We’re about to open the doors to a world that’s like a blend of reality TV and heartwarming sitcoms – the realm of hotel staff experiences that are wild, heart-melting, and sometimes, so bizarre they leave you wondering if you’ve stumbled into a parallel universe.
Imagine a place where the lobby holds more secrets than a spy thriller, where elevators witness more drama than your favorite reality show, and where a simple check-in can turn into a story you’ll be retelling for years. We’re talking about those jaw-dropping moments that make you go “Wait, did that seriously just happen?” and heartwarming gestures that’ll restore your faith in humanity faster than you can order room service.
So, grab a seat – maybe even imagine you’re sinking into one of those plush hotel armchairs – and join us as we embark on a journey through Crazy, Heartwarming, and WTH Moments from Hotel Staff.
A friend of mine works at the front desk and shared this story.
“A young man just came to the front desk and said I have a very strange request. Do you have an iron? I hesitated because he wasn’t a guest. He said I’m from out of town & traveled for an interview and doesn’t want to go with a wrinkled shirt. I grabbed my keys and got him to a room with an iron & ironing board. It was too rare to not help him. You don’t see this ambition often and it really warmed my heart. As he left he said I can’t believe this worked out. I said you stopped at the right place kid, good luck!”
This made me smile and we need more people like her in the world.
This one takes place after I decided to stretch my wings and work for a hotel not owned by my family.
During one of my 2nd shifts, this older man comes to check-in. He’s staying for a week with the hospital rate and looks very distressed. His English isn’t great but he does his best. Several times during the process he mentions how much he likes my hair. He also got very talkative about why he was staying there, since it was a slow night I indulged him. Turns out that his wife had been flown to our hospital from Puerto Rico. After he checked in he went to the hospital to check on his wife and stayed there for a while. I was still on shift when he returned and he asked me where he could get some food. I gave him a list of restaurants that were delivered to us. He asked which was my favorite and what I liked to eat there then wandered off to make his call then lingered around the lobby waiting for the delivery. When the delivery showed up he brought his food to the desk and set a box in front of me. He told me that he hadn’t eaten dinner alone in 50 years and he wasn’t ready to start. He had ordered the food that I told him was my favorite and was hoping that I’d be able to eat with him. Since my relief had shown up already I clocked out early and sat in the breakfast room with the guest to eat our food. Every night after that was the same thing. He’d come home from the hospital and ask me to order food for him so he’d get the front desk discount and I’d order my own food or warm up whatever I brought. His wife wasn’t doing good and he ended up having to stay with us for almost two months. We had dinner together every night (I lived two blocks away and would come in on my days off).
The guy was really nice and really lonely. His wife wasn’t doing good and none of his kids were able to get to the US. He called me Red even after I’d changed my hair and would tell me all about his life in Puerto Rico and his kids. After a lifetime of sh*tty guests, it was a really great experience. His wife ended up passing away in the hospital and he made sure to wait for me to come into work to leave and thanked me for the dinners and let me know that I’d made a hard time a little bit better.
Several years ago I worked the front desk at a privately owned hotel (non-chain) that had been a chain five years prior. Let’s call the chain Golden Dawn for the sake of the story.
The only way to book a reservation was to talk to the front desk staff. No online reservations, no third party reservations. About 50% of our rooms were sold to walk-ins.
In walks a woman I don’t recognize from check-in. She plops a piece of paper in front of me and then goes and gets lots of luggage. The paper shows her with a reservation at Golden Dawn at this address for tonight for a tenth the price we were selling before being fully booked. She comes back to the desk likely thinking that I have been checking her in all this time.
“I regret to inform you that we do not accept third party reservations; we are unfortunately already booked for the night”
“I have a reservation! It’s right there! I paid good money for it!”
“Ma’am, I believe you, unfortunately, you are not in our system because we don’t take third party reservations. They sold it to you fraudulently.”
“You are just trying to steal my money! I have a confirmation number right there! I handed it to you.”
“Yes, ma’am you handed me a reservation to a Golden Dawn. We are [hotel name], gesturing to a sign”
All of the signage inside and outside the building is correct.
“Also, this is for a fourth floor room, we only have three floors.”
“I stayed at this GOLDEN DAWN last year on the fourth floor!”
