I work night audit at a hotel, and a couple of teams from the same school are staying with us for a soccer tournament. I worked last night when they arrived, and tonight, they had the first round and lost. Our quiet hours are from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am, and the lobby ceiling is the floor of the third floor, so it echoes really badly. On the second and third floors, if the people in the lobby are loud enough, you can hear what sounds like a club through the floor.
Last night, the parents were drinking liquor and hanging out in the lobby, but no one said they were being so loud that they couldn’t sleep. So, I waited until close to 1:00 am to tell them to pack it up and head to their rooms. It took them a while, but they did so amicably.
Tonight, though, we get a complaint a few minutes after 10:00 pm about the students being loud in the halls. I tell the coach, who says he’ll take care of it
Ten minutes later, a reasonable guest approaches at the desk.
Reasonable Guest: “Hi. I guess the coach didn’t scare them enough.”
Me: “I’m so sorry about that. I can—”
Reasonable Guest: “Oh, it’s fine. I talked to them myself. I guess one of the moms is mad because I cussed at them.” *Rolls her eyes* “But my husband is military, and he needs to be up early.
The coach overhears and comes to the desk.
Coach: “Now, I understand being in the military — lots of my family have been — but you do not cuss at children.”
Reasonable Guest: “Okay, that’s fair. I apologize for that.”
Coach: “No, you don’t apologize to me. Apologize to those kids!”
Reasonable Guest: “Oh, f*** you.” *Heads back to the elevator*
The mom in question (the one who’s upset about the guest’s cussing) and the coach proceed to lecture ME about why it’s unacceptable to cuss out teenagers, with [Mom #1] claiming her children are now TERRIFIED because they’re in the room next to the Reasonable Guest. The hotel is also completely sold out, so I can’t even offer to move them to another room to placate her.
The volume has also not gone down, and we’ve gotten complaints from every floor about how loud they are, so I step up and say that it’s after quiet hours and we need them to quiet down and head back to their rooms soon, and I request that the parents help keep the kids calm and respectful of other guests.
The kids all head back to their rooms and chill, while the parents stick around in the lobby. There’s one table of moms and another table of dads, and they’re ALL drinking liquor and riling each other up over this one person who went through the proper channels to get the kids to quiet down, but when that didn’t work, told the kids to herself, and when she apologized to the coach, he didn’t accept it. They also turn on music, which I repeatedly ask them to turn down. At one point, I leave to go to the laundry room, and they BLARE the music.
Me: “Come on, guys, seriously?”
The group all protest that they don’t know what I mean. The music has already been turned down by this point. I even saw one of the dads reach for the speaker and then pull his hand away.
Me: “The loud music. I’ve asked you to keep it down.”
Mom #2: “Maybe it’s the TV?”
Dad #1: “Yeah, we don’t hear any loud music.”
Me: “Because you turned it down as soon as I looked at you.”
Dad #1: “We’re all adults here. You can relax. It’s okay.”
It’s now 11:45 pm. I tell them that they need to head back to their rooms — or go to a bar — because it’s way after our quiet hours, and they haven’t heeded my repeated requests for them to be quiet. Two minutes later, the music blasts loud again, so I turn around.
Me: *Shouting to be heard* “Okay, that’s it!”
The music volume comes down and I lower my voice.
Me: “Everyone needs to get back to their room now. Or leave and go to a bar. It doesn’t matter, but you can’t stay in the lobby being loud anymore. It’s way past quiet hours.”
Dad #2: “All you had to do was ask us nicely; there’s no call to yell and be rude.”
Me: “Sir, I’ve asked you repeatedly since 10:00 pm.”
Dad #2: “No, you haven’t. You’ve just yelled at us. I’m a paying customer, and I want to stay here.”
Me: “I just raised my voice to be heard—”
Dad #3: *Waves a hand to shoo me away* “Just leave it. Go back to your desk.”
Dad #2: “Either go sit down and shut up, or call the cops on us. Those are your choices.”
Me: “Yes, sir.”
I turn on my heel to head back to the desk, but [Mom #3] intercepts me by getting directly in my face.
Mom #3: “You’re really gonna side with those b****es over us?”
