The job of a hotel worker is more demanding than one may realize. From vacations to business trips, hotel visits should be refreshing, and exciting for hotel guests. However, not every guest has had home training. Others believe they are living in a palace and make their presence a burden for all employees that have to answer to and make every request they have come true. Here, hotel workers share stories about their worst guests and their crazy requests that are sure to make you wonder what truly goes on in people’s heads.
All content has been edited for clarity.
“I’m Not Going To A No-Name Hotel!”
“We had a night where we were overbooked. After running the numbers, a total of twelve rooms had to be relocated to another property. This was not typical, but we had a contract come in later for thirty rooms for a two-week stint, government pre-paid and we weren’t going to tell them no because one night we would be oversold.
When we were oversold, we noted which guests were only staying for a single night, so we didn’t have to worry about moving them back to our hotel the next night. There were about twenty-five single-night guests checking in. Because this was such an egregious oversell, the vice president of the hotel reserved rooms at the super high-end, historic, and famous hotel down the road. It was done this way so that as guests came to check in, we could first offer the upgrade to them and hopefully, get all volunteers rather than have to force people out.
Per our company policy back then, we paid for it in full. So basically these guests would get a free night.
Despite the offer of a free night at a nicer hotel, it got to the point where we had no choice but to send the last five guests to the other hotel regardless.
I could understand why some of the guests would have rathered stayed with us, such as the ones that had kids who were uncomfortable with running around a hotel like that. However, others just didn’t care if they spent the money. The ones that did take the offer jumped on it and were quite happy.
Of the last five, three of the guests arrived together, shrugged it off, and took the shuttle over. They seemed middling about it, but they got off our airport shuttle so I think they were more tired than anything.
The fourth of the guests to arrive was a doozy. He was dressed in a tailored three-piece suit and was hauling metal luggage. His entire vibe screamed a desire to impress.
We explained that we were out of rooms for the night, but added that since his reservation was guaranteed, we’d be footing the bill to move him to the high-end, famous hotel down the road.
Now, the hotel down the road wasn’t part of a chain. It was an independent business over one hundred years old with over seven-hundred rooms, a private golf course, and hosts ‘heads of state’ types of events. It was very well known for its high-end authenticity.
However, this did not impress the well-dressed guest. In fact, it set him off into an entitled tantrum.
‘I refuse to be dumped at some no-name hotel.’
‘Sir,’ I explained. ‘This is a very exclusive hotel and much nicer than ours and most in the area.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I only stay at internationally recognized brands, not no-name hotels that no one has heard of.’
‘Three out of the last four sitting presidents have stayed here. It’s a very well-known hotel,’ I countered.
The man became more and more irate, ‘Did. You. Not. Hear. Me? I only stay at the best of the best.’
At that point, the night manager approached the front desk. He introduced himself and asked if there was a problem. The guest huffed and puffed then said he was staying at our hotel for free and refused to be sent off to the hotel we booked for him. Free of charge.
The night manager looked at me quizzically but I just shrugged. I was done with the guy.
‘Sir, the hotel is a world-class facility…’
Mr. Three Piece Suit cut him and started yelling very loudly, turning red as he did it. Our night manager was not very patient with rude customers. When I saw him crack a devious smile, I could only imagine what he was about to do next.
‘Fine,’ he said evenly. ‘Our sincerest apologies. We will find the nearest internationally recognized brand hotel.’
The manager walked him over to guest services so our driver could take him across the highway to an ‘internationally recognized brand’ that had a good reputation but was a step down even from us.
My guess is the snob was trying to act the part of a rich executive but didn’t have enough information to pull it off.”
Check Your Cameras
“I had a male Karen who was super rude and impatient.
One night I was training the new front desk attendant on his very first evening shift.
My manager decided it was fine to have the two of us pull the shift despite the fact that it was once again his first evening shift. We didn’t have many arrivals at first, but it built up to a good forty or fifty guests.
I was teaching the new guy everything he needed to learn. At some point, a guest became upset and very impatient because I was training the new employee instead of helping him right away. He had a terrible attitude and was unforgivingly rude the entire time I was checking him in. He even snatched his check-in card from me.
The next day, the same guest came downstairs at some point to make change for the guest laundry facilities.
I remembered who he was, but I made it a mission to be overly nice.
The guy returned the vibe, so I figured he must’ve been having a bad day or whatever the night before and mentally moved on. An hour later, he came back with a look on his face that could kill. He announced his gloves were missing from the dryer.