This argument continues for a while with me keeping my cool, informing her that we are booked, all of our rooms are full, me insisting that we don’t have a fourth floor, not Golden Dawn, don’t take third party reservations, etc. Eventually, she screams at me that I am going to take her to her room on the fourth floor, which she paid for, right now! I don’t respond, just stare at her with a blank face until she slaps the desk and screams “Now!” again.
I don’t mime making a room key, but I do grab my huge key ring and we both load ourselves up with her excessive luggage and climb the stairs. Once we get to the third floor I gesture to the third floor sign and tell her it is the third floor. I then use my maintenance key to unlock the door to the maintenance stairs which are not lit and she trudges up behind me not saying anything. I open the floor to the tarred roof and walk outside. “and here is the fourth floor, I hope it is as nice as the last time you stayed here” I drop her luggage and go down the stairs back to the front desk.
Honestly, had she been nicer to me I would have tried to help her get a room at a different hotel and submit documentation to try and get her a refund (or chargeback) from the third party but since she screamed at me I left her and her luggage on the roof. Plus, she insisted she had stayed on the fourth floor, so that’s what she got.
There was an option at the bottom of the stairs to go straight outside inside or come by the front desk. I didn’t see her again and she wasn’t there when I went to lock the roof back up on my midnight rounds.
So it all started when I decided to do a property walk at 2 am (I was working audit that terrible night). I am a good soul (I think idk who knows) and I go outside to check on cars to make sure nothing bad happened or anything like that. I notice a white sedan that had its engine on. I shine my flashlight in the vehicle. I stand there, stone cold, as a head twitches in the back seat. Twitch. Again! Twitch. Now my heart is racing. Who the f*ck would have Annabelle in the back seat. Wait. No! It’s not a cursed doll! The thing is breathing. I yank out my phone and call 911 immediately. “911. What’s your emergency?”
“Yeah. Umm. There is a baby in a vehicle and I’m not sure where the parents are.”
“Is the vehicle on?”
“Yes”
“Did you try to break into the vehicle?”
“No. not yet”
“Okay just stand near it and I send medics. What’s your address?”
“Sure. It’s *** ********”
“Great. Like I said just stand near the vehicle and emergency units have already been dispatched and are currently en route.”
“Thanks, ma’am”
I hang up. By this time my hands are sweaty. I need to pee. No! No, Ryan. You have to stand here and watch!! I pace back and forth in front of the sedan as I hear the sirens approaching. Thank god they are close. A police car races up to me, followed by an ambulance, then a fire truck. As the police officer breaks into the car, more and more police show up. Okay, so now we have seven cop cars, two ambulances, and three fire trucks. For one baby? Sure. I don’t make the rules. After the baby is safely retrieved from the vehicle, we try to go on our security tapes, but thanks to our wonderful management company, they barely work.
Fast forward a few weeks.
A police officer that I recognize walks into the lobby of the hotel. She catches me up to speed on the case. So, apparently, they found the baby daddy next door to our hotel. How lovely. And to make things worse the mom didn’t know the baby daddy took the baby 40 minutes away to a hotel.
The first time we met, I could tell exactly why she was there. Lots of people check in with our medical discount rate, so it’s not always obvious, but the scarf on her head was a dead giveaway. She was short, maybe 5′, so the 20-30 lbs. she’d lost from chemo was a lot. But there was a vitality to her, nevertheless. You wouldn’t guess that she was wracked with pain from the literal poison she was using regularly to play Chicken with Death.
For the first year & a half I was working that front desk, she came into town every few weeks with her mom. The hospital she was going to had a great oncology department. Sometimes, she’d be more lively than I was. Sometimes…she’d need her mom to basically carry her in. I offered the use of a wheelchair that we had in the bell closet once, but she didn’t take it.
Then, one day, I noticed that her reservation had been cancelled as a no-show. After that, nothing.
A few weeks after the no-show, I saw a big group of about fifteen people come in all at once. They said they had reservations and I was like, “Oh, okay, what’s the last name?” In the middle of this pack of humanity, I hear, “Ava!” as she pushes her way up to the desk. I was wholly confused when she got up to me. You know how you see someone after a long time and something is really different, but you can’t quite tell what? Yeah – that. It clicked after a second, though:
ME: “Oh! You have hair!”
The family got a good chuckle out of that and I started the check-in process for all their rooms. I told her how good it was to see her and asked what the occasion was.
AVA: “We’re celebrating!”
Again, it took me a second. I’m pudding-dense, y’all.
ME: “Oh?…OH! FOR REAL?”
