When people go out on vacation they last thing they think about when staying at a hotel is the mess they leave behind. That's why hotel maids are truly unsung heroes in an under appreciated occupation. The workers in these stories share the absolutely abysmal rooms they've had to clean up; from smashed furniture to actual biohazards. Give these folks a raise!
Gross! Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
There Was No Salvaging That Hotel Room
“Housekeeper wasn’t my title, but when you work at a small hotel with a small staff you do a little bit of everything — you kind of have to.
This was a small hotel (120ish rooms) that allowed pets for a modest fee. This particular hotel was ‘extended stay,’ meaning it was set up so that every room included not just the basic amenities, but also a full kitchen; full-sized fridge, dishwasher, oven, the works. It was common to have people stay while their houses or apartments were being repaired, or while waiting on the sale/purchase of a home.
Two women (mother and daughter) check in with two cats. Okay, cool. They seem a little silly, but we’ve seen a lot of weird people and don’t think anything of it.
The rule at this property was that while guests could refuse to have their room cleaned, rooms had to be inspected every five days, just to make sure the rooms didn’t have any severe damage. Sounds like a great idea, and might have prevented a lot of the damage described in other rooms in this thread, and if that rule had been followed here it might even have saved some measure of my sanity. Unfortunately, during this time the Housekeeping Manager who was supposed to be conducting these checks was very busily sleeping with her boss.
After the end of the second week, the housekeepers started to complain about the smell, even through the closed door. Sadly, the Manager decided to continue her sordid history of doing absolutely nothing but fooling around, and the complaints were basically ignored.
At the end of the third week, the women were evicted for nonpayment.
I wasn’t there when the first unlucky housekeeper opened that cursed door, but I’m not sure how she didn’t immediately start vomiting. Just walking past the building made me start to gag, and this was walking past an exterior entrance — as in, I was outside, not in a closed hallway!
Apparently, during their three short weeks in that small hotel room, two cats became FOURTEEN, most of which were not spayed, some of which were injured, and NONE were provided with any kind of actual care. There were no litter boxes; both litter and cheap kibble had been scattered amply over every surface. Urine and feces were everywhere, along with blood and worse. There were cats with injuries so bad that when the animals were collected by animal control they had to be immediately put down.
Roughly about the time this was discovered, the old manager and the housekeeping manager got fired (for fraud, not the sleeping around, surprisingly) and a new hotel manager was brought in. She took one look at the train wreck and hired a disaster relief company to come in. They ripped the room up down to the studs while wearing full hazmat suits at all times. Not only did we have to replace all the soft goods — the mattress, the furniture, the carpet, the curtains — but also the APPLIANCES in the kitchen, which had somehow also been drenched in urine. There were places where they had to jackhammer up parts of the floor and re-pour concrete because the smell just wouldn’t stop.
In 10+ years I have seen blood, feces, vomit, and any number of bodily fluids. I have seen floods, raw sewage, moldy food, stained mattresses, and rooms destroyed by careless guests who thought carpets were perfectly acceptable places to put out their cigs. But NONE of that compares to that one tiny room.”
They Had To Decontaminate The Entire Room
“Perfect spot for this story.
So we had this one couple that would stay in our hotel in a casino that I used to work at when I was 16. Both were married to other people. They had stayed there for a few days as usual.
Time to checkout. Me and my coworker went in and were hit with this putrid smell of garlic, foul-bowel, vomited wall when we had entered. To your left when entering the room, there was a mini fridge and a sink. Next to it, the bathroom on the left side before the bedroom. Vomit, and blood all over the counter of the sink and floor leading to the bathroom. This was all carpeted. Even on the mirror. Just, wow.
Heading to the bathroom, the toilet seat was completely off and shower curtains ripped almost all the way off. Puke everywhere. Blood all over the toilet as well. Looked like something out of a horror movie. Just foul.
