• The Hotel Diaries
    168 replies, posted
I recently started working as a clerk and night manager at a large hotel, and you wouldn't believe the weirdness I've been subject to. Nearly every day brings something unexpected, and just when I think I've seen the strangest thing possible, something comes out of left field that makes me reevaluate my sensibilities. I've been wanting to write about some of the more interesting things I've seen and heard since I started working, and I think you might find some of the job's quirks and oddities worth the effort of a quick read every now and then. Even without the inclusion of all the strangeness, hotel clerking has a lot more going on than you might imagine! After all, the clerk is the only employee on the premises after the housekeeping and maintenance staff checks out, and he's responsible for managing the entire building all by his lonesome. In a hotel like mine, this can spell some very hectic nights. At the very least, things are rarely tedious! Anyway, without further adieu, the Hotel Diaries. [quote][B]The Poop Lady[/B] There are just some questions you don’t want to know the answer to. The Poop Lady’s case raises several. In the interest of making you better understand the wretched events that unfolded during the Poop Lady’s stay with us, I should first explain the layout of my hotel. We feature all upper-middle scale suites with private entrances, meaning that there are no adjoined rooms as you would see in lower scale hotels and motels. The only exception to this is our four handicapped suites, which each have a normal adjoining suite for reasons of caregiving to those guests who need special accommodations. Poop Lady, apparently, did not understand the inteded use of the adjoining room. Or, for that matter, her own room. Her first night in the hotel, she rented one of our handicapped suites. The rates are a bit lower for those rooms, and so we'll sometimes rent them to walk-ins who need a discount rate, even if they do not strictly need a handicap accessible room. Poop Lady sure didn't, but she paid in cash and didn't have the scrap to swing a standard king. Nothing out of the ordinary. Neither is there anything unusual about her hanging a “do not disturb” sign from her door handle. It's nice, even! Saves the housekeeping staff the trouble of turning a room, and the reclusive guests rarely seem to cause problems. Poop Lady defined reclusive, and I never suspected a thing. In fact, I'd all but forgotten she was even with us! I didn’t see hide nor hair of her until the morning of her scheduled departure, when she called the front desk to inform me that she would be extending her stay, and would also like to rent the adjoining room. Totally normal. What wasn’t normal was what we discovered after the Poop Lady had finally checked out. I wish I could better hype the suspense, to leave you guessing as to the surprise, but I guess you already know. You see, she pooped all over her room. Then, when she was done, she went on over to the adjoining room and pooped all over that one too. No sensibilities were left unmolested. The sight was mortifying, the smell revolting, and the very air felt sticky and rotten. Her filth was smeared deep into the carpets, the linens, and the drapes. Its odor was so damn pervasive that, even after the carpets had been steamed, the linens trashed, the drapes torn down, and every surface scrubbed and sanitized, the room was [I]still[/I] unrentable. After eight hours of letting it air out with the windows open, the phantom stink of ghost turds still haunted the rooms. I had to place them both out of order for an indefinite period. We'll see where things sit tomorrow, but I wonder whether the third floor handicap suite will [I]ever[/I] be fully exercised, and I'm just not so sure. Whatever dark ritual she was performing might just have marked those rooms for good. We kept her security deposit and blacklisted her. Take that, Poop Lady. Fat lot of good it does the innocence of our mortified housekeepers, though.[/quote] [B][U]Archive[/U][/B] [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1188357&p=36192509&viewfull=1#post36192509"]The Poop Lady[/URL] [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1188357&p=36192613&viewfull=1#post36192613"]A Mystery in the Pipes, and Also the Pool[/URL] [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1188357&p=36192662&viewfull=1#post36192662"]Jack[/URL] [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1188357&p=36204418&viewfull=1#post36204418"]Detective Frank[/URL] [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1188357&p=36204418&viewfull=1#post36204418"]Big Shirtless Meth-Head, and Mrs. Big Shirtless Meth-Head.[/URL] [url="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1188357&p=36655282&viewfull=1#post36655282"]Numbers[/url] [url="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1188357&p=36662146&viewfull=1#post36662146"]Housekeeping[/url] [url="http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1188357&p=36792051&viewfull=1#post36792051"]Unhappy Campers[/url]
Aaaand.. There go my sides. Adieu Poop Lady, Adieu.
