I work in a hotel. On a slow Sunday evening, I briefly stepped away from the desk and returned to the glorious sound of a ringing phone.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Hotel Chain]. My name is [My Name]; how can I help you?”

Caller: “Hi. I’m looking to check on a reservation, but it’s old. Are you able to do that?”

Me: “Sure. What’s the name and check-in date?”

She gives matching information and I look it up.

Me: “Okay, what are you trying to find out?”

Caller: “Well, I’m looking at the number of guests on the reservation, because my invoice says two, and I’m trying to figure out why.”

I check. The stay happened months before I started working at this property. There’s only a number — two — and no other guest name listed aside from the one on the reservation.

Me: “I see two people in the room but only one name on the reservation.”

Caller: “Why wouldn’t the other name be listed?”

Me: “It could be an oversight during the reservation creation or check-in process. I’m sorry, I don’t have any other information available beyond the number.”

Caller: “So, there’s no way to find out if there was anyone else in the room?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but if there was another person, their name wasn’t listed.”

I begin to hear a male talking in the background, saying something along the lines of, “I’m telling you, it was only me in the room!” At this point, my soul begins the process of escaping the clutches of my human form, fearful of what the future holds.

Caller: “What’d you say your name is?”

I tell her again. She then calls me by name and continues.

Caller: “My spouse was there with a little blonde thing. He’s twenty-eight and she’s twenty-two. He thinks it’s okay to do this kind of stuff behind my back and thinks I’m too stupid to find out.”

Me: “…”

They continue fighting. It’s a slow night, and they’ve invited me to the horror show that is their bubbling romance, so I take a seat, grab some popcorn, and listen to them argue for a few minutes.

Caller: “I’m sorry. I’m sure this is a strange call for you.”

No, of course not. This is totally normal. I continue to stay silent.

Caller: “There’s nothing else you can give me?”

Me: “No, I’m sorry.”

Caller: “Okay, well, have a good night.”

I hung up and went back to babysitting humanity.

When I was a kid, my dad and I were at Thanksgiving dinner with my dad’s girlfriend and her family.

Me: *Proudly* “Dad, both of your girlfriends have the same first name!”

Dad: “Oh, you’re just a little kid; you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

But I “reminded” him of [Girlfriend #2]’s full name. She happened to be a coworker of [Girlfriend #1]’s sister, so there was no doubting that she was a real person.

I am the front-of-house manager at a trendy restaurant. It isn’t “upscale” but it’s a local restaurant that receives incredibly good reviews from national media. It’s the type of place you take a date to impress them. Part of this is due to the food; part is due to the service.

On a somewhat slow Saturday night at 7:00 pm, I answer our phone.

Customer: “I’d like to make a reservation for 8:00 pm.”

Me: “Sure.”

Customer: “Can you help me with something?”

Me: “What do you need, sir?”

Customer: “I need to make the night extra special. Can you set the table up with flowers?”

Me: “That’s not a problem. We have fresh flowers delivered for décor every few days so I can make a bouquet for you.”

Customer: “Do you have greeting cards?”

No? But it is a slower night, and we have a market next door where I could send a server to grab a card.

Me: “What would you like it to say, sir?”

I struggle to keep up with his rambling, but the gist is about how much he loves this woman.

By this point, I’m thinking, “Holy s***. This guy is proposing.” I tell some of our servers and everybody is stoked because none of us have ever seen a proposal before. We go all-out on this table.

Eight o’clock rolls around and there’s no sign of this couple.

Eight-fifteen comes and a couple walks in the door. I think it’s them, but I’m not sure. The guy looks incredibly nervous; he’s sweating bullets. The woman seems very tired and lethargic. Then, the guy asks for a table for two. The server walks him to a table. He sees the table with flowers and asks to sit at that table. The server tells him it is for a reservation, and he says, “Yeah, that was me.” Weird start, but okay. We seat them there.

The woman opens the card and reads it. She doesn’t seem that interested; she just sets it to the side. Every employee is watching this table from the corner of their eyes, waiting for something to happen. But they are silent. The only words spoken are their drink orders to the server.

After their drinks come, they order some food and sit in more agonizing silence.

Then, the woman turns to the guy.

Woman: “Do you think this is going to change anything?”

And the fighting started. Once the shouting began, it became clear that this wasn’t a proposal. The guy had cheated on her and was trying to win her back.

The woman stormed out of the restaurant. The guy started crying, chased her, and didn’t come back.

I work for a hotel in pre-arrival/prior reservations. I’m not at the hotel itself; I’m in a call center a few miles away.