To get to the good part. We go into the bedroom area. The duvet seemed fine and they had made the bed before leaving. Unbeknownst to us, we remove it. There was so much blood on the bed as it had looked like someone was stabbed to death. Fecal matter as well. Used rubbers too. Yuck!
Now since we had to decontaminate this room, since it now has been considered biohazard, we had to remove the whole mattress and dispose of this. Hoho!! Low and behold!!! Beads the size of bowling balls shoved under the mattress! I started gagging as well as my fellow coworker.
This room had gotten to the point I had to call the MOD. He came up and looked at the room and lost whatever he had eaten that day. He told us to leave the room and go home to shower.
The plus side is we got off early for the day and didn’t have to touch that room for a week as the company called a professional cleaning crew to completely clean the room and dispose of anything and everything that had been in contact of the grossness. The couple got fined heavily for the damages and were banned from the hotel for life. The worst ever room I had ever seen.”
Ever Clean Up A Shoot Out?
“I wasn’t a maid but I did work at a hotel. This was certainly the most memorable and terrifying incident I remember while working there.
So a guy checked in with his wife one night then leave for the bars. They return soon enough and the guy is absolutely plastered. They looked like they had a good time but things must have went sour very quickly because apparently the man started throwing things. He tore down curtains, flipped the mattress, toppled furniture, all the while threatening his wife. We heard the screams and did the reasonable thing which was call the cops. Oh did I mention that this lunatic was also armed? This man was ragingly inebriated, brandishing a sidearm and threatening to kill his wife and himself. We went up and unlocked the door for police and waited in the hallway for them to show up. Few seconds later cops charged in and there’s a bit of a standoff. The man finally released his wife but wouldn’t take his hands off the weapon and kept it pointed at the officers. There was more yelling and that’s when the shooting started.
I don’t know who fired first but one of the officers had a pump action that must’ve been loaded with double 00 buck or something because blood went everywhere. Bits of brain and tissue all over the room. Most of it soaked into the carpet, walls, and strewn across the windows. It looked like a scene straight out of CSI.
The police took the body and began an investigation that took weeks. The unfortunate thing about an active crime scene is that it must stay completely intact until the investigation is concluded so the blood stains stayed up for the whole ordeal.
Another grisly detail is that this was a two-tower hotel so there was another room across the way that faced directly into this one. From tower one you could peer right into the murder room for weeks. After the investigation ended and it was time to clean nobody wanted to do it. The hotel had to hire some professional hazmat guys to do the dirty work.”
Weird Guy
“My first ‘real’ job was stripping beds in a small motel at the age of 14. I would start a bit before the maids so that they just had to remake the beds. Easy enough job for a 14-year-old.
One room was a stay over and I knocked on the door. Guy answered and I asked if he wanted service that day. He was in stained briefs and said yes, he wanted service. I told him I just strip the beds and I could come back later with the maid and get it all done at once. He told me to just come in then and strip the bed and dirty towels out. So I did. When I went to leave I told him the maid would be to his room after a bit to give fresh towels and make the bed. He got upset and wanted me to make the bed right then.
Mind you there were nasty dirty underwear next to the bed and in the bathroom along with a ton of dirty magazines on the other bed.
I explained again that I don’t make the beds, just strip the rooms. I was a scared young girl. He got angrier and I dipped out of the room fast to go talk to the head housekeeper. She was supposed to tell me that morning before I got started to stay away from that room and forgot to pass on that info. So since she messed up she went with me and the maid and we had to make his bed and put in fresh towels while he was sitting there staring at us in his dirty nasty underwear.”
“The Things That Happen In Hotels Can Be Horrific”
“Not a maid but I was a former front desk manager at a hotel. Had a guest who was under the influence and harassing my night auditor. The crazy guy left the his room then fell into a ditch a block from the hotel. A random staff member happened to spot him on the way in to work the next morning at 6 a.m. and helped him back. After refusing medical treatment I told the man he would need to leave by 5 p.m. My general manager was handling the situation (as I’m just the guest relations manager and this was over my head).