‘What?’ I was so confused.
The man went on to accuse someone of stealing them out of the dryer and wanted us to watch the video footage from the laundry room. I explained to him that I couldn’t access it, and I could only access the live feed. I then informed him I would have to call management for something like that.
He insisted I do so, because without his gloves he would freeze tomorrow because they were leaving early in the morning. The guest made my boss come back to work and watch the feed from earlier to see if anyone opened the dryer and stole his gloves.
For reference, the hotel was not located in a small rural town without a Walmart or anything. There was an open Dollar Store, convenience store, and gas station that all sold gloves.
I didn’t offer these options because we weren’t supposed to. The man didn’t even ask about any nearby stores. In fact, he said he would file a police report about his missing gloves if we didn’t find them for him.
My boss made me watch the footage with her when she came in to do so. That way there would be two of us that watched the footage.
It became clear that nobody touched his dryer. I called the man and informed him, but of course, he wasn’t happy. Not even in the slightest.
During the call, the man stated they must have magically disappeared and even asked me which dryer he used to see if I actually had watched the video. My boss went back home and I went back to my work. Maybe another hour later, he returned to the desk to tell me he still couldn’t find his gloves.
I didn’t know what to tell him, except, ‘I’m sorry about that.’
He then started questioning me about whether I actually watched the video and who the other people in the laundry room were. The man even went so far as to insinuate that it was someone that worked at the hotel that stole the gloves.
I simply told him they were guests and left it at that. Eventually, the man left. He was upset but saw he wasn’t going to have his way. Whatever it was he was trying to accomplish.
I wish I was making this up.”
I’ll Get My Lawyer!
“A few months ago it was very busy at my hotel. A guest came to the front desk because he wanted to check out early. He had checked in that same day and wanted to leave but not pay.
It had been so busy that I wasn’t thinking straight and said that I would have to check the room. If it truly hadn’t been used then he was obligated to a refund.
I went upstairs and saw the room looked clean, but clearly altered. The bed had been made, but not the way housekeepers make it. The pillows were in different places and the sheets had been tucked in the wrong way. The towels were hanging on the bathroom racks, but not rolled neatly like the housekeepers took the time to do.
I started putting everything together and went back to the front desk. I pulled up the reservation history, which I should have done from the start. Immediately I saw he didn’t just check in but he had been there for four hours.
It was after six and housekeeping had left for the night so the room couldn’t be cleaned and therefore not re-sold. I informed the guest that he could still check out but he would be charged for the night.
‘But I didn’t use the room!’
I explained to him all the things I observed in the room. It was used and no one else was on duty to clean it.
‘Why don’t YOU clean the room?’
‘Then I wouldn’t be able to work the front desk,’ I told him patiently.
What I didn’t expect was for him to blow everything completely out of proportion.
‘Do you want me to contact my lawyer?’
That was all that I needed to hear.
‘Sir, since you have brought up legal action we cannot speak anymore. Have your lawyer speak to our corporate lawyers. They will know how to get in touch.’
The guest paused for a long time. It was obvious he had never gotten that response before.
‘But, what about my refund?’
‘You have to talk to your lawyer about it,’ I told him casually.
The guest wanted to keep talking to me but my responses became shorter and shorter. I had to point out that the cameras in the lobby had microphones and the conversation was inappropriate because anything said could be used in a deposition.
He finally walked away.
I took an extra long break afterward.”
Not Gonna Check!
“My favorite story comes from a couple who were booked for an extended stay. I worked night audit and most of my job was done behind the front desk in the lobby.
At the time, I stood at about 6′1″ and weigh three-hundred lbs, so I was a hefty fella. The couple was in the motel because their house had flooded and needed major cleaning before they could move back in.
Well, a strange feature in our motel was there was a window from an upper hallway that overlooked the lobby.
So, I was working away in the wee hours of the morning when I heard a noise from the window. I looked up and saw a fifty-year-old man peeking around the side of the window watching me.
That’s when I noticed what he was wearing.
From what little I could see, it looked like he didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. I went racing upstairs to investigate. When I finally got up there, there was the man in his birthday suit trying to kick a case of adult beverages off to the side that was propping the door open to his room.
He turned to me like nothing was abnormal about the situation and asked, ‘How’s it going?’ I could tell he was subtly asking for help but I was a little too stunned to move.
His wife realized he was in the hallway completely bare and screamed at him, ‘Bill, what are you doing?!?!’
He responded to his wife, ‘I’m talking to the guy outside!’
