(I am working as a receptionist. One evening my colleague and I observe some unusual behaviour with three or four different gentlemen requesting a specific room number. That’s usually a good indication of having someone making “business” in your hotel. With the last gentleman:)

Gentleman: “Hello, I have a friend in room [same number as previous gentlemen].”

Me: “Certainly, sir, could you please tell me the guest’s name?”

Gentleman: “[Female Name].”

Me: “Thank you, sir, but unfortunately the name I have for that room is different. Would you be able to call that person to ask her to meet you here in the lobby?”

Gentleman: “Sure.”

(The gentleman calls the lady. They are talking on the phone and are three meters apart. I realise they are talking to someone they have never seen before; they soon realise and they go upstairs to her room. After about an hour the gentleman leaves and the lady asks me for a coffee. I serve her coffee and take payment.)

Me: “Madam, I’m sorry, but I need to talk to you in private.”

(I escort her to our office and close the door.)

Me: “Madam, I’m really sorry, but I have reason to believe you are making business in our hotel and we cannot allow it for obvious legal reasons.”

Lady: “Business? What business?”

Me: ”It can be either prostitution or drugs, madam, and we cannot allow it here.”

Lady: “Oh, no, no, no. I would never do anything like that! You are wrong; I’m just a normal guest meeting friends.”

Me: “Meeting friends you don’t even know how they look? A bit unusual.”

Lady: “…”

Me: “Madam, look. You have paid so you have the right to stay here. This is your life and I don’t judge you for your choices. However, if I see any more signs of activity I will be forced to ask you to leave the hotel.”

Lady: “Absolutely. I am not making any kind of business.”

(She goes up to her room. Five minutes later she calls reception:)

Lady: “Hi, we spoke a few minutes ago.”

Me: “Hello.”

Lady: “Can I please just have one last client coming up?”

Me: “No.”

Lady: “What if I give you £20?”

Me: “No.”

Lady: “Oh, okay.”

(The lady left the hotel a few minutes later.)

(While he was in high school my brother worked graveyard shifts for a rather shady motel. At the time a man had been going around robbing people at gunpoint, and had already killed a clerk who refused to hand over the money. My brother was unlucky enough to have that same man come in and rob him at gunpoint, and he was obviously terrified. He handed the guy the money and luckily wasn’t shot. Later, when the police and ambulance arrive, his boss finally comes down from his room in the motel.)

Boss: “You gave him all the money?! Even from the safe?!”

Brother: “Yeah, he said he’d shoot me otherwise.”

Boss: “That’s no excuse! These people never actually shoot anyone. You should have called their bluff. Now I need you to pay back the money he stole.”

Brother: “What?! I don’t have that kind of money!”

Boss: “Then I’ll keep all your paychecks until it’s paid for. Now finish out your shift. I don’t want to hear anything about you going home due to ‘emotional distress.’”

([Boss] then went back upstairs to his room and my brother finished his shift. My mother was furious when she found out, and stormed in to rip the boss a new one. Eventually the boss decided not to make my brother pay, offered him free psychological services, and gave him three days vacation time. My mom, being similarly generous, decided not to sue. My brother didn’t stay at the job long after that.)

In my former employer’s hotel, the front desk was built so that one couldn’t see the front door — which was glass — while seated.

One summer night, while the wait-staff in the restaurant were still counting their tips, I heard a “thump” against the door. I decided I ought to go check it out, and was puzzled to find nobody at the door. I stepped outside, and there wasn’t a soul in sight to any direction. I turned to go back inside, and noticed something just in my peripheral vision on the ground. Looking down, I discovered a piece of cooked pork roast, about two to three inches thick and six or seven inches across, and an accompanying greasy splat almost dead-center on the glass of the door.

Left to ponder this mystery while cleaning the door, I came to the conclusion that someone both highly accurate with thrown projectiles and highly dissatisfied with their meal had discarded the hunk of pork from a moving vehicle.

When I told this story to my friends later, we christened the incident, “The Drive-By Porking.”

(I am the night audit supervisor on a quiet night at a four-and-a-half star hotel when I get a call from one of the guests, a pilot with the British Royal Air Force.)

Me: “Good evening, front desk. How may I help you?”

Pilot: “Yeah, I want this girl out of my room.”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir? Did someone get into your room?”

Pilot: “She’s in the bathroom; I want her out.”

Me: “Is this woman a guest of yours?”

Pilot: “Well… Yeah, but she won’t come out!”

Me: *rolling my eyes, guessing what type of “woman” is in his bathroom* “Okay, sir, I can ask security to come by and help you to convince her to come out.”

Pilot: “Yeah, okay… but what about my money?”

(I hesitate, as my first instinct is that the guest is asking us to refund his room for the inconvenience, but he cuts me off before I can say a word.)

Pilot: “She’s got my money.”

Me: “The woman in the bathroom, sir?

Pilot: “Yeah, I want my money back.”