Caller: “I’m concerned about credit card fraud; I just got an email about a stay at your hotel, but I don’t have anything planned.”

For security purposes, I can’t just reveal details about the order, but I ask her to confirm the details she has. Her husband has a relatively common name, so she thinks maybe it is just that someone selected the wrong profile, but she says they have had a credit card fraud incident in the past.

Me: “Can you please confirm the email, phone, and billing address in the email?”

She does, and she also tells me the address of the person who stole their card before. All the information is her husband’s work address except for the email, which is hers. The last four digits of the card are not any that she knows offhand, but she does say she doesn’t know her husband’s work cards.

The more we talk, the more it looks like her husband booked everything under his work information except for the email, and then, when he checked in with a second adult and upgraded the room to a king suite, the system pulled her email because they’d stayed there together in the past.

My support team advises me to just tell her it isn’t any of the last four digits she gave us and it’s a case of the wrong profile. I do so.

Caller: “Okay, thanks for checking. My husband is out of town on business until the nineteenth, so I know it’s not him.”

The room was set to be checked out on the nineteenth. I really wanted to tell her, “Call your husband to make sure he doesn’t see suspicious activity on his company cards and let him know why you’re asking. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

This took place in the mid-1990s when I was fifteen years old. It was around 11:00 at night when I heard someone tap on my window. I looked out to see two of my best buddies waving at me and gesturing for me to come out. I opened my window.

Me: *Whispering* “Dude! What the h*** are you doing here? You’re gonna get me in trouble!”

Friend: “Dog, you gotta come with us! There’s this smashing party going on at [Boy]’s place! His dad is out for the weekend and he’s got the place to himself! Girls all over the place! You gotta check it out!”

I’d never snuck out of the house before.

Me: “Uhhh… I dunno about that.”

Friend: “[Crush] is there.”

Me: “You serious?”

Friend: “Dead serious. Come on, I told them we were gonna come get you. You’re gonna let everyone down!”

That particular girl being there was all the reason I needed to risk my neck. I quietly got dressed and tiptoed out the back door since the screen in my bedroom window was too difficult to remove and replace.

After spending a good five hours or so frolicking around with everyone and acting like the bunch of high school morons we were, we decided around 4:00 am that we’d all better split and get back home before our luck ran out and someone came looking for us.

I managed to slip back in through the back door and was tiptoeing back to my room when I heard a toilet flush and my mom emerged from the bathroom with a groggy look on her face. And there I was, standing in the middle of the hallway, fully dressed and reeking of cigarettes and beer (neither of which my parents had).

Mom: “What are you doing?”

Me: “I heard a weird noise in the shed so I just went to check it out.”

Mom: “You got dressed up like that to—” *sniffing* “OH, H*** NO! [Dad], get out here now!”

My parents were having some serious marital issues at the time, to the point where they were sleeping in separate bedrooms.

Mom: *Banging on my dad’s door* “GET OUT HERE, [DAD]!”

No answer.

In a rage, my mom threw the door open and ripped the blanket off my dad’s bed to reveal an empty bed. Puzzled, my mom looked outside to see his car missing from the driveway, and then, she picked up the phone.

Mom: “Hello, is [Dad] there?” *Pause* “This is [Mom]; I am [Dad]’s wife. Did he have a graveyard shift tonight?” *Pause* “He hasn’t had one all this year?!” *Pause* “Really now?!” *Pause* “Thank you!” *Slamming the phone down* “If this is some kind of prank, somebody better say something now because I’m about to go homicidal! Get back in bed! Don’t think you’re off the hook!”

I got back in bed with an “I’m-so-dead” feeling of impending doom hovering over me.

Around six am, I woke up to hear:

Mom: “WHERE IN THE H*** HAVE YOU BEEN?!”

Dad: “I got called in for a graveyard shift; someone called in sick.”

Mom: “BULLS***! I CALLED YOUR WORK! YOU HAVEN’T HAD A GRAVEYARD SHIFT ALL YEAR!”

Cue a mayhem-filled screaming match where my dad finally fessed up about “the other girl” — who happened to be one of her good friends. The screaming match grew into a screaming marathon that continued almost until noon, and my dad ended up moving out about two weeks later.

As for me, my mom was so pissed that she never punished me for sneaking out of the house to smoke and drink, although, for a while, she started making me put my shoes and jacket in her bedroom at night. That lasted up until I was sixteen.

My dad still jokes with me to this day that I inadvertently got him busted doing essentially the same thing the same night.