[quote] [B]A Mystery in the Pipes, and Also the Pool[/B] We have an indoor pool. It's lovely, too. Not the biggest or the deepest, but totally functional, and the kids all seem to enjoy it. Even when sewage is pouring from the ceiling. Okay, fine, I don't [I]technically[/I] know that it was sewage. It certainly [I]looked[/I] like clean water, but can you ever really be sure? The point is, when an unidentified source of questionable water starts gushing from the ceiling into the little indoor pool that your children are playing in, the appropriate response is not to leave your kids in the water while you amble up to the front desk, smile, and calmly say, "somethin's leakin' into the pool." When I hear "somethin's leakin' into the pool," I imagine a few drips here and there; something I can chalk up to condensation on the cooling ducts, or a loose nozzle in the sprinkler system. What I saw instead was more similar to a high volume bath spigot chugging at full blast. Not just one, either, but several spread out across the ceiling, right between the cracks of the ceiling panels, spurting and chugging water into the pool like it's going out of style. While I'm staring gape-jawed at the little emergency I suddenly have to figure out how to deal with, the parent of the year asks me, "so, should my kids stop swimming in there?" Jeez. Intent on discovering the cause of the outpouring, I spent the next hour door-to-dooring every single room in the hotel that was even remotely situated above the pool area. I expected to find some Rude Gus or Negligent Ned who had let their bath run over, or maybe a wash basin with an exploded faucet, or just a dude with a fire hose jammed down his ventilation duct. No such luck, though, and by the time I finished searching the hotel, the torrent had slowed to a trickle, and, soon after, stopped completely. I left the pool closed for the rest of the day, with a note to our maintenance guy to find the cause and make sure the pool was properly sanitized. He wasn't able to find anything either, however, and now I live in constant worry that it could happen again at any second, anywhere. Sewage showers often result in bad reviews.[/quote]
This sounds interesting.
And a very short one before bed: [quote][B]Jack[/B] We maintain a list of every guest who is blacklisted from the hotel. The list includes names, dates, and offenses that resulted in blacklisting. With the exception of Poop Lady, most are pretty straightforward. [I]Guest A[/I] smoked in their room. [I]Guest B[/I] refused to pay. [I]Guest C[/I] became belligerent and aggressive. Stuff like that. Then there's Jack. I wish I knew Jack's real story. I've asked around a little, but none of the people I've asked seem to have been here for long enough to remember. Jack's blacklist entry simply reads: [i]Jack. 2011. Gypsies.[/i] Is this just a bit of hotel slang I'm not familiar with, or were there actual gypsies involved, and if so, in what capacity?[/quote]
Good ol' Jack and his gypsies... Quality thread mate. Can we have more?
Subscribed to your thread, this is gon be good :D
@The Poop Lady story: Isn't that vandalism? Shouldn't she pay for the damages?
Sounds like this is gonna be a great read for a while. I love stories like this.
I love every one of your stories. BDA for storyteller member of the year, all years. I've always wondered how blacklisting and such worked at hotels, I mean, it seems relatively easy to get away with some bad stuff without any consequence.
You should make these into a blog or a Tumblr or something.
It's pretty rare to actually straight up blacklist somebody, unless they go all Poop Lady or Gypsie Jack on you. Most of the time we'll just charge a fine or hold onto a guest's security deposit if there's adequate reason. I've got another fun story, involving undercover police, that I'll tell in a bit, if I wrap up my side work early enough! I've got an entire high school marching band giving me a merry runaround tonight, though, so it may few hours yet!
Dear god these are great. Keep them up!
You should archive all of them in the OP, since it looks like there'll be a lot of entries.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;36199887]It's pretty rare to actually straight up blacklist somebody, unless they go all Poop Lady or Gypsie Jack on you. Most of the time we'll just charge a fine or hold onto a guest's security deposit if there's adequate reason. I've got another fun story, involving undercover police, that I'll tell in a bit, if I wrap up my side work early enough! I've got an entire high school marching band giving me a merry runaround tonight, though, so it may few hours yet![/QUOTE] Oh boy, I'm eagerly awaiting this one.
You must put a lot of hard work into your writing, it's so easy to just keep reading.
[QUOTE=Rubs10;36202088]You must put a lot of hard work into your writing, it's so easy to just keep reading.[/QUOTE] He just puts some thought and class into his posts, he has a very nice writing style.
These are great. Maybe i should get a part time job at a hotel :v:
I love this. Your writing style is very intriguing and I need more. Also, I feel for you on the Poop Lady ordeal; I've seen similar things happen.
[QUOTE=Prez;36203148]I love this. Your writing style is very intriguing and I need more. Also, I feel for you on the Poop Lady ordeal; I've seen similar things happen.[/QUOTE] Same here. Believe it or not, people shit in grocery stores too.
