An Unexpected Guest, The Easter Egg Hunt From Hell, And 14 Other On-The-Job Stories From Hotel Workers That Have My Jaw On The Floor
If there's someone who encounters some of the most unhinged humans on a daily basis, it's gotta be literally anyone who works at a hotel. From Karens complaining about every little thing on their family vacations to trying to check in a half-delirious college student who flew in on a red eye, it's truly never a dull moment at the front desk.
Recently, redditor u/Slider-678 asked, "Hotel workers, what is your craziest story?" Because I love work drama, obviously I clicked immediately, and the tales certainly did not disappoint. So, without further ado, here are 15 of the wildest on-the-job stories as told by people who work at hotels:
Note: Some submissions have also been sourced from r/TalesFromTheFrontDesk.
1."I worked at a large hotel in Chicago where we would often get business travelers. A man hung one of his suit jackets on the sprinkler in the ceiling. No idea why — there was a closet in his room. Do y’all know how many gallons of water per second those things release? I didn’t know until that day. It broke the glass tube in the sprinkler, causing them to all go off. Brown sludge water went everywhere, GALLONS AND GALLONS of it. It ruined every room beneath it. Unfortunately, this room was on the 19th floor. It caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damages. All for a suit jacket."
2."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 guests heard a loud crash in the room next door. He checked the computer and saw that the room was supposed to be unoccupied. He and I went to check it out. We knocked, but there was no answer. He opened the door and...there was a cat in the room."
"Turns out, it had knocked over a lamp and smashed it. It was super friendly and came right up to us. We took it back to the office and looked at the room records. The prior person who was in that room had abandoned the cat when he checked out three 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.'"
3."I was working at a small boutique place, just starting my day shift at about 6:30 a.m. I hadn’t even had my coffee yet. A woman came to the desk, visibly shaken. She said, 'I can’t find my husband. He’s not in the room, and all his clothes are still there. He’s a sleepwalker, and I'm worried that he has wandered into another room.'"
"My first thought was to check the CCTV. We head up to the first floor linen storage, where it's located. Well, as soon as I got the door open and the lights on, there was her naked husband sleeping spread across our bundled duvet covers, with one open half covering him. She woke him up, and of course, he had no idea where he was. She wrapped him up and took him back to bed.
They checked out later, and the dude was bashful as hell. I told him not to worry about it as he gave me a great story to share, and let him know I would tell anyone who would listen. And I plan to!"
4."We had guests who left three-week-old expired milk in the fridge. They were only in house for three days, so that means it was already two and a half weeks expired when they checked in. Who lugs around rotten milk?"
5."We had a very high net worth individual stay at our hotel for over a month. About two weeks in, he snuck into the staff access areas and found their way to us. It was 2 a.m., and we were doing closing. He apologized and asked if he could have a peanut butter sandwich and just chill for a bit, so we sat with this person who was worth billions while he chewed on a PB, and we talked about sports. He told us he'd had too much fancy food and shit company and just wanted to chill with 'real people.'"
6."I worked at a waterpark hotel, and for Easter one year, they decided to host a massive Easter egg hunt with over 500 eggs, including a smaller golden egg that was worth a cash prize. They went ALL OUT for the marketing campaign on it — it was all over the website, TV and radio ads, they even went so far as to get local news stations to mention it at the end of segments. The hype was huge, locally and otherwise. The planners unfortunately overlooked a massive detail: One of the major perks of staying at the hotel was that guests could enter the park two hours before the general public and start searching for eggs."
"The big day arrived, and it only took minutes to realize their mistake as hotel guests immediately began hunting down the eggs. By the time the doors officially opened to the massive crowd of excited kids and expectant parents two hours later, ALL of the 500+ eggs had already been found. To top it off, the heating system for the water broke down, too. So, the park was packed to capacity, out of eggs, and — without heat in snowy Minnesotan April — the water was ice cold. The backlash was spectacular."
7."A highstrung cook had an argument with an A-type bistro attendant at our hotel's restaurant. It eventually escalated to a pull-apart brawl when a kitchen knife got involved. The pair crashed through the swinging door and were rolling on the carpet when the regional manager just happened to be walking in. Cops were called; I think both got fired or arrested."
8."We had a large group of 20 or so young guys staying with us for work. The bulk of them checked in on a Saturday night. We got five different complaints that our guest dryers did not work. We haven’t had any issues previously with our dryers, so we ask them what’s going on. They all gave some variation of, 'I’ve run my clothes through the dryer three times now, and they’re still damp!' Guess what, dear readers? All five of these young men have been using our washing machines just fine, and then loading their laundry into ANOTHER WASHING MACHINE (our front loading ADA complaint washing machine)."
"They ignored any and all settings on the machine that would reasonably allude to the fact that this machine washes, not dries, clothing, and then complained to the front desk that our machines didn't work. Not only were these items not 'dry,' they were soaking wet, because they've been washed thrice.