The wife promptly demanded he come back in the room. Once I snapped out of it, I went up to the door and kicked the case into the room so the door would close.
The coup de grace was when I told my manager the next day. The manager asked me if he was doing ‘anything else.’
My only response was, ‘I don’t know….I didn’t check!'”
“Where Are Your Parents?”
“I was working as a front desk agent when an extremely neurotic mother with six-year-old identical twins and an apathetic husband called six times to make sure that our hotel was ‘environmentally-friendly’ because her children were ‘sensitive’.
After assuring her our cleaning products were ‘green’, and that we recycled and used soy-based inks, she freaked out when she arrived and realized that ‘green’ did not mean fragrance-free.
The mother threw a hissyfit in the lobby. She then demanded we triple-check the hypoallergenic room she booked.
In her instructions, the mother expected the housekeeper, the head of housekeeping, and finally, the manager on duty to make sure there were no fragrances after the cleaning. The mother urgently requested that we remove the complementary soaps and lotions because they caused permanent neurological damage.
Two hours later, the mother finally gave the room her approval. However, she then felt the need to scream at the bellman, who was trying to be helpful by assisting her with the fourteen market-style shopping bags jam-packed with their belongings.
The mother informed us earlier about the chemicals in plastic suitcases that could seep into the clothing and contaminate everything. It was the bellman’s deodorant that she smelled that made her fuss even more. Because she could smell it, she was fearful of him touching their belongings because it would possibly also contaminate their things.
Unable to handle all the bags and both children at once, the mother demanded that I watch one of the twins who had fallen asleep on a lobby chair, while she made sure all of their things made it up to the room uncontaminated.
The only parting instructions I was given were, ‘If he wakes up and gets scared, his name is Mullet.’ The instructions came from his twin brother, ‘Bowlcut’.
An hour and a half later, my manager was fed up because one of his desk agents was playing babysitter to a passed-out child in his lobby. The strange looks from other guests as they passed by added to the awkward ambiance in the air. My manager called the room and asked them to get their son.
Twenty minutes later, the father finally came downstairs, hoisted Mullet over his shoulder, and hauls him away.
The next day, Bowlcut was left unattended in the lobby. He kept admiring our fish tank as I approached him.
‘Where are your parents?’
Bowlcut announced they were still in the room. To our dismay, the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hung on the door. This prevented us from knocking. After calling the room nonstop, we didn’t get a single response.
Bowlcut stayed under my supervision while my manager decided the proper protocol for a ‘lost child’ who is not technically ‘lost.’ He decided that if we couldn’t get a hold of them within the hour, calling the non-emergency police line was the only option left.
Just before the call was made, the mother called from the room. She was furious about our persistent calls interrupting their ‘family meditation.’
Calmly, we explained Bowlcut had been at the desk with us for the last forty-five minutes and asked if we knew.
The mother, however, insisted that as long as I was working at the front desk, she was sure her children wouldn’t go anywhere they weren’t supposed to.
Why she trusted me with her children, I will never know.
I was far from a nanny.”
Call An Ambulance
“A guest was requesting that we call the paramedics because his wife had food poisoning. Everyone knew that with food poisoning, the hospital just charges you a bunch of money and pumps fluids in you.
So a security agent and I went out to the room to talk to them to try and convince them that it wasn’t worth the medical bills, but we would be happy to call them one.
We entered the hallway and immediately smell something foul. I thought that someone had gas, but shrugged it off as we kept going down the hallway. We got to the door and knocked lightly.
As soon as the door opened we were hit with a wave of an all-too-familiar stench.
I could feel my stomach churning as I tried to hold myself together. We started talking to the husband and kept hearing crying coming from the bathroom. We finally approached the bathroom door to talk to the wife. Slowly, the door opened ever so slightly, and out popped the face of the wife. With urgency in her voice, she announced that she wasn’t decent. The smell was even worse as she stood there with the door slightly open.
She retrieved one of the guest towels and wrapped it around herself as she explained what happened. In a nutshell, she was feeling nauseous while she was taking a shower and ran to the toilet. However, her food poisoning was so severe, that her ‘illness’ came out the front…and the back.
It was everywhere.
Feces were splattered all over the mirror, the wall, the cabinets, and the tile floors. She then opened the door for us to witness the abomination that spewed out from both ends. The bathroom had been horribly splatter painted with poop.
At that point, I excused myself, called security to have them dispatch paramedics, and called housekeeping.