She didn’t even answer, she just nodded really fast with a big ear-to-ear grin. I then told the other desk clerk to take over. I walked to the back and, as soon as I was out of sight of the desk, I bawled like a f*cking baby. By the time I composed myself and went back up front, they were all leaving to their rooms. I stopped Ava before she left the desk, scribbled my initials on a pile of our happy hour drink coupons, and handed them over.
ME: “Here. This weekend’s on me!”
I almost got fired for that, because I’d apparently given out several hundred dollars worth of free booze from our bar, but I gave zero f*cks. If you make the Reaper blink first, I’m gonna make sure you have one b*tchin’ party to celebrate.
Ava didn’t come back for a long time after that, but when she did…it wasn’t with a scarf.
I work at a big brand name hotel in a beach town. In the summer, our rates skyrocket to almost $300 a night, and we are usually sold out. Someone booked 2 rooms for a long weekend and decided not to show up or bother calling to cancel. Our no-show policy is pretty standard – 1 night’s cost for each room you booked. This gentleman was charged over $500 total for his 2 no-show rooms. It sucks, and it’s a lot of money, but it’s 100% his fault.
The gentleman called me a couple of weeks later when he got his credit card bill. I explained to him our policy, and that he wouldn’t be getting a refund. He went off, “You don’t know who you’re messing with”, “I’m not paying you idiot”, yadda yada. Eventually told me he was just going to dispute it with his credit card company.
This is basically what I said to him: “Sir if you want to dispute the charge with your bank, you have every right to do that. I would not personally recommend it though. If this was a case of a stolen credit card, I would agree with you, but we have documentation showing you were informed of the no-show policy. However, if you wish to pass this issue along to the bank, I will gladly deal with them”.
When you dispute a charge, the bank will front you the money while they investigate. When he got money from the bank right after he filed a dispute, he called me to GLOAT. He told me how stupid I was, yada yada. What I don’t think he understood, is that the money is pretty much a loan, under the assumption that his charges really were fraudulent. Which they weren’t.
I easily won the dispute, proving that he willfully did purchase these rooms, and was informed of the no-show policy. Then the bank billed him back for the money they fronted him. He called me again. Lucky me. He told me that the bank was billing him and that I had to pay it. He said because it all started with my hotel, it was our responsibility to pay his bank bill. At this point, I didn’t even know what more to say. I just said “No, have a good day”, and hung up. Down the road, he called AGAIN, saying that his credit card company was threatening to turn over the bill to collections if he didn’t pay. Now he wanted us to pay $800 because of the interest. I told him that his personal finances are his own business, and to stop calling. I tried to warn him in the beginning.
An older couple from Florida, maybe in their 70’s are checking in.
Woman: Gosh….the trees look absolutely awful without leaves on them.
Me: You just missed our peak fall season. It was beautiful, but now most have lost their leaves for the season.
Woman: It’s horrible. It looks ….depressing.
Me: Yes, I can imagine that winters in the north can be a bit dismal compared to Florida.
Woman: But the ones you have out front are ornamental, right?
(For reference, the trees in the front of our property are flowering crabapple trees)
Me: I guess you could say that they are absolutely stunning in the spring. Covered with flowers.
Woman: Well why just leave them there during the winter when they look so horrible?
(I kind of just gave her a blank look, as I wasn’t quite sure what she was inferring.)
Woman: Can’t you remove them? I really think you should have them removed. They look awful. It’s upsetting. (yes, she said the trees were upsetting eye roll) If they are good for the spring just plant new ones in the spring, why keep these ones when they are done blooming?
Me: (not even knowing how to respond to the fact that this woman just told me we should remove our trees and replant new ones every year) Oh, well, those are full-grown trees.
Woman: Is there a manager I could talk to about this?
Me: I am the only one on-site at the moment, the owner will be present here in the morning when you check out.
Woman: OK. They need to be removed. It’s very ugly. Just awful! How is anyone supposed to be comfortable staying here when all they see out their window are things that look DEAD! Are you sure that they actually aren’t dead? I mean….they really look dead to me. I think you should get rid of them. I think they are dead. You could probably hire someone to come and do that tomorrow. And maybe when we get back to the hotel I won’t have to look at dead things.
Me: Well…you are welcome to make your suggestions about them to the owner in the morning. I can leave him a note about your concerns in the meantime if you like.
