(I am a housekeeping supervisor at a hotel, and I am manning the phones during the afternoon shift. The phone rings. It is my colleague from the front desk.)

Me: “Thank you for calling housekeeping. This is [My Name]; how may I assist you?”

Colleague: “[My Name]! I have a guest who just complained that his room wasn’t cleaned when he came back! Could you send someone up quickly?”

(I quickly check the records; the morning shift indicated that he had put the “Do Not Disturb” sign up, and left his room for the afternoon shift. I pick up another phone and dial the phone of the room attendant assigned.)

Me: “His room was on ‘Do Not Disturb,’ but it’s okay; I will send someone up now.”

(I get the room attendant and conveyed the message, as my colleague was speaking.)

Colleague: *sounding very shrill* “Why do you still sound so calm?! The man was furious! Shouldn’t you have some sense of urgency?”

Me: “I’m not the one running up to clean the room. But, if it makes you feel better, I can pant and speak in a breathy voice to you?”

Colleague: “…”

Me: “All right, I’ve gotten through to the room attendant. They are on that floor and are moving to said guest’s room now. I’ll update you once they are done. Goodbye.”

(I still don’t understand how moving quickly to get things done should translate to sounding like you’re running a race.)

(A disheveled man carrying what looks like a sleeping bag enters our hotel at two am, and I think that he is a homeless guy at first.)

Disheveled Man: “Checking in; what do you need?”

Me: “Name, please.”

(He gives me his name, and after looking, I see that he has made his reservation for tomorrow and I tell him so.)

Disheveled Man: “What do you mean? Today is [Date], right? I made my reservation for [Date]!”

Me: “Yes, today is technically [Date], but check-in time’s at three pm.”

Disheveled Man: “So?!”

Me: “Not… two am.”

Disheveled Man: *deer in headlights* “…” *blinks* “No! It’s [Date]!”

Me: “Three pm. In about 13 hours, your room’ll be ready. Right now… we’re all full.”

Disheveled Man: “All full?! Don’t you treat me like a fool! I used to be a doctor of surgery, understand?! I’m smart! I’m very smart!”

(He treated me to a rant about how smart he was, and how many patients he’d performed successfully on, before finally leaving in a huff. Seriously people, don’t be an idiot; check in at check-in time! Read the terms and conditions for once.)

(My friends and I have joined in on a tour of a hotel supposedly haunted by a little boy. The tour is being run by a group that has a few married couples. It’s decided that a group of females will go into the room where the little boy is supposed to be. There is one woman acting as lead.)

Leader: *addressing the ghost* “If you would like to make yourself known or even seen, we wish you no harm. We are all mothers here…” *even louder and with a b****y undertone* “…except for those who can’t actually have children.”

(I wonder why she would even toss that comment in. We wait about ten minutes with no action, so we move out into the pitch-black hall to get ready to move to the next part of the tour. A few minutes later, my friend hears a noise in another hallway off from where we are waiting. She quickly snaps a picture up the hall.)

Friend: “Oh, my God! Look at this!” *shows us a picture of two people embracing* “Um, isn’t that [Lead]’s husband and [Other Woman]? Are they having an affair?”

Me: “Wait a minute. It looks like she’s crying; he could simply be comforting her. I wondered who [Lead] aimed that comment at, about someone not being able to have babies.”

Friend: “Oh, she did say that, didn’t she? I thought I misheard her.”

Me: “I was standing next to her.”

Other Friend: “I must have missed that comment, but I did wonder why [Other Woman] got up and walked out of the room.”

(I’m a housing officer for the council, and part of my role includes checking bed and breakfast accommodation provided as a temporary measure to homeless families to make sure the hotels are up to standard. Normally, this is more a formality than anything, and the couple of hotels we use regularly all know me and let me get on with it. On this occasion, I go to reception and ask them to contact the people we have placed so I can then go and do the room checks; instead, the manager says he will take me up to each room and let me in if there is no answer. The first two rooms get checked with no problem. At the third, no one answers, so after knocking, the manager enters the room.)

Me: “Oh, it looks like there’s a leak in the bathroom; the carpet around the door is soaked!”

(We knock and then open the bathroom door. The toilet seat and lid is down, but water is clearly flowing down the outside of the toilet bowl onto the floor, and the floor is covered in a layer of water.)

Hotel Manager: *stepping into the puddle in his normal work shoes* “I’ll fix that!”