‘Bring a bunch of deodorizing spray and lots of cleaning materials,’ I said bleakly.”
I Need An Alibi…
“When I was a front desk clerk for a hotel, I received a call that to this day makes no sense.
The guest asked if he could make a reservation for a night in the past. I declined his request even after he stated that he would pay full price.
After hanging up the phone, I wondered why someone would want that. My assumption was he likely was up to something illegal. However, the hotel didn’t have a caller ID just yet for the rooms, so I didn’t know who the person was. There was also no way to track him down.
I wondered if he wanted a hotel room in the past to establish a false alibi. I also wondered if he was trying to do something with taxation I had heard of stories of people who wrote off expenses for a trip using simplified formulas and tricked hotels to write off expenses for credibility in their schemes.
It was an awkward conversation that caught me off guard.
You just NEVER get that kind of request, even after thousands and thousands of phone calls.”
We’ve Got Your Back
“I work the night shift at a Holiday Inn Express.
One time, this old man checked was being extremely rude. Because it happened all the time, we all shrugged it off and gave him his room key.
The older man went to his room and didn’t know how to use a thermostat, so he called the front desk and yelled at me for having a complicated thermostat.
I went to his room and showed him how to use it while he muttered and grumbled under his breath. Once he understood, I told him to enjoy the rest of his stay before heading back to the front desk.
Around fifteen minutes later, I got a call from the old man again. That time he was furious because he didn’t know how to work the remote in his room. I told him I would be right there.
Getting from the front desk to his room only took about three minutes. Upon arriving for the second time, the old man handed me the remote with an annoyed look on his face. I pressed the big red POWER button and lo, the television comes on. He grumbled angrily about something before I went back to the front desk.
I didn’t hear from the old man again until around four-thirty in the morning. He came to the front desk and quietly asked if someone could tie his shoes for him.
If this guy were a day under fifty, I would have assumed the guy was being an idiot and refused. However, all traces of his anger were gone. His eyes were pleading and it did something to me. I said, ‘sure,’ hopped over the desk, and tied his shoes for him.
He then explained that he had a stroke recently and it made it extremely difficult for him to tie his shoes. He went on to talk for probably twenty minutes. The old man was actually really nice, just really quick to get flustered. Also, he was totally bewildered by buttons.”
Entitled Much?
“I worked a quarter mile from the Strip in Las Vegas at a four-hundred-room hotel as a front desk clerk.
One customer I vividly remember was when we had a member of the hotel’s rewards program pester us about granting him access to his room at ten in the morning knowing that check-in wasn’t until three in the afternoon.
The hotel maids didn’t even start their shifts until nine-thirty that morning. He marched in and my other associate ended up dealing with him. The irate man kept demanding why the room wasn’t ready.
He then told us he was going to walk to the Strip and get something to eat. The man repeatedly called the front desk aggressively demanding to know why the room still wasn’t ready
An hour later, he came back and started yelling at my associate. She said the same thing over and over and reminded him that checkout isn’t until twelve in the afternoon at the earliest.
Completely fed up, the man screams, ‘WELL WHY DON’T YOU JUST KICK OUT WHOEVER IS IN THERE NOW SO I CAN HAVE MY ROOM?!?!?!’
It disgusted me, to be honest. The entitlement was atrocious.”
Where’s My Food?!
“I recently had a guest come to the front desk claiming their keys didn’t work. They had somehow been deactivated.
I remade her keys for her and she went up to the room. The guest returned to the desk minutes later claiming they had left a bag of food in front of her door, but it had disappeared.
I explained the hotel didn’t take responsibility for personal property left in public spaces. I let her know I would check with my staff to see if anyone had seen anything. The guest became very upset with my response.
I checked with my housekeeping staff to make sure nobody accidentally grabbed it thinking it was trash. Everyone on the floor confirmed they hadn’t touched anything. The woman then demanded I call the police.
Stunned, I informed her I could give her the number, but since the hotel was not the reporting party, she would have to call herself. She took the number and promptly called the cops. The woman also told the cops she thought, without any evidence, that the guest across the hall had taken the food.
At that point, one of our housekeepers came down to the desk and informed me the woman had been seen leaving the second floor when their room was actually on the fourth. The bag of food was still sitting in front of a door on the second floor.
The woman had gotten off on the wrong floor, went to the room in the same position as the one on their floor, obviously couldn’t get in since she was at the wrong room, and then left her food at the wrong door then accused people of stealing her food.
I loved listening to her call the cops back and explain the whole situation was of her own making.”