Woman (sounding excited) Yes! Leave him a note. We will be gone all morning tomorrow. I hope you get some pine trees so it will look festive! Do you know? For the holidays! It will be so much better! You’ll see!
Our hotel (126-room business hotel in Northern Minnesota) is sold out. A big corporate event (like eighty grand big) took all but 10 rooms, and those ten got reserved. Unfortunately, most of them were reserved by construction workers: for the most part, they’re emotional Karens who freak the heck out about everything and like to flap their proverbial d*cks at me. And then there’s Gary, who is Special–in that, he’s more of a d*ckhole than all the others.
Gary approached me at the desk. “Checking in.”
“Just need to see your ID.”
“No, you don’t.”
I let that hang there for a moment, then: “Yeah, I do.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve been staying here for months. You don’t need to see my ID.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t. Nobody else checks it.”
“They’re doing their jobs wrong. ID, please.”
“I’m not showing you my ID.”
“I’m not giving you the keys to your room otherwise.”
“So you’re gonna deny me service just because I wouldn’t show you my freaking ID?”
“Yes.”
Gary huffed and puffed and tried to blow the house down, but I am immune to the rages of middle-aged impotence. “Nobody else ever IDs me.”
“Sir, if Jesus Christ walked through that door and showed me the stigmata, I’d still ask for a government-issued photo ID. And I’d love to see yours, now.”
Gary relented and pulled out his wallet. Yep, it’s Gary! So I pulled up his reservation. “Okay, now I just need you to swipe or insert your card here!”
“No, you’re not, you’re just making stuff up to feel like a big man.”
“I don’t need to feel like a big man. I need you to swipe or insert your card.”
“Why?”
“I’m not going to! Because nobody else ever makes me do this, and I don’t care about helping you guys out.”
“Well, I’m making you do it.”
“I won’t be doing that.”
“Then I’m not giving you your room. Have a good night.”
I turn to walk away–lo and behold! The card appears in his hand! He inserts the chip! Payment goes through! I get him his keys and hand them to him with a smile. “Have a good night.”
“You’re a real d*ckhead, you know that?”
“If you decide to become verbally abusive with me or any other employees I will have the police remove you. Only warning. Have a good night.”
“You–“
I lifted the receiver on the phone and stared at him. Gary rolled his eyes and stalked off, muttering darkly. Coincidentally, his boss came through the lobby not ten minutes later, and he was not happy to hear what I had to say about old Gary.
One day I was working the front desk when a man came in. He kinda looked homeless, his clothes were ripped and dirty. He asked about getting a room for “a little while”. He laid a $50 bill on the counter, casually slid it my way, and then turned away from me.
I ignored the money and told him what rooms we had and the rates. He turned back around, saw the cash there and instead of replying, pushed the $50 closer to me.
Me: Sir, the room with tax is $xxx.xx, I’m going to need more than that.
Weird Man rolls his eyes at me: Come on. I know how this works. Just take the money.
Me, confused: I can’t take it, it’s not enough to book a night here.
Weird Man, exasperated: It’s not for the whole night! That’s the point. Just get me a key, you won’t even know we were there.
The lobby doors opened and a woman walked in. She was beautiful and not wearing much. A sports bra and a little blue skirt with sandals. He says to her loudly: “TRIXIE? Go sit down, I’m getting us some privacy.”
She acknowledges that she’s Trixie with a big smile and a wink and takes a seat.
Weird Man turns back to me: So, we good? Key?
Just as I start to tell him what I said before, the lightbulb finally goes off. I get it.
Me: Are you trying to give me money so you can use a room for an hour?
Weird Man: Not even an hour, I promise. You get fifty bucks.
Me: You’ve done this here before?
Weird Man: Not here, no. But other hotels, all the time. (WHAATT? LOL)
Me: Sorry, I can’t do that. See that camera? (I point to a black box in the ceiling that is not a camera) They’d look back, see what I did and I’d lose my job.
Weird Man nods his head: Oh, I can’t do that to ya. Trixie, let’s go!! I knew this place. They got us on film!
And that was the first and only time I had someone try to book a room to sleep with someone for an hour by offering me fifty dollars.
The other day I had a woman call me from Nevada asking about rates for a weekend she could come out and see her man who is locked up here. He was recently transferred from a facility in a place it was more economical to visit than here.
My heart instantly dropped for her because our room rates were ridiculous and none of the discounts I could give her other than my own personal one which I’m still 30 days out from being able to use were available.
