When people stay in hotels, it's expected they will treat their hotel room like it's their own room. This is to be courteous to the staff, while also being a good guest overall. Unfortunately, these people did not seem to get that memo.
Hotel staff reveal the worse messes a guest has made. Content has been edited for clarity.
People these days! Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
“He Didn’t Cause A Problem”
“I was training on the 7am-3pm shift as a front desk clerk, and people were checking out.
One on our policies was that if you didn’t pay with a credit or debit card, then we had to charge you a $50 deposit for your room that you would get back the next day if your room was not damaged and nothing was missing when you checked out.
A man came to the front desk and wanted to check out, but before he left, we had to check his room. My manager took me to his room to show me what to what look for (damaged property, stains on the carpet, etc.) and as we walked into his room, the smell of fluids slapped us in the face.
However, despite the smell, we couldn’t find stains or obvious damage to the room. So, on our way back to the front desk my manager says, ‘That smelled like… Shame. It smelled like shame…. He only get half his deposit back.’
When I told the customer he was only getting half his deposit back he was irritated, but he didn’t cause a problem about it.”
Did He Ever Come Back?
“There was this old man who booked a room for a week, and that week was freaking terrible. First off, he tried stealing a fake 20 dollar bill off our wall and tried playing it off like he was grabbing a menu for Chinese. He would constantly ask us if we had food, which we weren’t inclined to do. Next, a previous owner shows up helping with some computer work and this old guy tried to steal whatever was in his car. When we called him out on it, he denied it but we weren’t stupid.
So then came the day he was supposed to leave, I was told that they let him know he must either pay or leave. This elderly man had decided to fake a stroke, but we called him an ambulance. He was taken to a hospital, and then I was called down to clean his room. What I saw truly makes me gag every time I think about it.
There was rotten food, smoke butts, old dirty clothes he left behind, and a torn-up bedroom. I was in utter shock this old man had torn this room up; he even peed In bottles when there was a working bathroom. So we decided to get protective gear because we weren’t going to touch this room barehanded. So we got ready and decided to clean up the rotten food and the smell truly is the unforgettable part. After that mess, we decided to hold on to his personal belongings in case he came back for it, and just looking at that bag just gave me a sick feeling in my gut every time.”
“Don’t Ever Want To Know”
“One that really sticks to mind was a couple who had checked out, and they had stripped the bed and put all the towels and sheets in a pile near the door. Sometimes people do that to be nice and to save housekeeping a job, so I didn’t think anything of it at first, but not this couple. Started picking up the sheets to put in the laundry bag and realized they were soaking wet. I opened them up to find they were absolutely covered in blood and feces as was the carpet where they had been lying. I thought it was horrific but carried on cleaning.
I went to do the bathroom and found that they had clearly tried to clean the blood and feces off the sheets with the shower…and managed to just spray it all over the bathroom. Took me hours to clean the bathroom, the sheets and towels were thrown away instead of washed, and had to get a carpet cleaning company in. I do not ever want to know what the heck they had been doing in that room.
Also, shoutout to the woman who was sick in a trash can and put it out in the hall because it smelt so bad she didn’t want it in her room, and then complained about how bad the hall smelt the next morning and left a scathing review online about it.”
A Very Stressful Situation
“I was road-tripping alone and decided to support the local economy of this small town I was stopping in and stay in a small family-owned motel instead of a chain.
It was obviously infested with bedbugs. Obvious… the next morning, that is (I arrived late at night and went straight to bed.).
The worst thing was that I was moving myself out to college and had all my worldly possessions in the car with me. ALL of my clothing, ALL of my bedding, the few pieces of furniture I was bringing…
Fortunately, isolating everything that had been in that room in trash bags, and buying bedbug spray immediately prevented it from infesting everything I owned. But all the time I spent anticipating the worst got me hugely stressed out.”
“It Was Gross And Unnecessary”
“Worked at a B&B. Young couple stayed the weekend, king bed, porcelain dolls, typically B&B suite. The number of protection filled with an odd color excessive amount of fluid was ridiculous. In the middle of the bed on the floor, on the dolls, sheets, ceiling (that fell while I was cleaning). It was just gross, and unnecessary. Anywhere but the garbage can. Top it off, I didn’t have anything to wear/ use while I was cleaning, all by hand. I didn’t really understand how to stick up for myself yet, and the owner was mad it took me forever to clean the room that day.”