I was told that the guest left around noon and that the problem was resolved by the GM. But I had a funny feeling that this wasn’t the last of the crazy guy. Around 6 p.m. right as I was getting ready to leave, I decided to check his room just in case. Door was open and sure enough I found the guy still in his room. Except this time he was unconscious on the floor covered in blood and feces. No signs of life and a giant gash on the back of his head. I sent my housekeeping supervisor to the desk to call for an ambulance and started CPR.
It took six minutes for the EMTs to arrive. The man was awake and angry when they ambulance got there and I was a shaky mess. He had taken too many pain pills, slipped and slammed his head into the bedside table. Turns out the same EMTs had to give him CPR three weeks earlier at another hotel during a similar incident.
I was absolutely terrified but my manager told me to ‘suck it up and handle it’ and said I was being dramatic for being so shaken. Blood doesn’t bother me all that much, and I have a toddler so poop isn’t that bad either. But the sound of his rib breaking and the sadness I felt for this man throwing his life away still hasn’t left me.
Room was out of commission for two weeks after a hazmat team and new carpet went in. For two weeks I had to listen to guests yell that they were being walked to another hotel. Please be nice to hotel staff, we are doing our best! By the end it was really hard not to snap and tell these over the top angry guests I was giving a guest CPR and had to have hazmat hose down a room afterwards. The things that happen in hotels can be horrific. Please be patient.”
Don’t Look In My Room!
“My nephew owns several mountain resort motels.
I was his GM for quite awhile, and specifically resided at his biggest motel and ran it 24/7 by myself.
I had a young guy show up for his booking. The credit card he used to book was a disposable one. He set off my spidey sense something awful, though no reason. Just had a bad vibe.
So I charged him $500 cash hold deposit thinking he would go away.
He paid it. Which set my suspicion into overdrive. But not a dang thing I could do about it.
Next morning, I make breakfast for all of the guests, buffet style. Don’t see him at breakfast.
10 minutes before checkout time, he shows up and wants his money back. I tell him sure, I’ll just go check the room first.
His face got super angry, and he said, ‘Whatever. Just keep the money’, jumped into a vehicle and went to drive away. I snapped a pic of his license number because seriously – who leaves $500 behind??
I went to his room and opened the door – the room was destroyed. I didn’t let my cleaning staff anywhere near it.
There was trash all over the bed, ice cubes all around the room (??), the sink was plugged with women’s underwater and dirty socks with water flowing onto the floor, the sheets were torn, blood smeared around, a tripod set up in the corner and left behind, empty packaging for all different kinds of adult toys and various clothing, the TV was flipped forward and laying on its face – the room was utter destroyed.
I’m guessing he had a video feed going. My nephew and I, in Hazmat type suits, spent about 4 hours cleaning the room before we let the cleaning staff in there to completely scour it from ceiling to floor, so we couldn’t rent it out that day.
Little prick cost us more than $500, but at least it was recoverable.”
What Happened In That Room?
“Not hotel maid staff, but I owned a 68 room motel for a few years in a heavy tourist area.
By far the worst was a family from the Middle East – all men – who came to visit for about 14 nights. They appeared to be very fastidious and polite. They very politely told the cleaning staff that it was against their culture to allow a woman to clean their quarters and tipped them, and told them it wouldn’t be a problem.
After checkout, the room was… destroyed is a kind word. There was a pile of towels and linen about five feet tall in the closet. Wallpaper had curled off the wall at the edges of the room from the pipe and cig smoke being so thick. (It was a non-smoking property). Ashes and trash were everywhere. Left-overs and burn marks dotted the carpeted areas of the floor. The toilet was scorched on the tank and in the bowl.
One bed frame was broken in several places like a cartoon, and the mattress laying in the center of the debris on the ground. The TV and the dresser it was on was simply gone.