Me: “Ma’am, it’s my responsibility to care for all the guests here—”
Mom #3: “You’re gonna f****** kick us out for sitting here talking and having beverages?“
Me: “Please don’t cuss at me, ma’am.”
Mom #3: “Okay, I won’t cuss at you. But let me ask you this: who’s rented the most rooms at this hotel?”
The soccer group as a whole has rented twenty-five rooms out of our ninety, so not even a full third. Please also note that we get a lot of business bookings, so we generally have around a third to a half of our rooms rented out during the week to regular customers who love our hotel and its staff.
Me: “Our quiet hours begin at 10:00 pm.”
Mom #3: “Who. Rented. The most. Rooms.”
Me: “Our quiet hours begin at 10:00 pm.”
Mom #3: “You can’t even tell me, because you don’t know. Your duty should be to the people who bring you the most business.”
Me: “Hotel policy states that quiet hours begin at 10:00 pm.”
Mom #3: “Last night, you were telling us to turn up the music! At 1:00 am!”
Me: “No, ma’am, I definitely did not.”
Mom #3: “This is f****** ridiculous. You’re going to side with the b****es who cuss out children, instead of good customers. This is horrible hospitality, and I tell you one thing, we will never be back here, and I will be complaining about how terrible this has been and about your s****y service!”
I just walk away because she is cussing in my face again. I pull out my cell phone and dial the police non-emergency and check out some kids buying soda from the market while all of this is going down. They can’t look me in the eye.
Operator: “[Location] Police Department, how can I help you?”
I’m visibly shaking from anger and adrenaline at this point. I give my location, job title, and name to her.
Me: “We have a bunch of drunken guests in the lobby, and I’ve repeatedly—”
At this point, it all starts coming out in sobs.
Operator: “Hey, it’s okay. Is there an office or somewhere you can go that’s safe?”
Me: “Yes.”
Operator: “Go in there, lock the door, and then tell me what’s happening.”
I step into the back office; the door has an electronic lock so it automatically locks when fully closed.
Me: “Okay. I’m okay.”
Operator: “Take some deep breaths and tell me what happened.”
I go into detail about the circumstances, how long I’ve been politely requesting that they quiet down, being explicitly told to call the cops on them, etc. In the middle of this, the knob on the locked door jiggles.
Me: *Shouting through the door* “This door is locked! Please don’t try to open it!”
It doesn’t happen again, but the entire time I’m on the phone, I can hear them clustered right outside the office door, talking.
Operator: “Okay, they’ll be pulling outside any moment.”
It takes five minutes for the cops to knock on the office door and get the story from me directly. After that conversation, I go back outside and continue doing my job.
I’m still crying off and on because I need to remain calm, and I can’t, so instead of screaming and hitting anyone, I’m crying. All of the moms are gone by this point, and I can hear a man ranting and shouting, presumably to a cop.
I have to check out some teenagers who want to buy sodas, and I take some others up to their room because they got locked out. The entire time I’m doing this, there are exchanges like this:
Dad #4: “She knows this is bulls***.” *Louder, to be sure I can hear* “SHE KNOWS THIS IS BULLS***!”
Dad #5: *To another dad who’s heading to his room* “Hey, you’d better be quiet! I can’t believe you’re being so loud right now! That’s so disruptive, God!”
They’re almost totally cleared out by now. I’m returning to the desk and passing the elevators, and [Dad #1], the one who told me to relax because we’re all adults here? He calls out and I look up.
Dad #1: “Hey, you might want to turn down the TV. It’s pretty loud.”
Luckily, five hours later, my manager was the one who relieved me, and I told her the whole story. She said she was proud of how I’d done, that I’d done everything right, and that those people weren’t welcome at the hotel anymore. In fact, the general manager was going to cancel their future reservations and blacklist them for this behavior. She even sent the lobby footage to the school as part of the explanation.
[Mom #3] did leave a review, which claimed that the front desk staff was responsible for abusing her teenagers, that we had “no hospitality”, and that they “do not recommend.”
Meanwhile, I spent the weekend hanging out with my friends at a festival, being happy. Good riddance, bitter old windbag.
This story is part of our Not Always Right Most-Epic Stories roundup!
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