An Awkward Call
“Worst one ever was when there was a Christmas party or wedding or something going on where people got extremely trashed. One particular gentlemen, upon checking out said he had a lovely stay and left fairly quickly without any free breakfast or anything.
Now when the housekeeping went in they were met with the most god awful smell, I think someone described it as the smell of sewers mixed with the smell of the bin lorry on a high summer day, but could not find the source. That is until they whipped off the duvet to be faced with the bed absolutely covered in diarrhea. When I say covered I mean covered and the man tried to hide it with a duvet cover! It was so bad it had leaked through the sheets, mattress protectors, and most of the way through the mattress, it was sickening.
This lovely gentleman thought he could get away with that without a word but luckily we take contact details and a credit card on check-in! Let’s just say it was a bloody awkward phone call I had to make!”
“It Was Uninhabitable”
“I was a front desk manager for a guy who owned three motels at the time. Eventually, I started working at all three locations (2 were basically next door to each other) and I started living in one of them. They were like, small creepy roadside motels you find outside of town and try to avoid. When I started, the owner told me each month when the person in room one owed rent, how much it was, and just to take it and give him his mail.
One day I actually met the man in room one; he was mostly blind and by himself, a frail old man, no one came to care for him but he would stay in his room all day (sometimes he had the door cracked) but he only came out to pay rent or to stumble over to the gas station a block down in the middle of the night. I would try to stop by his room with his mail and things like toilet paper, towels, etc. but would get shooed away. The only deliveries were from the adult beverage store. I worked there for over 1.5 years and saw him maybe 3-4 times personally. My boss (who this entire time was in another country) would keep telling my manager and me to leave him alone, don’t even dare to bother him for anything, even after telling him about the complaints of an odor around his room and pests in the room next door.
Then suddenly one day, some people (I assume maybe assisted living?) came into the office and said. ‘Mr. X is now checking out of his room and will no longer be staying here.’
Gave the key and left. I was confused so we called the owner and all he cared was that he didn’t get paid the last month of rent. So, since he was gone, we got to see the room for the first time in at least three years. Needless to say, it was uninhabitable, probably forever. The toilet was broken and poop piled up onto the walls and piled up in the tub. Pee everywhere, even on the ceiling. Bed bugs, roaches, lice, rats – you name it. All of this was caked into the carpet/flooring, or whatever was left of it, over years and years, or soaked into the drywall. A thick layer of smoke on every surface. Food bones, bottles, cans, smoke butts, and boxes everywhere. I refused to enter it again, and soon after happily left that job. It sickens me to this day to imagine a person living in squalor like this, even in a hotel.”
They Had So Many Chances
“It’s late evening, and a woman comes angrily in to our lobby from the pool with three children and says, ‘You guys need to do something about what’s going on out there,’ and gestures to the pool area.
I look at her inquisitively and she just says, ‘Go look, you’ll see.’
I walk outside and it’s pretty immediately clear the couple in the hot tub are ‘discreetly’ making love.
I approach just enough to get their attention and say, ‘Hi guys, I know everyone’s here to have a good time tonight, but we got a complaint about some hot and heavy activity in the hot tub.’
They’re clearly trashed, but apologize and say it will stop.
A few minutes later, the phone rings. It’s the woman who complained before calling from her room which faces the pool.
‘They’re still at it. You need to do something. Children are staying in this hotel.’
I go back outside and sure enough, now that the spectators are gone, they’re banging it out in the hot tub.
I go back out, tell them to get out. They start giving me the story: it’s their anniversary, they’re very sorry, we won’t have any more problems with them, etc. I foolishly let them stay in the hot tub.
Ten minutes later: phone rings. ‘Seriously!!?’ Same lady. I look out the window, they’re both totally undressed. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ve warned them, I’m calling the police.
