I work in a hotel. It baffles me that so many random people walk in and say they would like an upgrade. It doesn’t work like that. We don’t just give free upgrades to anyone who asks. We don’t even randomly upgrade the [Rewards Program] members. If we make a mistake with your room or reservation, we’ll ask if it’s okay to upgrade you. If we accidentally overbook a certain room type, then we’ll offer someone an upgrade. If something in your room is not functioning and it doesn’t represent the standards we keep, we’ll upgrade you. If it’s a slow night and we know you’re having a hard time, (e.g., you had a car accident, you’re escaping domestic violence, you unexpectedly lost someone close to you, etc.), we’ll quietly ask if it’s okay to upgrade you.

Sometimes, third parties upgrade people without asking them first, and I’m the one who has to take the s*** when they don’t want that room. Sometimes, (a lot of the time), third parties literally just lie to people. And sometimes, people are entitled bungholes. Even worse are the entitled bungholes who book using third parties. That’s the type of person this story is about.

It’s a very busy night. We are completely booked and have no rooms left to sell. [Guest] comes in around 9:30 pm having booked a pet-friendly single room (one queen bed) as a prepaid, nonrefundable reservation made through a third-party booking site.

Guest: “My name is [Guest], and I’ll take a free upgrade, thanks.”

And then, she just keeps going through her purse as if she didn’t just say some entitled s***. That ain’t how it works, ma’am. I blink at her a few times until she looks up.

Me: “I’m sold out. There aren’t any other rooms available to upgrade you to.”

Guest: “Well, [Booking Site] told me I could book this room and then ask for an upgrade when I got here, and you’d give it to me.”

Did they now? I can’t say whether they did or not. To be honest, it could go either way; I can see [Booking Site] doing that s***, and I can also see [Guest] making that up. Let me also say that if you book through a third party, we aren’t giving you an upgrade unless something in your room is seriously messed up and another room of that same type isn’t available. If you book a prepaid, nonrefundable reservation, I can’t put you in any other room type anyway. When thinking about who to upgrade, we cross off third-party reservations first.

Me: “Ma’am, even if I did have a room to give you, I wouldn’t be able to switch you because you booked a prepaid nonrefundable reservation, and I’m not able to edit those in that way.”

Guest: “But [Booking Site] said you would give me an upgrade!”

Well, [Booking Site] lied to you, bro.

Me: “Like I said, this is the room you booked. I’m all sold out and I can’t change your reservation.”

Guest: “Well, what am I supposed to do now? Huh? I have my kids and husband with me, and we can’t all sleep in a single room!!”

Okay, then don’t BOOK a single room for your whole family and assume I’ll give you another one for free when you show up. The entitlement! I can’t believe I have to say this, but if you’re traveling with your whole family, you need to book a room that accommodates YOUR WHOLE FAMILY.

Me: “That’s up to you. I can bring some extra pillows and blankets if you’d like, and I think I still have a rollaway available if you want that.”

[Guest] primarily speaks another language, so she has trouble understanding what I mean by a rollaway. I try using a few synonyms (cot, portable bed, etc.) and describing it, but she’s not getting it. That’s fine; I deal with language barriers on the daily with this job. Meanwhile, her two daughters are standing a bit behind her while this is all going down, and the older one — probably about ten or eleven — steps in to translate for her, which is super helpful.

Guest: “That’s not acceptable! I want to be upgraded!”

Me: “That’s the best I can do. Bottom line. Would you like the rollaway bed I offered?”

[Guest] starts to take a breath, but her daughter interrupts her and says yes.

Me: *To the daughter* “Sounds good. I’ll bring it to your room when I have a minute.”

And then I finished checking them in.

It’s pretty bad when your ten-year-old kid is more reasonable than you are.

I told my manager about it, and she checked the cameras. I thought [Guest] was just going to have four people in the room. My manager told me she counted nine people going into that room. She said, “Holy s***, it was like a clown car; all these people kept packing in there. All I could think was, ‘Yep, that’s a fire hazard.’”