[quote]the phantom stink of ghost turds[/quote] My dad found this hilarious
You should definitely archive them, tumblr would be a great place to put them
[B]MY SIDES[/B] I laughed them off
[quote][B]Detective Frank[/B] I don't know whether or not it's standard policy for hotels to have undercover police officers investigate their shadier guests, but we have one cruise the halls and check the rosters every morning. I've got to give credit where credit is due, Detective Frank does not look anything like a detective. His undercover persona is very believable, and he looks just like the kind of guests that he takes an interest in. Detective Frank disguises himself as a sloppy drunk and wanders the halls of my hotel every morning of every day of every week, swigging from a grimy flask. He's unshaven and always looks unwashed. The twist is that he's not actually an undercover detective, he's just a drunken hobo. Okay, fine, he [I]is[/I] actually a detective! But you really wouldn't know it to look at the guy. Detective Frank takes a special interest in all cash paying guests, especially if they come from one of any of the red-flagged counties around the country. He looks for suspicious patterns, and sometimes he finds them. Now, this is a hand-me-down story from before I started working at the hotel, but it's still a lot of fun! You see, some time ago we had a guest who stayed with us on a very regular basis. She was an elite member of the hotel chain, meaning she was flagged in our system as having given us a [I]lot[/I] of business over the years. The curiosity behind her was the fact that she always payed in cash, she always visited the same few hotels, she always had a lot of visitors, and that she apparently looked "nothing like the usual sort of elite member." Detective Frank found the patterns of her stays, and arranged for her to be pulled over after checking out of her room. The officer who pulled her over found over $500,000 in cash in the trunk of her car. Detective Frank found a high volume drug dealer! Because of the hotel staff's role in helping him track her stays and movement, the police department issued the entire hotel staff a generous cash reward, and everybody went home happy and satisfied (with the exception of the drug lady, who went to prison). I keep hoping [I]I[/I] can help Detective Frank catch a drug kingpin, but no luck so far! All he's uncovered in [I]my[/I] stay is a lady who had a dog in her room without our knowledge. Charging her the ten dollar pet fee wasn't quite as exciting as breaking the financial backbone of a drug ring probably would have been.[/quote] [editline]5th June 2012[/editline] [quote][B]Big Shirtless Meth-Head, and Mrs. Big Shirtless Meth-Head[/B] Mr. and Mrs. Big Shirtless Meth-Head are a hotel's worst nightmare. They showed up at eight in the morning, already well and proper drunk, and looking like they may have just come off (or started) a hell of a meth bender. Both the Meth-Heads were in their mid-30's, but looked no younger than fifty. Both were also, as their nickname implied, big and deeply sun damaged and totally shirtless (In Mrs. Meth-Head's defense, she did have some form of bathing suit top on). Mr. Hillbilly, however, was both shirtless [I]and[/I] barefoot, which, in my opinion, makes up her Mrs. Hillbilly's feeble attempt at modesty. Mr. Meth-Head was impossible to understand, since he had very few remaining teeth, but thankfully Mrs. Meth-Head was there to translate and conduct the transaction. The rent paperwork, which consists of a signature, two initials, and a brief description of the guest's vehicle, took them in the ballpark of ten minutes to fill out, and they had many, [I]many[/I] questions it. Well, it was really only three or four questions, but Mr. and Mrs. Meth-Head kept appearing to forget that they had already asked them after a few moments, and so would ask them again. And again. And again. [I]Ad infinitum.[/I] Finally, we got them to their room. And then the visitors started coming. At all hours of the night, our hotel's guests were subject to a ceaseless flow of big shirtless meth-heads wandering around the hotel. Not even Detective Frank seemed to know where to start, because, as far as anybody could tell, nothing strictly illegal was actually occurring. If there were deals going down, none of Frank's ambushes uncovered them, and if they were using drugs, they weren't doing on the actual hotel grounds. Apparently, the faces of meth were all just hanging out. Despite the fact that they lived five minutes away, [I]this[/I] was the family vacation: a stay in an upscale hotel in which they never use any of the amenities, only leave the hotel to go sit in their van for a while, and wander the halls in a state of perpetual insobriety.[/quote]
These are great, I love your writing too. It's like I'm reading a good book.
Yeah! A good (but horrifying) book!
How the fuck did I miss this? This thread is pure gold.
These are pretty entertaining. I've lived in hotels now for about a year and a half now. I became pretty close with the staff and I've seen some interesting, disturbing, and sad shit.
[QUOTE=Mr. Sun;36205120]These are great, I love your writing too. [B]It's like I'm reading a good book.[/B][/QUOTE] This makes me want BDA to turn this into a book at some point (whenever he fees like it, that is.)
Hah, BDA I fucking love you
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