Police arrive and head out to the pool. The officer handles it like a pro. He’s very nice, lets them know that it’s inappropriate, but he doesn’t want to ruin what’s clearly a fun weekend for them both, but they need to go to their room and not come out for the rest of the night. They are to stay in their room until tomorrow morning. No excuses. The couple thanks him for his understanding and promises they’ll behave and stay in their room.
The officer and I wind up chatting and laughing about it all and he asks if he can grab a cup of coffee in our lobby while he fills out his report. Of course, he can.
He’s sitting in the lobby, I’m back to work, and I hear him say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!’
I’m shocked at the broken quietness as I see him jump up and exit the Lobby…
Right to the hot tub, where the same couple is back in the hot tub making out. (I can only assume they took the stairs at the end of the hall out to the parking lot and around to the pool.)
Arrested them both. They came back Monday afternoon (they were arrested on Friday night) to collect their property.”
“She Yelled She Wasn’t Going In”
“A guest decided to extend his stay. When a maid went to clean his room, she called me up saying she wasn’t able to get into the room. I went up and unlocked it for her.
Upon opening the door we peered into the room. She immediately yelled and hollered about how she wasn’t going to step inside that room and quickly just left the scene. The guest, a sweet and somewhat nerdy 20’s- something computer programmer, had what I can only describe as an immense amount of voodoo items in this room including this strange statue of a raven, a large tome, candles, and other fetishist items.
Felt bad for invading his privacy when I realized he had asked to extend his stay. His door always had the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on it and I had just assumed he forgot to remove it before leaving as many guests do.”
“The Poor Woman Looked Shell-Shocked”
“I worked at a hotel a few years ago, front desk. I checked out a nice couple in the morning, they were very friendly, said they enjoyed their stay. Then housekeeping got to their room, the poor woman looked shell-shocked. I got to go through the room with a camera and my supervisor to document the state of the room.
Two large, black, double-headed adult toys, lots of ziploc baggies with powdery residue, syringes (some used, some still with caps on them, including 2 in the toilet), and more travel sized bottles of baby oil than I could count. We also found what appeared to be feces and blood smeared all over the bedding and walls and a small digital camera.
Police were called, descriptions of them taken, and all their information they had used to check in. I quit soon after, so I don’t know if they ever found them or pressed charges.”
The Reasoning Behind It All
“At the time, I was a teenager. It was my second summer working at this particular hotel, and an older woman was staying in one of our first floor rooms. Her car was parked directly in front of the room door and was filled with tons of her personal belongings. Her room even looked like an apartment rather than a hotel with how much personal stuff she had. At this point, she had been staying there for three weeks. Every single day she wanted clean sheets, which I thought was kind of weird considering she was the only one staying in the room and I had never seen her leave.
One day I knocked on her room door and announced that I was housekeeping there to change her sheets. There was no response. I tried again, and again, and after the third time I thought it was kind of strange. Knowing she was an older woman, I frantically entered the room in fear that maybe she had fallen. Turns out, that’s not what I should have been worried about.
In a chair in the corner of the room, she was sitting, head tilted back, mouth open, eyes half-closed, and not breathing. After seeing her dead, I realized that the reason she had all of her stuff and wanted service daily was that she had come to the hotel to die. She wanted to make sure her body would be found.”
This Could Have Ended A Lot Worse
“A syringe under a mattress, AFTER I felt a prick on the end of my finger. I was tucking in a sheet under the bed, and there were actually two uncovered ‘insulin’ needles under there.
I got rushed to the hospital; hepatitis shots and a tetanus shot, two different HIV prevention medication for a month, monthly blood tests for about a year.
I’m fine, and it barely stuck me in truth, but I was already afraid of needles and disease I still feel traumatized. I was not going to post at all, but I’ve always wondered if there was anything else I should have done. The doctors assured me that they were more precautious than necessary.”
“I’ll Never Forget That”
“I had an elderly couple check in one afternoon. A couple of hours go by and the husband comes up saying the wife is sick and they need to leave immediately. Given the circumstances, we figured it would be a quick clean so we refunded the money and downed the room for the night.
The next morning we tell one of our maids to hit it first since we knew it was empty.
