The Mattress Police May Soon be a Reality

In the 1985 hit comedy Fletch, Chevy Chase says he's with the mattress police to get out of a sticky situation (see attached video). But California lawmakers are considering making mattress police a reality.

After the California Senate returns from its monthlong recess, one interesting bill will stand out from the mountain of proposed legislation. If approved, SB 432 will require hotels to eliminate flat sheets—the ones with no elastic on the corners.

My head nearly exploded when I read this. I thought it had to be a joke—we have a budget problem, a $26-billion deficit problem, a border problem and many other problems that are ruining California, yet this is the law that our elected officials come up with? Flat sheets could become a crime. For real?

Are we electing people who are so inept and so clueless about the real world that they think flat sheets will solve our problems? This bill is the brainchild of Kevin DeLeon a Democrat from Los Angeles whose mother worked in the housekeeping industry. He said the bill is "near and dear" to his heart. Apparently his mother suffered back pain while working as a maid in the hotel industry.

So in our suffering economy, and an already hurting travel and hotel industry, we are considering a law that will cost them $10 million to $15 million to get up to snuff and purchase new fitted sheets.

According to the L.A. Times, more than 7,400 California hotel housekeepers filed workers’ compensation claims last year. Out of those 883 filed for hurt backs, according to the state Industrial Relations Department.

So we know 10 percent of the claims are related to back injuries. But how many of these back injuries are mattress-related?

Of course, this bill has the support of big labor unions, but there were arguments in the Senate against this ridiculous piece of legislation from Sen. Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo). He said, "We are now going to make it a crime in California not to use a fitted sheet? Really?"  

It is refreshing to see even a tiny bit of common sense left in what is otherwise a lame group.

I am no expert, but I just wonder what our representatives are thinking and doing when they come up with nonsense like this. The state of California is dying on the vine, and this is the best you have got?

There are hundreds of other issues that need to be fixed, ratified and worked on. Fitted sheets seem to be the least of the worries. Who is going to police this law? Are we really going to have mattress police?

Maybe if our legislators were doing the important things, such as watching our border, reducing their spending and, basically, just using their brains, maybe—just maybe—the state of California wouldn’t be the catastrophe that it is becoming.

So the question remains: Are fitted sheets really one of the important issues facing the state of California?