She gasped when I told her the price. I told her about a few hotels that she could most likely afford that are even closer to our big a**ed men’s prison. And we talked about how she was thinking of taking the Megabus to San Francisco which is 4 ½ hours away minimum and I told her about an airline that could fly her for the same price and she’d touch down 45 minutes south of where she’d want to be and be able to take public transport to town to save her some cash.
She finally stopped me and said “Girl, why are you being so cool with me? I’m not even staying with you!”
I said, “Ma’am I’ve done some time myself and I understand going to jail is expensive and I feel you because some of my friends have been locked up in places I can’t get to, so if I can help I’ll help.”
She started laughing and said “You know what? You’ve been the most real person I’ve talked to today. I said prison to some other clerk and they hung up on me. My man got to run up on a pot charge, It’s some sh*t I’ll tell you but he’s getting out next year and when he gets out I want you to plan my trip to pick him up. You’re real and you’re sweet and you know your sh*t.”
And I laughed and said I’d be honored and told her to write my name down and ask for me when she called again because I’d get her a better rate when the summer was over. And to let me call over to the cheaper hotel I thought of that’s closer to the prison and let them know she’d be calling.
So, working as a night manager at a large hotel where we had four overnight staff. Our hotel is very close to a plaza that is FILLED with bars, including a very sketchy country bar known for over-serving and not checking IDs (this is Canada, legal drinking age of 19 for reference).
We see 3-4 ladies in their late 40s and a younger girl barely legal (we later find out the daughter of one of the older ladies) leave shortly after 11, dressed for the country bar for sure. I thought it was a little weird to go clubbing with your mom and her friends but whatever, you do you.
Just before 1 am the younger girl and one of the older ladies return. It’s pretty obvious the younger girl is quite drunk but they are being quiet so I don’t hassle them on their way to the elevators. 20ish minutes later the older lady is heading back out to party with her friends. Another 20-ish minutes and we get a call from the security guard that a woman is passed out on the floor in the hallway, could I go up to back him up.
I head up to the floor in question and sure enough, slumped against a room door is the young lady from earlier. She is unresponsive to our verbal commands and then she starts throwing up on herself. We roll her (we have medical gloves on at this point, thank god we keep them on us at all times) into the recovery position and call an ambulance.
While waiting for the Ambulance the mother and her friends return to their rooms. We inform the mother that we called an ambulance for her unconscious, unresponsive daughter, who is throwing up on herself and started SCREAMING! How DARE we call an ambulance? What are they going to think? Her husband is a first responder and will find out! She is going to sue us!
Now, the houseman arrives with the EMTs who start making sure the young woman can breathe and load her onto a stretcher to take her to the hospital. One of them does in fact know the mother and that is when we find out the daughter is only 16!!!!
He looked at her and told her she better call her husband. She goes off with the ambulance crew, crying.
That is, by far, the weirdest / most stressful night of my several years working in a hotel.
A few weeks back, when we were completely booked, a guest complained about the smell of weed coming from a room. I ask them which room they think it’s coming out of, and they tell me.
I go up to the room, and knock on the door; it’s a group of like 8 or 9 people, black and Latinx. I tell them someone reported the smell of it and asked if they had it (the room didn’t smell strongly of it, but it’s clear that they at least had been smoking before entering the hotel). They assured me they didn’t, and I left it at that. I can’t ask to search the room and they were keeping quiet, so I apologized and left.
About 10 minutes later, the same guest called down to complain except this time he said, “I know you probably can’t call the cops, but I can if you want.”
“No, sir, I do not need you to call the cops on that guest. I will check on them again.”
“I can do it, just let me know.”
Honestly, this time I just do a walk-by of the room; I still can’t smell anything, and in my hotel, you can smell smoke almost as soon as you step off the elevator. I go back down and am chillin’ watching Daredevil season 3 when a guest walks into the lobby. “Do you need anything, sir?”
“No, I’m just waiting on someone.” I recognized his voice as the guest who’d been calling down.
About 20 minutes go by, Daredevil is about to fight Bullseye for the first time, and one of my city’s finest, whom I know because he has been here for other problems before, walks in and says he got a call. “I didn’t–“
“That was me!” this motherf*cker. “I think there’s someone smoking marijuana next to me and this fellow isn’t doing anything about it.”