The maid came back refusing to clean the room because there was poop all over the bathroom. I didn’t really believe her because she tended to be lazy. So I decided to check it out myself. She wasn’t lying. There was poop EVERYWHERE.
I don’t know how, but there was poop on the toilet seat, on the tank, under the vanity and on the wall under the vanity, on the floor next to the toilet, on the wall behind the toilet, and on the side of the bathtub. This lady must have blown out her butt while falling over to poop how and where she pooped. The smell was horrendous.
I ended up having to clean it. I went through 3 bottles of our strongest cleaner plus an entire garbage bag of cleaning rags which were immediately trashed. We had to down the room another 5 nights with the use of 5 bottles of air freshener and open windows.
I’ll never forget that.”
Didn’t See That Coming
“There was an older woman who checked in my second week of being there, she definitely should not have been independent. She lived in town and booked a room for a week. She said that she was getting her house renovated because it was infested with ‘fiberglass.’ She was probably in her 70’s or was just not up-keeping herself for a person in her 60’s. She would walk around with one of those surgical masks and wearing yellow rubber gloves. As the week went on she started to wear bandages on her arms (we think she was scratching herself, i bet if we asked it would have been because of the fiberglass).
She shouldn’t have been able to drive, but she kept going to and from her house to get more things, basically was moving in. Our hotel was on a main road and she would just back up into it without looking, it was a miracle she never got into an accident.
But other than that she would spend most of her time in the room, and occasionally would walk to the office (where the manager would sit, this would be me or one of my other coworkers) and just spout crazy stories about fiberglass and how it was everywhere and all over her room. Once the week was up she extended her stay another five days because (her house wasn’t ready yet).
She repeatedly declined maid service so we could never really get a glance at the condition of the room, yet she would keep complaining that her air conditioning had ‘fiberglass all over it.’ One of the days she came to the door complaining that the room was infested with spiders and she showed a tissue that she said had ‘spiders in it, but there was nothing. Like real sad stuff.
Unfortunately, since we didn’t really have any real way of helping her, my boss advised me to tell her that we are booked solid for the rest of the summer/etc so she could extend her stay any longer. So we waited out those last few days dealing with her complaining and occasionally catching glances at the room as the maids brought her towels and such.
From what we saw there were pillows everywhere, a big bag of like perfumes, pills, etc sprawled out on the dresser (like so many random things), etc. She was seen a few times carrying large garbage bags into the room, but we weren’t sure what was in them. Just imagine a room that a mentally ill person had been staying in.
She also had a few weird interactions with guests that made them complain, so we really could not wait until she was gone.
But this is the freakiest part where we get to the answer to what we found after a guest’s stay:
It was spotless. On her last night, we think she climbed out the window (first floor) and put stuff in her car and left (stealing the key too but that’s common enough we just replace them). We went back and looked on the camera and she was not on camera at all, the night manager did not see her leave (if you leave the regular way you have to be seen by the manager, the office is in the front and it’s a small hotel). The only way she could have done it was through the window.
Every worker at the hotel was so curious to see what the room was like after she was gone, it was insane, clean, nothing was broken except the air conditioner air filter (she said it had fiberglass all in it), but other than that not much else. We still had a third party clean the room but it was freakin weird.”
“Strangest, Most Disgusting Thing I Had Seen”
“Homeless man came into some money somehow. We never quite figured out how, but either way, he stayed in the same room for about 2 months.
Eventually, we convinced him that he needed to go elsewhere as we had a big conference or something like that, that was going to fill the whole hotel. I was a bellman and the hotel had a courtesy shuttle for the guests. I was instructed to give him a ride to the new hotel he would be staying at.
I helped him get the remaining stuff from his room and the moment I entered, I knew the room would be out of service for a while. There was trash everywhere, the bathtub was used as a waste bin, the were dirty stained towels pouring out of the closet, and he had stripped the bed a put his sleeping bag on the mattress. The worst part was the smell. Despite the fact that he had been staying there for at least two months by this point, I am 99% sure he never once used the shower. It was the strangest, most disgusting thing I had ever seen.
The room was out for almost 2 weeks while it went through a deep clean, but it still had that smell for the rest of the year and a half that I worked there.”