(I am smirking silently to myself for having confirmation of the type of “woman” who is in his bathroom. I have a bit of a discussion, back and forth, with the guest, explaining that while security might help convince the woman to come out of the bathroom and leave, he cannot force her to return the money. The pilot then decides to call the police and hangs up. I shake my head to myself, fully knowing what the cops will do. After a while, two police officers get to the hotel and I escort them to the pilot’s room. The female officer walks in very slowly, comes around the corner from the entrance, and sees the woman — who has come out of the bathroom in the meantime — in the corner of the room. She smiles, points to the woman and joyfully shouts out:)

Policewoman: “CINDY!”

(The pilot’s jaw must have been going at Mach-3 as it dropped to the floor from realizing that the cops, of course, would not force a prostitute to return money she got in an illegal transaction with a mark.)

(I work for a small tech company as an admin and HR assistant. My mom also works for the company, as the HR manager. Once a year, we hold yearly all-hands company meetings in a hotel in some nice location. This year’s meeting takes place in Las Vegas. We have a new employee, Olga, a woman in her mid-twenties who joined the company only a few weeks ago from a branch in Eastern Europe. All names are fake, fake, fake. The meeting goes well, Olga does her own short presentation very professionally, and everyone goes their own way in the evening. I have a quiet night in. The next morning, around nine am, I’m going to breakfast with my parents.)

Mom: “Did you hear what happened?”

Me: “No, what?”

Mom: “I got an email a couple of hours ago from [Another Employee], saying that Olga had an accident and had to be taken to a hospital.”

Me: “Oh, no! What happened?”

Mom: “I wasn’t given much detail, but the email said that she fell and hit her head early this morning. She was taken to an ER with a head injury, was admitted, and was there for hours. She seems to have amnesia.”

Me: “Oh, my God! How did that happen?”

Mom: “I’m not sure; they didn’t give any more detail than that.”

Me: *realizes something* “Wait a second. ‘Early this morning’? That sounds like she went to some bar last night, got completely drunk, and then fell because of that. ‘Early this morning’ probably means one or two am.”

Mom: “No! No way… Really? You think that’s what happened?”

Me: “Yeah, totally.”

Mom: “No. I mean, I’m sure they’d have said something if that was the case. Anyway, Olga seems like such a sensible girl; I’m sure she’s not the type to do that.”

Me: “Okay, sure. Whatever.”

(I really don’t like to make terrible assumptions about people, but I am just going by logic. If, at nine am, Mom got this email a couple hours ago, and it says that Olga’s already been in hospital for several hours at this point, and the accident happened “early this morning,” that means it was barely after midnight. And otherwise, in all likelihood, how could a young woman have “fallen” and gotten a head injury shortly after midnight, on a Friday night, in Las Vegas? Especially without anybody claiming they were mugged or anything like that. The odds of it being anything else but extreme drunkenness are just not high. Some time later:)

Mom: “Olga’s out of the hospital; thankfully the amnesia was only temporary and she seems fine now. The hospital bill was quite high, though, and since she’s a new employee and only recently came to the US, of course she had no insurance yet, so our company had to pay all of her medical bills. But everyone swore to me and [Company CEO] that the accident had absolutely nothing to do with alcohol. Poor Gary, though – he ended up having to accompany her to the hospital and sit there with her all night.”

(“Poor Gary” is one of our long-time and highest-salaried employees, a quite good-looking guy in his early to mid-thirties.)

Mom: “Yes, poor Gary; he’s so harassed. You know how Olga has managed to recently get herself transferred to our lucrative project in the Silicon Valley? Meanwhile, she’s living in San Francisco – where Gary also lives – and she’s making him teach her how to live there, drive her around, and help her with absolutely everything since there’s no one else from the company living there. Poor Gary’s already so busy with work, and Olga’s bothering him with all sorts of nonsense and making him essentially take care of her. I hope he’s not feeling too overburdened.”

(Then, at next year’s all-hands company meeting.)

Mom: “Do you know what I learned about Olga? They swore up and down to me last year that her injury had nothing to do with drinking, but I found out recently from other employees that they were lying their pants off! They went to some Vegas bar late at night, she got severely drunk, she was dancing, and she managed to fall and hit her head on some table or bar end! The company paid so much money for her hospital bills for that! Ugh! If I tell [Company CEO] about this he’ll be spitting mad! Can you believe this?”

Me: *barely managing to keep my face straight* “Really. I’m shocked.”

Mom: “Poor Gary, having to deal with her and all her nonsense…”

(Less than a year later, Poor Gary quit without notice, in the middle of managing an extremely important project for our company, to take a very lucrative management job with a huge Silicon Valley company. Less than a month after that, Olga also quit without notice, abandoning the project on which she was the lead programmer, to take a programmer job with a different Silicon Valley tech giant. This seriously messed up the projects for our company, and our CEO was absolutely furious that they abandoned ship in this way after being treated well, getting high salaries, having Olga’s medical bills paid with no question, and setting her up on a project where the client was paying for nearly all the cost of her food AND her San Francisco apartment’s rent, etc. Not too long after this, I did an Internet search on them out of curiosity, and one of the very first pages that popped up was Olga’s and Poor Gary’s upcoming wedding announcement site, gushing at length and in very saccharine terms about how happy and in love they were and had been ever since they met when Olga first moved to San Francisco. “Poor Gary,” indeed. Terribly harassed, I’m sure.)