The cops go up, speak to the guests I’ve already spoken to and come back down. I ask them if they found anything (of course they didn’t) and if they need me to sign something (they don’t), and I apologize for the guest wasting their time.
One of the things we have guests sign is a paper saying if they cause a disturbance to other guests, we reserve the right to ask them to leave. This includes loud noises, verbal or physical harassment, and basically anything we feel like violates the safety or well-being of another guest.
So I asked the officers to stick around for a minute, I call the guest who had called them and informed him he has violated our disturbance policy and needed to leave. Of course, he fights it, starts yelling at me over the phone and refuses to leave. I ask the officers to accompany me up to the room, and together we walk this guy out of my hotel.
A small luxury tropical island resort. An older guy walks out of jewelry shop and comes right over to the reception. He’s together with a much younger lady who’s twirling a sapphire bracelet on her hand. The dude asks to settle the jewelry shop bill in cash. 20,000$. No problem, I start the checkout and he repeatedly asks if this will not show up on the room bill. I ensured him it won’t. He paid, gave me a tip and left. Two hours later I met him again. This time with his wife and two kids.
I mean – we are talking about a tiny island that’s 500x500m in size and has about 50 rooms. The dude either has some serious b*lls or impressive multitasking skills.
I checked in an older woman from Texas last night, who, after checking in, asked about our “free shuttle”. The convo went something like this:
ME: We actually don’t have a free shuttle service.
Southern Woman (SW): I heard it was free.
ME: Who said it was free?
SW: I don’t know, but I thought it was free. I want to use the free shuttle.
ME: We don’t have a free shuttle. The service we use is $17 per adult.
SW: It says online that it’s free.
ME: I am the guy who controls what the websites say, and I assure you, none of them says it’s free. It’s $17 per person.
SW: I’ll just have to look it up when I get upstairs.
So up she goes and I go back to doing my work. She comes down a few hours later and tells me that she doesn’t want the shuttle, which is great because I never ordered it. I tell her OK.
When she got back, I told her to have a good night and thought that was it.
This morning, I got an email from her, directed to our front desk email, about how rude I was. She also complained about “Unexpected charges” which was just the incidental authorization. I talked to the FDA who talked to her this morning, and he said that I was really nice to the woman behind her. Now, the woman who complained happens to be black and the woman who was behind her was white. What Southern Woman doesn’t know is that the white woman behind her had checked in earlier, and she had stayed at my previous property the night beforehand, so we had already bonded. But she thought my, “Welcome back!” was somehow racist against her.
The booking came in a few weeks ago with a note attached that the guest will be travelling with their deaf father. Just so that we would be aware when dealing with them when they arrived as they were here for a number of days and his daughter wanted to make his trip to Ireland as smooth as possible.
Upon seeing this note and noting I would be the one to check them in as I was rostered for their arrival time, I decided to learn some very basic sign language. I greeted the guest in my usual fashion, asking for the surname on the booking. Once I heard the name I realized immediately who was standing in front of me.
I had been learning for two weeks how to say “Welcome to Ireland. My sign language is terrible, but please if you need anything during your stay just let me know and we will help you”.
I smiled at the father and daughter in front of me, turning to the father I greeted in ASL and began the bit I had learned for him. His daughter broke down crying and called me sweet. But the father just smiled and was so happy. Honestly seeing his reaction was enough for me. It was so worth the last few weeks of learning basic ASL.
At check-out, I sadly wasn’t working, but they had left a gift for me. A small box with some chocolates and a book on ASL. Inside the inscription “Thank you very much for what you did on check-in. My father has been in amazing form since you checked us in and insisted we get you a gift before we left. You have no idea how much this meant to my father and me and we can’t thank you enough. You’ve made his trip home to his family after 50 years very special with one simple gesture”.
They wrote a letter to the GM also asking to give me a raise, which I really appreciated. And gave us an amazing review on TA. I cried like a little b*tch for a solid 5mins when I came into work today to find this gift in my locker.
Me: Front desk, this is ____, how may I assist you?
Female Guest (FG: who sounds like a Sorority Sister): Yea, I’d like a massage. In my room. Can you do that? How much would it cost me to get you here right now?
Me: (confused) I’m sorry… you want… what? (I’m thinking I must have misunderstood this girl, or maybe she’s a perv, or she thinks we have a spa…you just never know in this industry, I can’t tell you how many dudes have tried to get me to go to their rooms, it’s disgusting).
