Yes, your hotel knows that you just stole that towel...because they sewed a microchip in it

Jelisa Castrodale | USA TODAY

We've all been there. We've all been frantically trying to re-pack and check out of the hotel on time when — just before we zip our suitcases — our eyes focus on the embroidered logo on the fluffy hand towels. "Should I?" we ask ourselves, imagining how classy it would look in our own bathrooms.

Don't do it. The hotels know, guys. THEY KNOW.

According to a Miami-based company called Linen Tracking Technology, a lot of hotels stitch tiny microchips into their towels, robes, pillowcases, cloth napkins and other linens. The LinenTracker chips are currently being used in over 2,000 hotels--but don't ask which ones.

According to Linen Tracking Technology executive vice president William Serbin:

"Our properties like to remain anonymous. They benefit from the gained efficiency and don’t want to alarm guests that they have this technology,"

The RFID-equipped chips were originally designed to help hotels keep track of their linens as they went back and forth to off-site laundry facilities (Hotels can lose an estimated 20% of their linens each month through various mishaps, most involving cleaning issues). But they've since started to employ that same technology to catch sticky-fingered guests who might try to make off with their in-room robes. When the chips are taken past the hotel's entrances or exits, real-time tracking software sends an alert. The head of housekeeping (probably) isn't going to follow you home, but those towels might show up on your credit card.

Linen Tracker says it can supply hotels with RFID-chip enabled linens at about the same cost as those without chips, and one can only assume just as soft.

According to a recent survey by Novotel hotels, linens and bathrobes are the most frequently stolen items, which surprises no one. But the rest of the top ten featured pretty much anything that wasn't nailed down, including remote controls (what?), light bulbs and the display trays and soap dishes in the bathroom. Sure, that makes sense: those things fit perfectly in the pocket of our stolen robes.