This lady had a prepaid, nonrefundable OTA (Online Travel Agency) reservation for one night at our hotel. She called around 10:30 pm on the night of arrival. I answered the phone with the standard greeting.

Guest: “Hey, so, I just landed at the airport, and I was wondering when the shuttle would be here to pick me up.”

There was a split second of “Oh, my gosh” before I had to tell her:

Me: “Oh, uh, our hotel doesn’t have a shuttle.”

Guest: “Oh… Well, how am I supposed to get there, then?”

Me: “Which airport are you at? Pittsburgh?”

The Pittsburgh airport is two or three hours away.

Guest: “No, Philadelphia.”

What the f***?!

Me: “I mean, you could try calling a taxi, but I doubt a lot of them would be willing to drive that far. It’s a pretty long way away — like, a seven-hour drive.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute, and I was just about to ask if she was still on the line.

Guest: “Where is your hotel?”

Me: “It’s in [My Town], Pennsylvania.”

Guest: “It’s… not in Philadelphia?”

Me: “No.”

Guest: “Oh. I must’ve accidentally booked the wrong hotel. Can’t you, like, transfer my reservation and payment to [Different Hotel Brand] in Philadelphia?”

Oof. I wouldn’t even be able to do that if it was the SAME brand. How do people think our computers work? This wasn’t the first time someone had insisted that all hotels are connected through their computers.

Me: “No, I’m sorry. That’s not possible for me to do.”

Guest: “Well, can you at least cancel it and refund me?”

No, ma’am, I can neither cancel nor refund your NONCANCELLABLE, NONREFUNDABLE reservation. No, I didn’t say that, but do you KNOW how many times I’ve WANTED to say that?

Me: “I’m sorry, but you booked a noncancelable, nonrefundable reservation through a third party.”

Guest: “But don’t you make exceptions for accidents?”

Me: “I can’t do anything with a third-party reservation like this. I’m sorry. When you book a prepaid [OTA] reservation, your payment information and money go to their company. We don’t have any of that information here because we aren’t the people you actually paid. I’d recommend calling the customer service number at the bottom of the confirmation email they sent you and asking them if they can do anything.”

Guest: *Sighs* “Okay, thank you.”

Ten minutes later, I got a call that started with the dreaded:

Travel Agency: “Hello, this is [OTA], and I’m calling you on behalf of our mutual guest.”

Bleurgh.

They asked me to cancel it without penalty. I told them I couldn’t cancel a noncancelable reservation.

Travel Agency: “But don’t you make exceptions for accidents?”

Me: “I can’t do anything with a prepaid, nonrefundable reservation. The virtual card was charged days ago. If you want to cancel it and refund her, that’s up to you. But I can’t do anything on my end here.”

Aaaand she said, “Thanks, I’ll tell the guest, bye.”

I can’t believe people really wing their travel plans like that. If you’re flying from another state, you’d think you’d double-check that all your accommodations were correct and taken care of so you don’t end up stranded.

If this lady had booked directly, I could’ve canceled it. But when you book through a third party and they inevitably f*** up, I can’t do a thing about it.

I did feel bad for her, but come on, people! Check your travel plans BEFORE you travel.

I work as a night auditor, and we see and deal with a lot of crazy s***. I work at a small hotel in a small-ish town where we have a lot of break-ins, drugs, crime, and homelessness, and it’s overall not a safe city to live in.

It is 3:30 am, and some very young woman with a dog tries to come in. We lock the doors at 11:00 pm, and guests use their phones to open the door. It looks like the woman is trying to do this, but she cannot get her phone to work, so she rings the bell over and over again. I go to the office to unlock the door for her, and she rushes in.

Me: “Hi, ma’am, how can I assist you?”

She ignores me and runs to the elevator with her dog. I rush after her.

Me: “Ma’am, I am going to join you in this elevator because I need to verify what room you are going to as you did not check in at the front desk.”

She starts screaming at me.

Woman: “YOU CANNOT BE IN HERE WITH ME!”

Me: “I need to verify your information, ma’am.”

Woman: “I HAVE CANCER AND AM ON CHEMO! GET OUT! I AM IN ROOM [NUMBER]!”

Me: “Ma’am, I just needed you to verify. You don’t need to scream at me.”

Woman: “YOU ARE RUDE! I AM GOING TO TALK TO YOUR MANAGER IN THE MORNING, RUDE B****! WHAT ARE YOU, A F****** MORON?!”

