17 Fascinating Stories From Hotel Employees Whose Jobs Are a Never-Ending Adventure

Curiosities
10 hours ago

Working in a hotel is more than just serving guests and solving routine tasks. It’s a real kaleidoscope of emotions, unexpected situations and stories that even the most imaginative scriptwriter might find it difficult to come up with.

Every day, hotel employees face something new. Their life is a mixture of hospitality, stress, humor and endless improvisation. Internet users shared the most curious stories from their working life.

  • Found one of those black fuzzy caterpillars in a room. I carried it outside, oh so carefully not to lose it. Put it down on the sidewalk and it didn’t move. I picked it back up to make sure it was alive and realized it was someone’s fake eyelash. © Love-Dizzy / Reddit
  • I have a friend that owns a small motel just off a highway. I would hang out with him and chat on some late nights. One night, he got a call that one of the guest heard a loud crash in the room next door. Checked the computer and saw that the room was unoccupied.
    A friend and I go to check it out. We knock, and there is no answer. He opens the door, and there was a cat in the room. It knocked over a lamp and smashed it. It was super friendly and came right to us.
    We took it back to the office and looked at the room records. The prior person that was in the room abandoned the cat when he checked out 3 days earlier. He was already on the other side of the country when we called him, and he said he was not coming back for the cat.
    My friend took ownership of the cat, and now she is the motel cat. She walks all around the property and takes care of any mice or critters. She even has her picture on the wall as one of the “employees.” © mrsheikh / Reddit
  • I had a woman years ago come up to the front desk and say, “I came here for sunshine! It’s 65 and raining out!! What are you going to do about it!?” I just stared at her and finally said, “Nothing. I can’t control the weather.”
    She stomped off and complained about me to management, who basically went, “Okay... crazy lady.” © mesembryanthemum / Reddit
  • Worked at a hotel during summer, let’s just say it wasn’t the best one. 50 rooms and only 2 people at reception. We got usually super busy, so it wasn’t easy to keep with everyone.
    We had a couple hiring for a week a room, and they had a lot of luggage, my colleague and I were shocked of how much. Ended up by them stealing everything in the room, even the windows. They took out our windows. We both got fired that day. © serenityvoiid / Reddit
  • My buddy works at a hotel and shared this crazy story: a guest requested a room full of balloons for a surprise party. The staff spent all night blowing up balloons, only for the guest to check out without even seeing the room! © shyrochyn / Reddit
  • One of the strangest reviews we received at our hotel, “My husband came home after his trip and he was so upset. I can’t believe you made him drink his coffee from a paper cup. We always thought your hotel brand had high standards, but clearly that is not the case. We will never stay at your hotel brand ever again. This is disgraceful!”
    Thing is, we definitely have ceramic cups available, he just had to ask the breakfast attendant. © Melfunctional- / Reddit
  • One resort I worked for had a guest order ice cream from room service. I don’t recall exactly what happened, but the guest was pissed about something with the order, and proceeded to deliberately dump the ice cream out of the bowl onto the floor and told the attendant it was his job to clean it up.
    When he went to get a towel from the cart, she blocked the door and told him he couldn’t leave until he cleaned up the mess she made. Poor guy used the sleeve of his uniform shirt to do what he could.
    The following morning, the guest was “invited” to the resort manager’s office, where she was told that she was no longer welcome at the resort for the remainder of her stay and would not be welcomed back in the future under any circumstances. © PrscheWdow / Reddit
  • I work at a popular hotel. Recently, I got a weird complaint from a guest. At 2 a.m., he called to complain about the interior and furniture, and then described all the flaws of the design in detail, “Your interior is in the 90s style. It looks so awful that I just can’t sleep.” © Overheard / VK
  • We received a guest complaint about noise by one of our pools. Come to find out that a woman staying in a suite near the pool was locked out on her patio and was screaming/pounding on the sliding glass door. The room’s director and head of security go to the suite, and find a man sitting on the sofa, calmly watching TV.
