I work night audit at a hotel. Most of the time it’s a fairly mundane, quiet job. On this particular night, we are at something like 10% occupancy, which means paperwork will be light and I’ll likely have several hours to just chill. I’m setting up my papers for the night when I get a call from the bar staff, who are still going through their closing procedures. We have glass elevators, and the bar is directly across from them; the bartender says she just saw a man and a woman get into a physical altercation in one of the elevators.
I radio for security; meanwhile, the woman has come back down to the main floor, but states that the man in question has stolen her purse. Apparently, he tried to convince her to come back to his room with him, and when she declined he tried to force her from the elevator, but only managed to get her purse out with him. He then set the purse on the ground outside the elevator and told her to “come and get it.” She smartly refused and returned to the main floor.
We all look at each other incredulously; it’s so slow, and the man was at the bar for several hours, so we know exactly which room he’s in. Our security guard goes up to the room. The man is right there, and at first denies having the woman’s purse until the guard points out that it is literally sitting in plain sight on the table. The man lets the guard take the bag, and the woman insists she doesn’t want to get anyone in trouble, but given that several people who witnessed the altercation state they don’t feel comfortable with the man still being in the hotel — including myself — the police are called.
I can’t say for sure what happened up at the room, as I can’t leave the desk per policy, but a bit later the man is escorted through the lobby in cuffs, and with a freshly torn shirt. The police urge the woman to press charges, as apparently, from what they saw in the room, “he had no intention of ever letting [her] leave,” but to my knowledge she never does.
So, the police are cleaning up that mess, my guard is taking statements to write up a report, and the excitement is over, right?
Wrong.
Suddenly, two women come barreling through the front doors, and upon seeing the officers, go straight to them. At first I think they are here to plead the case of the man who was arrested, but nope. They are actually in no way related to the earlier events. They had received some distressing texts from a friend and had been driving around all night trying to find her car somewhere. And wouldn’t you know it, it was in our parking lot.
Now, technically speaking, I am not allowed to give out room numbers without the guest’s express permission. But, having overheard the gist of the texts they are showing the police, and with the assurance that it will be the officers going to make the welfare check and not the women themselves, I make the decision to break with policy and give them the woman’s room number. And a good thing, too, because apparently she has pill bottles everywhere and is barely conscious on the bed.
She is wheeled out on a stretcher, but does make a full recovery.
And that’s the story of how I didn’t get to even touch my paperwork until three hours into what should have been a nice, quiet shift. To this day, if anyone starts to say, “This will be a nice slow night,” I tell them off for jinxing it.