Me: “Okay, let me just step out.”

She is acting erratically, and I do not want to be in the elevator with her and her dog, so I step out and push the button again so that I can go to the floor she is claiming she is on.

I get up there and notice that she has no idea where she is going.

Woman: “OH, MY GOD, STOP FOLLOWING ME! YOU’RE HARRASSING ME! ARE YOU STUPID? YOU IDIOT, I ALREADY TOLD YOU WHAT ROOM I AM IN!”

Me: *As calm as I can be* “Ma’am, we have sleeping guests, and you are going to need to calm down. Also, room [number] does not exist here. I am going to need you to come to the front desk and verify the reservation information; otherwise, I am calling the police to have you removed.”

The woman tries to get her phone to show me what room she is supposed to be in. It doesn’t work. She says she is a super-platinum god-like member, and she is calling the company because she is NOT going to the front desk and won’t put up with this treatment from me.

She apparently cannot access her Internet, or it is slow, or something. She asks me for the Wi-Fi information, but I just look at her and say nothing.

She then calls her boyfriend or whoever she is going to see. She tells him this crazy story about how I left her outside in the cold at 3:00 am, and now I am harassing her and won’t stop following her because I am crazy or something, and how I am a rude idiot and she feels unsafe.

She puts her phone on speaker.

Woman: *To me* “He wants to speak to you.”

Me: “Hello, my name is [My Name]. What actually happened is that our doors lock at 11:00 pm for guest and employee safety. When I asked her about what room she was in or for any information about her reservation, she immediately got an attitude with me and called me names, and she refuses to cooperate. We have a right to know who is in our hotel. If she does not come to the front desk, or if you can’t come the desk to verify, I am ready to call the police. Either way, she cannot be up on the floor where we have guests sleeping, acting the way she is.

Then, the man on the phone says something to her that makes the logic start brewing in her noggin.

Woman: *Looking incredibly embarrassed* “This isn’t the [Hotel] on [Street]?”

Me: “No. If you had cooperated with me, ma’am, to give me the information I needed, I could have told you long ago that you were at the wrong hotel, and we could have avoided all of this.”

She apologized profusely.

I went down the elevator with her and her nice little dog. The whole time, she kept saying that she was so sorry that she had been so mean and rude to me. I let her know that I was not singling her out and that I was just doing my job; if she were in a hotel sleeping, I am sure she would appreciate the employees not letting random people in that could be dangerous. She understood and was very apologetic.

She said she needed to use the restroom, so I allowed her to use our lobby bathroom and offered to let her stay in the lobby while she waited for a ride, which she didn’t need because she had driven herself.

She had been in such a hurry to get into the hotel that she had left her purse and her luggage at the entryway. To be honest, I am shocked that no one came up and stole her stuff — which would have been Karma at its finest, but I am glad it was resolved.

I work at the bar at a relatively fancy hotel. I’m also eight months pregnant and look it. I have a regular who is always in town on business. He’s Japanese, and since we stock some good high-end Japanese whiskey at the bar, he usually comes down for some on his trips, complimenting our selection.

As he’s in town every month, he’s seen my pregnancy bump in various stages of development.

Bar Regular: “Wow, [My Name]. You’re ready to pop!”

Me: “Yeah, one month to go!”

Bar Regular: “Why are you still at work? You must be exhausted.”

Me: “Well, I’ll be working until the week before my due date.”

Bar Regular: “But what about your maternity leave?”

Me: “We don’t really… uh… do that, in the USA? It depends on the employer.”

Bar Regular: “That’s crazy! Japan has a reputation for always making our people work, but even in Japan, mothers go on maternity leave six weeks before they’re due.”

Me: “It’s okay! I have a seat at the bar, and it’s not like pouring you your favorite whiskey is hard!”

I laugh it off, and we chat a bit more. When he’s done, he hands me his bill (charged to his room), and he’s left a tip in there. It feels quite heavy.

Bar Regular: “You were always going to be a great mother, but this should make it a little easier.”

He smiled and left before I could say anything. He tipped me $1,000! That came in so handy when my boy was born — you have no idea!

Now, every month, he comes by and asks to see baby pictures, and he always brings my son little toys from Japan. By far my favorite customer!