The small round table was out of place, and the hanging light over it was was pulled out of the ceiling and left in pieces around the room. The bathroom mirror was broken in two places, one from an obvious fist or elbow strike.
There were bits of food and half-filled bottles of urine all over the room.
We also never found any trace of the Bible, the bath mat, either robe, any container empty or otherwise for any consumable in the room. The bath tub was backed up with extremely thick dark hair.
Room was out of service for 20 days while it was gutted to the studs.”
Five Crazy Aussies Dudes In A Hotel Room. What Could Go Wrong?
“Technically I wasn’t a maid, but I did work in a Hostel and we had a variety of duties, some of which included cleaning up the bunk rooms. These were all gender bunk rooms that slept about 12 people in bunk beds and for the most part, the guests were actually pretty clean. But this one time, a group of five Aussies checked in, all dudes. They were partying pretty hard all weekend and we didn’t really see much of them to be honest.
On the last night they were there, only themselves and one other male were staying in the room. Around 4 a.m., the German guy came to the desk and asked if he could sleep on the couch in the lobby. When I asked why he said that the guys had made a mess of the room and he wasn’t willing to stay in there. I was off at 5 a.m. so I got him set up in one of the private rooms and left a note letting the morning shift know to expect a mess.
Nothing I could have written would have prepared my co-worker for what they found. There was spunk everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. On the light switches, all over the furniture, everywhere. There were used rubbers lying around, empty cans full of cig butts, and most disturbingly, a dead bat. I don’t know what the heck happened in that room, but they tried to check out like it was no big deal. They ended up getting charged a whopper of a cleaning fee and we had to call animal control to come to remove not just the dead bat, but a live one that was flapping around in the closet.
Absolutely weird.”
Don’t Let Appearances Fool You
“I cleaned the room of a perverted sailor who was stuck in my remote northern Canadian town for a month longer than he was supposed to be due to weather. To give you an idea of how remote this place is, it’s a town of 800 people on the Hudson Bay which frequently moors ships that either deliver supplies to the town or to haul grain out of the town. He was getting hammered at the hotel bar every night, and during the day, while I completed my housekeeping rounds, tried to coerce me into ‘sliding my phone number under his door’. In the afternoons, the sound of the mumbling hotel TV could be heard, with the blue light of the screen dancing in the crease below the door. And the sound of bottles cracking would frequently echo throughout the hall that his room was in. The weather was terribly cold with howling 100 kilometer-per-hour winds so there really was not much else for him to do other than drink. The Do Not Disturb sign remained on his door for over a month so I never got to look inside, but got the impression that garbage was probably piling up, as it does in small hotel rooms.
The day came that I was given my cleaning roster which had his room number on it, 306. So, he’s finally gone! I wondered what kind of mess I had waiting for me in there.
I cracked open the door and I was hit with the smell of stale Budweiser. There were 15 cases of Bud lined up, with the empty cans replaced back in the boxes. Other than that, everything seemed orderly. Even the toilet wasn’t that bad considering the length of time he was there and how much he’d been drinking.
But the beds were made which I found suspicious… his room had two double beds and he’d slept in both. I peeled back the sheets on one bed and to my dismay, the white fitted sheet was covered in streaks of feces, and blood with at least 9-10 tied up crusty rubbers scattered around. I started dry heaving and grabbed gloves. I stripped the sheets and put them straight into a trash bag to throw out. The other bed was normal. To this day I wonder what happened in that room, but I can only guess he found someone in town to keep him company at night during his nights at the hotel bar. I just want to know, why the excess of blood and poop!?”