    The two of them had gotten into a fight, and he deliberately locked her out on the patio. The best part, though, was the final line on the Guest Incident Report, “Mr. and Mrs. X are celebrating their honeymoon and will be with us for 3 more nights.” © PrscheWdow / Reddit
  • I work in a hotel. Recently, a guest approached me with a request to print out some documents. Our printer is very peculiar. It chews the sheets, spits them out and makes a very loud noise. You have to catch printed sheets and even pick them up from the floor.
    When the guest asked me what was wrong with it, I nonchalantly replied, “It is not a soulless machine, but a personality. It is offended by the fact that we haven’t changed the cartridge for a long time.”
    After that I stroke its black side and say affectionately, “It’s okay, my dear friend, soon we will refill you!” The next paper sheet goes straight into my hands. You should have seen the guest’s face! © Overheard / VK
  • I worked at the front desk of a hotel, and since there weren’t many people, I sometimes took liberties knowing that there were no cameras. I could put on my headphones and dance, even sing along when the hotel was empty. I was dancing on the reception counter.
    And then there was a theft at the hotel. Investigation started. They checked the security footage. That’s how I found out cameras existed! To say I was embarrassed is an understatement. © Work Stories / VK
  • I work in a hotel and meet a lot of different people. A married couple was checking in. The hotel requires a deposit. The husband went to park the car, and the wife offered to pay the deposit while he was busy.
    I ask to enter the pin code. First try, second, third: the card is blocked. I ask her if she knows the pin code. She says she tried to guess, because the card is not hers, but her husband’s. © Overheard / VK
  • As the owner of a bed and breakfast place for the last 8 years, the craziest thing I ever found was an old-battered notebook with “Why I love salad” written on the front and then literally 40–80 pages on why salad was amazing. There’d be the occasional suggestion that the author believed salad to be alive in some sense. Looked like it had been written on and off over the course of several years. © ShaneMcD***h / Reddit
  • I used to work as a night receptionist. It was around 2 a.m. when a man came stumbling to the front desk, looking panicked. He whispered, “There’s someone in my room!” Naturally, I was alarmed. I offered to check the room with him.
    As we entered, I turned on the lights, and there it was—the “intruder.” It was a life-sized cutout of a Bollywood actor that we had placed in the hallway for a promotion earlier that day. For some reason, he had brought it into his room, propped it in a corner, and forgotten about it.
    I tried to keep a straight face as he muttered something about being “too tired” and shuffled back to bed. The next morning, he checked out like nothing had happened. © someonestoic / Reddit
  • Prior to guests arriving, I often had to run over to rooms to drop off a “welcome to our hotel” fruit basket type thing. We got busy, so I fell behind and had to run over to several rooms to drop off the baskets. Occasionally the guest has arrived before me. I knock, they answer, and I give them the basket, and leave. Well, I get to this room.
    Knock knock knock, “Front desk!” No answer. Knock knock knock, “Front desk!” No answer. Knock knock knock, “Front desk, coming in!” No answer.
    I open the door, and there are literally 7 people, sitting on the couches right inside the room, just silently looking up at me. “Oh! Hi! Here’s your welcome basket!” Put it on the table and scurry out of there. © bodhasattva / Reddit
  • Noise related requests/complaints were some of the strangest I have encountered. One example: I worked at a hotel built on pilings over a bay, so the hotel had amazing views. One time a guest called and said the sea lions and the waves were too loud for her nap and asked me to make the sea lions (in their natural habitat) be quiet until after her nap. © Stephanie Macey / Quora
  • A client once asked for an extra bed while he was doing a reservation via phone, when I told him that there will be an extra charge of 10€ per day. He asked if he can bring his own extra bed from home and pay the price without the extra charge. I said that this is something I can not reply and connect him to the manager.
    The manager offered a bed free of charge in case he paid in cash. He said, “Thanks, but I will bring an extra bed from home, in case you change your mind.” Fast-forward 2 months, he arrived with an extra bed in his truck, imagine that for a whole week there was a car in our hotel parking lot, with a single bed on top of it. © Alexandros Tsaltas / Quora

And here hotel workers revealed what goes on when you’re not looking.

Preview photo credit someonestoic / Reddit

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