In high school, one year, the band goes to the Land of the Mouse for a contest. Since we flew, we are staying in a hotel. To kind of try and prevent/catch kids who might be doing sneaky things, after curfew, the teachers and chaperones do room checks to make sure everyone is in the correct room, and then they tape the doors.

One day after we’ve been at the park, my roommates and I start packing and trying to stay awake while we wait for room checks. After a while, we start to wonder where our chaperones are because they should have checked in by now. None of us can remember the room number our specific group chaperone is in, but we have the room number of our band teacher, and we have his cell phone number. We try both numbers and get nothing.

Then, one of my friends says she remembers where the chaperone’s room is, just not the room number. She and I throw on shoes and decide to go check. As we open the door, we hear the sound of the tape ripping off the door. I stick my head out the door and see the tape hanging in the corner.

Me: “Well, crap. We have to find someone now. Do you think we’d have better luck going down to the front desk?”

Friend: “Probably. Come on.”

She and I leave the room, head around the corner, and run into our band director. He’d heard the tape and was coming to see who he’d catch. Cue the deer in the headlights moment; he’s shocked at who he sees (we are not the expected troublemakers), and we’re shocked that he was so close.

Me: “Uh, hi, Mr. [Teacher]. Um, we were coming to find someone because we didn’t get our room check, and [Roommate #1] and [Roommate #2] want to go to sleep. We didn’t know the exact room number for [Chaperone], but [Friend] said she thought she knew where the room was, so we were thinking about going to the room or to the front desk. And you didn’t answer your phone, so we thought we’d just come looking because we weren’t sure if the room checks were still going on.”

I acknowledge that I’m probably babbling and rambling, but I do not want to get in trouble for something I didn’t do. Neither one of us is a troublemaker or would have been in this situation, but heat-of-the-moment-type stuff and everything…

Teacher: “Okay, let’s go back to your room and I’ll do a quick check.”

We go back. [Teacher] stays in the hall but leans in to verify that all four of us are in the room and then says goodnight. We shut the door, and he tapes it back up.

The next morning, we head down to the breakfast and the chaperones find us.

Chaperone #1: “Oh, girls, I’m so sorry! We just forgot about you last night! We ended up needing to split the room checks differently, and everyone thought someone else had already checked your room.”

Chaperone #2: “Mr. [Teacher] said you guys handled it well, though! Next time, though, it’s probably fine to just go to bed in that situation, if you want. You guys are pretty good, so we weren’t too worried anyway.”

We had more girl rooms than boys but fewer female chaperones, and because of district policies regarding adults seeing students, it was interesting. We all laughed it off, and to make it up, the teachers and the chaperones let our group get in line first at checkout, getting on the bus, and at all the various activities we did throughout the day while waiting to go to the airport. Interesting end to a fun trip, though!

A lady comes to check into our hotel for a three-night stay.

Me: “Just to let you know, we don’t have automatic daily housekeeping; it’s done by request. To clarify: housekeeping won’t go into your room to clean it tomorrow unless you ask for it.”

Her mouth drops open in absolute disbelief.

Guest: “Really?! I have never heard of a hotel doing that! Even [Cheap Motel Chain] does housekeeping! I’m paying $400 a night, and you won’t even clean my room?? That’s absolutely crazy! Are you serious?!”

And so on.

Me: “No, ma’am, of course, they’ll clean the room. You just need to request it, that’s all. It’s pretty standard in hotels since the [global health crisis]. I’ll set it up to have them do it in the morning if you’d like. What time would be convenient for you?”

She keeps looking around huffing and puffing in complete shock like I just told her that she’ll need to pop out one of her own eyeballs and give it to me as a deposit or something. I am so confused about why she looks so horrified and offended by this.

Then, she looks me in the eye and, very slowly and loudly, like I’m an idiot who needs to be spoken to like a toddler, she says:

Guest: “Well, can you clean it now? Before I go in?”

Me: “I don’t clean the rooms, ma’am, and… Why…”

She actually stomps her foot at this. Then, it dawns on me and I understand. And I burst out laughing at this lady.

Me: “Ma’am, the room is clean. Were you under the impression that housekeeping doesn’t clean the rooms between guests? I’m saying that during your stay, they will only go in to clean if you request it.”

Now it was me talking slowly and loudly.

And yes, that’s exactly what she thought, and that’s why she was so horrified. She thought we had sold her a dirty room and told her she’d need to ask nicely before we’d clean it! She realized her mistake, mumbled something about being tired, and hurried off.