FG: I want a massage, it says you are available, so I’d like you to come to my room now. Can you tell me how much?
Me: (seriously confused and starting to think it’s a prank or she really is a weirdo perv) I’m sorry, we don’t have a spa or offer any kind of massage services.
FG: Yes you do! It says so right here, that’s why I called you.
Me: I assure you, we don’t offer massages. You are seeing this information… where exactly? Can you describe the advertisement you are seeing in your room?
FG: It’s the button I pushed and then you answered.
Me: (dumbfounded) You mean, on the phone?
FG: Yes! It says “Massage” and the light was blinking so I thought that meant someone was available. So I pushed the button and it called you.
Me: Ma’am …. (literally had to pause and cover my mouth so I didn’t laugh) …. that says message. The light means you have a message waiting for you.
FG: (Whispers) … Oh. My. God. It says message.
Random dude in the background of her hotel room: Hysterical laughter at max volume.
FG: * silence *
Me: Ma’am? Would you like your message?
FG: (Still whispering dejectedly) Yes, please.
I gave her the message, and she said thanks and hung up. Then I laughed so hard I cried.
I’ve been working at my hotel for three on-and-off years and have received zero negative reviews directly towards me while I was working the desk…
…well, I did say working the desk. In my three years, I received one directed complaint.
For context, this happened when I was still in college. I got off my afternoon shift and went to a campus pub with my college friends to unwind. I went straight from work still wearing my work clothes, but took off my nametag and anything that states my hotel on it; basically, I was wearing my checkered long-sleeve shirt and black pants (yes, this is important). I had a great time, downing shots, drinking beer, and then having my designated driver roommate drive me and my car back to our apartment.
Two days later, I get to work and my boss is there. Felt it kind of odd because she is usually gone before the afternoon shift gets there at 3 pm. She doesn’t look mad, more concerned and confused. I clock in and she asks to speak to me. Again, she didn’t sound mad, so I was wondering if everything is ok. She pulls up our review forums and shows me the most recent review. It reads something like “I saw the front desk agent getting drunk with friends, downing shots, and unable to walk. Very poor choice of staff.” I recognized the name as someone I checked in the day I went to the bar.
Obviously, my boss had to ask me some questions to follow up, with the biggest one being “Were you drinking at work.” I say that I was of course not and I just went to the bar after my shift two days ago. I explained that I made sure my nametag was off and there was nothing that said our hotel on it, but still had the same work clothes I had on that shift.
Per requirement, she reached out to the guest for more info and the guest explained that they recognized me at the same bar with my work clothes, beard, and long hair. The guest just said to her that she doesn’t think front desk agents should be drinking at all, even off the clock+.
After that, she said that I had nothing to worry about and that what I do on my own time is my own so long as it is not illegal. The guest’s review was removed by corporate after my owner’s request and the guest was added to our Do Not Rent list.
And the best part, after my boss said that I had nothing to worry about, she invited me to that same bar for drinks that same night and bought the first round.
Working my 7-3 shift and a seemingly nice, middle-aged man comes to the desk to check out. Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet.
This is where things get weird.
He says, “Hey I’m checking out of room 42069, but I wanted to see if there was a pet fee posted on my bill.”
I say, “Yes sir, it looks like there’s a $50 pet fee.”
He goes, “I’d like for you to take that off. I noticed your elevator hasn’t been inspected since 2017 and if you charge me the fee I’ll report you guys.”
I say, “Sir, extortion is a felony but I hope you have a great day.”
I work at a small timeshare and I’m fairly new at it. A lady came to check in recently and the first thing she asked me was if we had a pack and play. Now, I am 31, have no kids, have no interest in kids, know nothing about kids, and never want kids. I don’t even have friends who have babies or kids. I had no idea what this thing was, so I politely asked her. She immediately started screaming at me about how when she made the reservation they promised we had one etc etc. I had to interrupt her and told her I’m sure we do have one, I just don’t know what it is.
She finally explains. It’s a stupid crib. I tell her if it’s not already in the room, I will go get it. I text my property manager she verifies we have it and should already be in her room. Lady leaves.
My property manager calls me hours later. Apparently, the woman called and complained to our corporate about me because I didn’t know what it was. Corporate calls my property manager and pretty much lays into her about training her employees better. She stood up for me and told them “She doesn’t have kids. How the heck is she supposed to know what that is.”
People are insane and timeshare people are the most entitled people I’ve ever met.