Good Riddance
“Not hotel maid staff but I owned and ran a hotel before somewhere in the southeast. I had a couple who stayed for two nights and didn’t pay for a third and just vanished. So I go into the room with a housekeeper and oh boy was it bad. I don’t think I’ve seen that many used syringes in my life; had to be over 50 needles in there. The city the hotel was in was a bit larger but surrounded by smaller town. Like many American towns, there was an addiction epidemic in the area. Anyway it was abundantly clear what kind of people stayed in this room. They had clothes thrown all over the place. Found several pairs of stained underwear strewn on the floor, as well as burnt spoons, security tags ripped from clothes, trash piled up everywhere, and burn marks on the furniture.
While cleaning with the housekeeper, I don’t know what came over me but I wanted to check under the box spring. In a hotel, the bed frame is essentially a metal box, so the box spring and the bed frame create this hidden empty space under the bed for storage. Well I check under there and was not disappointed. Let’s just say there was enough adult toys to open up an Adam & Eve. Just a wide-ranging plethora of rubber, plastic, and gyrating toys, you name it.
Anyway, they came back to get the toys later that day and asked if they could stay another night. You can probably guess what my response was.”
Cats And Bloodstains
“Exotic cat convention or something…several rooms hadn’t been cleaned for at least a week. Some of the ‘cats’ were left in the room to roam. The worst room had a huge pile of kitty litter by the trash, small granules scatter across the whole room. The armoire was moved (which was giant and took a lot to move) the phone cord was chewed in half. This was one room mind you. To top it off, the front desk sends up a tour bus of British tourists. The couple finds this room I am still cleaning and says ‘It smells a bit like a cat, doesn’t it?’ in quite a thick British accent. 14-year-old me musters the most professionalism I have available and say to go back to the front desk and get a new room. I had already given my notice as it was the end if the summer. I informed my supervisor I would not be back the next day to finish my notice as he sat in the office not helping me finish up.
Another fun time was a nice note explaining all the blood was from his hemorrhoids… so I learned what that was at 14.
Long story short… don’t let young people work in a hotel for a first job.”
Good Thing They Had Security Cam Footage
“A couple was checked in at the triple A resort I used to work at. Resort policy says all guest rooms must be cleaned EVERY SINGLE DAY. And so my day begins at 8 a.m. in the morning. Their room was the very first room I had to clean. Got the keys, my senior room attendant told me he’d clean the bathroom then I’d clean the rest of the room, change the sheets/make up the bed. I happily agreed since the tips are under the pillows. So I opened the door, and OH MY GOD. To my horror, the pale white bed sheets were FULL of blood stains everywhere. It’s like someone was murdered or what. And not all that, USED RUBBERS ON THE FLOOR FILLED WITH FLUIDS! A LOT OF THEM. I was so ticked off and disgusted because I had to pick them up, and then separate them out later. Which means, I had to hold those awful things multiple times that day! And they didn’t even tip us.
The next day they check out, but guess what? They told the management that they lost $200, and said that the ‘thief’ allegedly entered by their sliding window. Cue in, me and my RA was the housekeepers on their room the day prior. 19-year-old me was so nervous that they’d accuse me of stealing the cash because after my shift that day, by 5 p.m. I received my allowance through money remittance worth $200 as well! I had to bring the receipt to prove that the money I have on my wallet was from my parents.
They demanded their seven day stay be free of charge, or else they’ll report to the police. Good thing the resort’s security department secured all the CCTV footage, and showed them that there was absolutely no human being seen entering their window.
I don’t know what happened to the couple, they checked out. HORRIBLE.”
She Can Still Smell The Blood
“I walked in to the aftermath of an attempted suicide. A man had slit his wrists and drank LOTS of spirits. We called the ambulance and they took him away, still alive.
The mattress was purplish brown with blood and pee, it soaked right through two ‘waterproof’ mattress covers. We didn’t even try to wash the sheets and covers, just stuffed them in black trash bags and chucked them in the dumpster. The hotel owners wanted to try to salvage the mattress, so we stood it up and sprayed it down with all sorts of disinfectants and let it air out, but no dice. They even had to remove the carpet in the room because it held onto the sick blood smell.”