Insane. People, book the room you need. Don’t walk in and expect us to give you a free upgrade. A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

I recently stayed at a hotel, where conference organisers had booked me into a wheelchair-accessible room. It was round the back of the building down a lane-wide ramp with no sides, handrails, or lighting. Even in a wheelchair, I wouldn’t have been able to get to or from it unless someone was there to push me.

The hotel’s answer was that there was a dedicated disabled parking bay nearby so I could just drive to the front of the building, hope to find suitable parking, and walk across the busy carpark every time I wanted to go to breakfast, reception, the coffee shop, meetings or anywhere.

When I pointed out I didn’t have a car and would need to call a taxi each way to take me from my room to reception and back, I got the obligatory “deer in the headlights” look.

It’s not really the hotel’s fault. Despite it being completely unsuitable for me, who can walk (sort of) and would be on my own without a car most of the time, I believe the room was quite spacious and well-equipped.

The requirement I had asked for was accessible washing and toilet facilities, so I ended up with a smaller and more basic (but still accessible) room, but at least I could make my own way around.

They were also good enough to provide a proper ergonomic computer chair so I could sit in my room and work.

Watching the cogs whirring was fun; I don’t think it had ever occurred to the managers that without a car, or at the very least a fairly meaty powered chair, there was no safe way to go to and from their premium “accessible” rooms.

I work at the front desk of a hotel. The hotel is pretty upscale and sits on a marina. A happy couple checked in the night before their wedding, and I just knew they’d be a handful, but I still seriously underestimated them.

On the first night (wedding eve), they kept calling for maintenance because they couldn’t get the fireplace to turn on or the jets in the tub to work. (It turned out that the trick was to press “on”.) Then, the complaints of loud sex start rolling in, followed by complaints of heated arguing.

We all survived night one. The wedding day was here. They got married on a boat with mainly the groom’s family on board. The bride got so drunk that they literally ditched her a** at the marina. One of the dock hands found her, eighties dress and all, wandering the boat slips.

We sent security to help her, but they couldn’t find her. While they were searching, she stumbled into the lobby bare-footed, losing her s***, grabbing every guest who had the misfortune of walking by, and sobbing to them. She nearly ruined a guest’s Versace suit crying on his arm (unsolicited and very awkwardly). Luckily, he was a good sport.

Before security could make it back, the groom showed up. They proceed to have a public argument and make-up (with plenty of PDA) for all to see.

Security finally rescued me and got them to their room. The last of the fun was more noise complaints of loud sex and arguing. Security pretty much had to set up camp on their floor.

I’m sure they’re still happily married to this day.

In November, I attended a convention in Tucson, Arizona. Back in October, just before the cutoff date, I reserved two nights at the hotel and gave the code for the convention rate. They didn’t need a card number for the reservation, which I thought was odd, but oh, well.

I went up to the desk during the convention and told the clerk I had a reservation.

Clerk: “I don’t see anything here.”

Then, he poked around for a minute.

Clerk: “Here it is. The tenth and eleventh of October, not November.”

Me: “What? I specifically gave the TUSCON50 code to get the cheaper rate.”

Clerk: “Yup, I see that here, and at the convention rate. I don’t know what they were thinking.”

Luckily, they were only about a third filled, even with the convention, so I got a room — even at the convention rate.

I work in a hotel. Our lowest floor is still about a meter and a half from the ground, and each of our outside rooms has a balcony rail. A guest has decided he wants to unload his motorcycle from his truck and leave the ramp down, so (I’m assuming) he can ride the bike up when he is done.

The guest who is staying in that room ordered room service earlier in the day and decided to leave the food uncovered and the balcony doors open, and they later went to the hotel pool/spa to relax. 

Upon returning, they calmly come up to us at reception, and say:

Guest: “There’s a bear in the room.”

Puzzled, we quietly approached the room and slowly opened the door. Lo and behold, there was indeed a bear eating room service and making a mess of my afternoon.

We called Parks Canada to deal with it. 

The guest was not charged a cleaning fee.