(He then proceeded to flush the already overflowing toilet without even opening the lid to see what might be causing the problem or what might come out. His look of consternation and slight panic as the flush predictably caused a small tidal wave to cross the floor and splash God knows what up his legs was the highlight of my day. Not sure we’ll be using them again!)

Apparently there is this couple that frequently meet up at the hotel for some ‘quality’ time together.  I had never seen them before, but after checking one of them out, Brandy mentioned to me how much she dislikes them.  Apparently they make-out in the parking lot for a lengthily period before finally coming into the hotel.  They’ve even done it in the lobby.  Apparently their time at the hotel is no secret, as the woman’s children have visited on at least one occasion.  She lives in Parksville and her boyfriend lives in Nanaimo.
Anyway, so two Tuesdays ago, I was alone on the front desk.  I had picked up the phone to take a reservation, and this woman appeared.  I put the call on hold and asked how I could help her.  She said that she had stayed in room 233 a few days ago and left behind a plastic bag.  Could I check to see if we had it?  First, I checked the lost and found book to see if anything was recorded.  There was something recorded for 223, but not 233, and it was NOT the kind of thing that I wanted to present to her if it was the wrong room.  I went back to the front and told her that I just wanted to confirm which room she was in.  Yup.  She was in room 223.  The “Grown-Up “Toys”” were hers.  I didn’t want to just hand them to her (again, very embarrassed), so I managed to find another plastic bag so that I could double bag it, making the contents more obscure.  I came around from the back, handed her the bag, and then apologised, as I really needed to get back to the folks on hold.
Sadly, she did not leave while I took the reservation. She opened the bag and checked out the contents and then lingered at the desk.  I finished up the call and then went back to her.

It is late, and I am working alone at the front desk of a family hotel. The phone rang just as a regular guest appeared in the lobby. She and her partner’s weekly rendezvous were notorious among the staff, as they often made out in the parking lot, lobby and elevator before getting to their room, and then usually soiled the linens very badly during their stay. I answered the phone and asked the caller to hold for a moment.

Me: “Good evening. How can I help you?”
Regular guest: “Hi. I stayed in room 223 a few days ago and left behind a plastic bag. Could you see if it was turned into the lost and found?”
Me: “Sure. I’ll just check in the back.”

I start by checking the lost and found log book to see if anything had been recorded as found. Sure enough, there was an entry for room 223 from day she stayed with “Grown-Up Toys” listed as the items found. Because of the nature of the items, I double checked the computer to ensure that she had been the last guest in the room before the items were found. Once that was confirmed, I fished around in the lost and found bin, found a plastic bag containing the items, double bagged it to make it somewhat more obscure, came back to the desk and handed her the bag.

Me (embarrassed): “Looks like the housekeepers found something in your room. Here you go. Sorry, but I really need to get back to the call on hold.”

I reconnected with the caller. The regular checked the contents of the bag and then lingered at the desk while I made a reservation for the caller. Once I was finished the call, I came back to the regular.

Me: “So, is everything all right?”
Regular guest: “This is really embarrassing… I’m so embarrassed, but… was anything else left behind?”
Me: “Uh… I can check, but I don’t think so.  Maybe if you could tell me what is missing…”
Regular guest: “This is so embarrassing.  I left behind our ‘naughty bag’.  There are two vibrators missing.  They’re work about $300.”

I double checked the log bin, the housekeeping sheets and went through the entire lost and found bin for the month. No additional sex toys were to be found. I came back up front.

Me: “Well, it doesn’t look like they were found in the room.  I can check with the housekeeper that turned in these items to see if she remembers anything else.  There is a slim possibility that if they were in a plastic shopping bag, they may have been thrown out, but I doubt it. The girls are extra careful. Let me get your phone number so we can call you if anything turns up.”

After she left, I called the housekeepers and the manager. I would have double checked the guest room, too, just in case the housekeepers had missed the items, but it had already been rented for the night. After a thorough investigation, the regular guest got in touch with our manager at which point she accused the housekeepers of STEALING HER USED SEX TOYS. I’m guessing she must have eventually found them in her own stuff because within a few weeks, she and her partner were back again. They kept coming several times a month until the man’s wife figured it out and demanded to know what room her husband was in, as she could plainly see his car in the lot. The front desk agent on duty wisely refused to disclose the information, but the man left very quickly after his wife did, and we never saw him at the hotel again. I later ran into the regulars on the ferry one day and was not surprised to hear that they had married!