1/4 of this group had reasonably never had to do their own laundry, and thus, it became our problem. Goody. The manager even put up a sign after incident #4, but within an hour, we got our fifth complaint."
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9."I was cleaning rooms one summer and entered the room of some guests that'd just checked out. I noticed some rolled up towels on the bathroom floor, but that was pretty common. As I started picking them up, I discovered that hidden underneath them were piles of human shit. I started to smell an overwhelming stench, and opened the shower curtain to find at least 10 more dumps in the shower, mixed with piss. The toilet, however, was clean as fuck. It didn't even look like it had been used. I quit that day."
10."While I was working at a luxury hotel, I once got a call to remove a snail from a guest's room as it was 'coming after them' and that they were 'afraid for their young child.'"
11."A guest called the police for a noise complaint about another room. The police got there and went up to the noisy room with a front desk receptionist. When they got there, they found a woman, her two kids, her ex-husband, her aunt, and another random man. They were deep frying chicken in the room at about 10 p.m. on a Tuesday. I remember seeing a man run out of the lobby with his deep fryer spilling oil all over the place."
12."We had lots of hotel guests in for a conference. One night (about 10:30 p.m.), a guy walked down from his room to the bellhop desk in nothing but tightly whities, with a bed sheet wrapped around his body from head to toe, and blood dripping down his face. This guy sounded out of it. He informed security that he and his boyfriend got into a fight. So, two security officers (one a supervisor) went to the room to question the other boyfriend, while another security officer waited with the bloodied boyfriend behind the bellhop desk for an ambulance to arrive."
"Up at the room, security was informed that the bloodied boyfriend had been passed out drunk and had crapped in one of the beds when the other boyfriend had walked into the room with his wife and two kids, all of whom had been enjoying a night on the town. Both men were coworkers who were in for the conference. Supposedly, the family man had given the suite room key to his boyfriend with the expectations that they'd do the deed during conference hours, all the while the wife and kids explored the city during the day.
Back at the bellhop desk, the security supervisor relayed the discovered info to the bloodied boyfriend, which set the guy off. He tackled the security supervisor to the ground. Blood and feces stained the hotel carpet and the supervisor's suit as he finally cuffed the bloodied boyfriend. Cops were called, and the guy got taken away before getting inspected by medics."
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13."The front desk clerk was running an OnlyFans from the hotel. She was nice, if not a bit quiet and guarded, but she'd leave during her shift with a key to an empty room, and come back a while later. I didn't find out until my last day, when someone showed me the account."
14."I worked the night shift, and was the only employee in the entire hotel from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Around 3 in the morning, I got a few calls about a fight in an upstairs hallway. I grabbed a pair of scissors, tucked them up my sleeve, and made my way upstairs to see what was going on. When I got there, I saw two guys having a full-on brawl. I'm 6 foot 2 and very broad shouldered, but these guys were taller and ripped as hell. As I approached, a third guy — just as large as the others — came out of a room with a knife, yelling, 'Get the fuck off him!' I paused a ways away and just shouted at them. They all stopped immediately and looked at me. I was getting ready to run for it when I saw them all just deflate."
"The knife guy dropped his weapon, and the others let go of each other immediately. They all hung their head, and one mumbled, 'I'm sorry' under his breath. They looked like a bunch of toddlers who had just gotten caught stealing cookies. I told them they would have to leave right now or I would call the police, and they all just nodded. They followed me onto the elevator, and spent the whole time apologizing and pouting while I escorted them out. I have never seen a situation go from 100 to 0 so fast."
15.And finally, "I work at a seaside resort on an island. We have a beautiful protected cove and a marina here. One night, we were attacked by pirates. There was a boat I've seen in our harbor a few times. It's about a 72-foot sailboat, and it's NOT in good condition. There are tarps and junk all over it, and it flies a pirate flag. Apparently, it has no insurance so it isn't allowed to tie up on any of our docks. Also, the owner and his friends are a bit sketchy, so they aren't allowed on the resort grounds either."
"That night, whiskey was the drink of choice on the pirate ship. Two men from the boat stole a neighboring dingy and rowed ashore, onto the beach in the cove just south of ours. They came in through the dark and tried to wake up a girl they knew on the docks, but she wasn't having any of it, and she told them to leave. They then came to our front desk at our guest reception in the Lodge, which was closed at the time. When guest reception is closed, there is just a sign on the counter with an emergency number to call if a guest needs assistance during the night.
We sell cigarettes from the front desk, and they are kept in a locked drawer behind the counter, along with the float ($600). Last night, these pirates, drunk on whiskey, broke into the drawer and stole the float and all the cigarettes. They did this directly on camera, which they even looked at while performing this plundering of our treasure.
Alas, as is the fate of most dumb, drunk pirates, they were arrested the next day in their beds, woken from their slumbering hangovers, the loot piled on their bedside table."
BuzzFeeders who work at hotels — do you have any wild stories like these? If so, tell us about them in the comments below or via this anonymous form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
