We know more than you think

It was late one evening and I was the supervisor on duty at my old Comfort Inn gig.

The building had two wings. The original one had no separate climate control units, either the heat/AC was on or it was off. In the spring and fall months we tried to check most guests into the newer wing which did have individual units in the rooms.

A gentleman and his wife check in with me, I put them in the new wing, and everything goes A-OK.

In the evenings we did not have an engineer on duty, he was on call. In the event of burnt out lightbulbs and various things like that, we took care of ourselves. If a room had bigger problems, we just switched the guests to a different room.

A few minutes after checking in the couple, the husband calls me.

Great, I think. They only call right away if something's wrong with their room. It's the least desired phone call to answer.

"Ma'am," he says to me. "Our room is way to warm!" He sounds pretty pissed.

I am not about to call the engineer if all it ends up being is some idiot who doesn't know how to turn his A/C on. It happens all the time.

I tell him someone will be right up, and I ask a coworker to cover the desk.

I'm about halfway down the hall when I hear moaning and grunting, the unmistakable sounds of people screwing.

I get to the couple's room, stop in front of it, and realize it's the couple.

C'mon! I mean, I just told them someone was coming to their room. I wonder if maybe they were trying to get in a quickie before someone knocked, to create some kind of excitement I suppose.

I stand there for a moment, listening to the wife moaning really loudly, and I decide I cannot just wait for them to be done.

I go back to the desk, and I am too embarrassed to give them a call. I really don't want to go back either. I decide I'll wait for them to call again wondering where somebody is. They have to call back, right? Not my fault they decided to fuck when they were expecting someone.

They never call.

The next morning I'm back in and the horny couple checks out with me. Fuck! They recognize me.

"Hey! I complained about our room being too warm last night and no one ever came to take a look!"

As I look back and forth from husband to wife images fill my head of them doing it.

"I'm sorry, sir!" I apologize. I am at a loss. If I tell them I tried to help but didn't, what do I say?

He just sort of grunts and they walk away.

Lesson to you: We hotel people know that after we check in a couple that they are probably going to screw immediately upon entering the room. Watch the volume, k?

Option C

The boyfriend started a new hotel job last week. It moved us across the country, and it is a resort, so I figured he would get me some stories out of it. It took 5 days.

Couple Checking In with boyfriend: Would you recommend we rent a car or take taxis everywhere?

Boyfriend (thinks for a moment): Well, if you're only here for a day I think taxis would be best.

CCI: Thank you!

The next day...

The couple found option C.

Apparently the couple did not decide to take option taxis or option rent a car. They proceeded to get extremely drunk and stole a golf cart. They made it 3 miles into town on said golfcart. Mr. Crazy drives up to a very recent accident and asks the police if he can help in some way. Mr. Crazy claims to be an employee of the hotel (as if this qualifies him to perform EMT services.)

The police arrest him for drunk driving.

The hotel charges him several hundred dollars for the damage to the golf cart.

Mrs. Crazy bails out husband and sheepishly pays room bill.

Lesson: Listen to your front desk agent. He may be new, but he's got your best interests in mind.

Best Complaint Ever

We hoteliers hear lots and lots and lots of complaints. It's part of the job really, and at some point you develop a sort of standard reply for every different kind of complaint you can get.

The most popular:

Guest: I don't like my room (either the view, the number of beds, the size, the location).
Reply: your room type (or whatever) is not guaranteed. We only guarantee that you have a room. (People don't really like that answer usually. But it's the truth.)

Guest: I didn't order that movie (um, yeah you did, we even know you ordered Fuck My Wife Please and watched it for 8 minutes but who are we to argue).
Reply: I will remove that from your bill sir.

Guest: I am not paying for this phone call (who uses hotel phones anymore? They are notoriously overpriced.)
Reply: I can take off 40% (this is after we show them that they did indeed make the call to Ireland or somewhere fucking far but they keep screaming about the $500 bill so after while we wear down).

Anyway, this complaint takes the cake, and the most disturbing part of this is that it's not uncommon!

Guest: The water level is too high in the toilet and my balls are getting wet.

Reply: Uhhhh

Employee of the year goes to...

Our overnight Security officer won Employee of the Year. At first I was disappointed, I seriously wanted my supervisor to win because she is the best boss ever. But when you think about it, anybody who has this job, shows up on time every day, and doesn't ever complain is a valuable employee.

This is the guy who has to deal with drunk bar patrons who are insistent that they are not in fact too drunk for another one. He has to catch the thieves who walk in our bar and steal ladies (unwatched) purses. He's the one who gets called to deal with noise complaints which can be anything from a big party to a loud stereo left on to people fighting or fucking. He's probably seen more naked people than any other employee.* He's the guy that has to deal with the drunk crying chick who's been locked out of her room. Or the gaggle of superfans that figure out when a celeb stays with us and stalk the hotel like the lunatics they are. He's the guy that got spit on when a drunk bar patron didn't want to leave because he was cut off and was starting to cause a scene. And the prostitutes! Oh the prostitutes. ** When the police figure out through craigslist or whatever (note to ho's: don't solicit through craigslist) that there is a prostitute running her business out of a room in our hotel, Security gets called to make a report as well. Things in this report may be the fact that said prostitute had a credit card machine. And I won't even go into the dead bodies - or the DB's as we call them in the biz. But I will later.

*An inordinate amount of guests answer their door with little or no clothes on. Bellman and room service people see quite a few as well.

**Even the nicest hotels have things like prostitutes, doesn't mean a thing.

So I tip my hat to my overnight security guy. You protected me when I did my stints on the overnight shift (and damn if you don't worry about getting robbed at gunpoint every once in awhile especially after reading in the paper that it happened to the hotel 2 blocks away last night). You deserve the $500 dollars and 5 paid days off. But while you weren't looking some guy just stole a painting off the wall. Oops.