So basically, it’s common sense to most — not including the fact we tell people not to park there — that emergency parking is for emergency vehicles. Generally, people understand that if there is an emergency, first responders may need the best access and don’t need to try to maneuver around your car or vehicle while working.

Now since it is right in front of our lobby, we give some leeway to let people to get their stuff out and check-in before they need to move their car, we don’t mind if you take fifteen minutes to take care of things regarding getting situated or the like. If you leave it there, we usually call the room and as I said, most people understand and move the car.

No fuss no muss. Simple concept.

I walk into my shift seeing a white car parked in the emergency area. Nothing too out of the ordinary, and I walk to the front desk and as I take my place, the supervisor — who works the previous shift — informs me that the guest has parked his car there, checked-in, and hasn’t moved it in three hours.

We have already told him twice to move the car and he has brushed off the requests, after that we will tell him one last time and give him thirty minutes before we call the city’s towing service to come and pick up a car.

I sigh and call the room.

Me: “Sir, we need to see you at the front desk.”

Silence… then a low mumble of him agreeing. I wait for fifteen minutes handling a check-in or two before he shows up.

Me: “Hello, sir, are you from [room]?”

Guest: *Already irritated.* “Yeah, what’s this about?”

Me: “Well, sir, I am sure you’ve already been informed that your car is in our emergency parking area and need to be moved.”

Guest: “Why do I need to move my car?!”

Me: “Um… it’s our emergency parking area, sir. Only emergency vehicles are allowed to park there.”

Guest: “It’s not like there is an emergency going out right now!”

Me: “That doesn’t really matter whether or not there is an emergency or not at the moment. It isn’t a parking space that is predicated on time or whether or not there is an emergency. That area needs to stay clear in case an emergency happens.”

He sneers and crosses his arms.

Guest: “So what are you going to do about it if I don’t move my car? Huh?”

I frown but he should know the consequences.

Me: “I’ll call The City to tow your car.”

Guest: “You’re not gonna tow my car!”

He laughs, already walking away. I level a flat look at him walking away. I do wait the customary thirty minutes that I told him I would wait to see if he would heed my advice and he doesn’t come back. 

A small call and interaction with the tow truck driver later and our emergency parking area is clear once again.

When he returns — three hours later — he looks around in the lot in confusion before realization dawns on his face and he storms back in, scowling and ready to deck me.

Guest: “What did you do?!”

I look him straight in the eye.

Me: “I had your car towed.”

Guest: “Why?!”

Me: “Because you were parked… in… the… emergency area!”

I am handling a guest’s check-in. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I think he is a bit forceful and intimidating when he speaks to me.

Guest: “I want a late checkout, around 1 PM.”

Me: “We can accommodate that, but as you’ve booked a prepaid non-refundable reservation through a third party, I’ll have to make a new reservation for your late checkout. As per our policy, you’ll have to pay for half a day.”

Third parties suck. I explain why a new reservation would be necessary if he wanted a 1 PM checkout. I also charge half of the third party’s rate; it has to be the hotel’s rate. He is super understanding and polite about it and thanks me for my help.

I note the 1 PM checkout in three different places. I write it in my recap email (which goes to both my managers and the next front desk agent coming in, so we can all stay updated on what’s going on), in the notes within his reservation, and in housekeeping’s notes so they’ll know he’ll be there until 1 PM. 

He asks me for a corkscrew that night. Not a strange request at all. I actually bought a corkscrew for the hotel because they only had a bottle opener, so I give it to him to use. He never returns it.

The next afternoon he storms into the lobby after getting a courtesy call from the front desk around 1:30 PM regarding his late checkout and how payment would be for a full night if he didn’t check out by 2 PM. 

He reeks of alcohol and starts yelling at the front desk assistant.

Guest: “I was told that I could stay until 8 PM for a half day’s price!”

Coworker: “Uh, no, I’m certain we didn’t say that.”

Guest: “The guy who was here last night told me I could stay until 8 PM. And then he said that the manager told him it was okay over the phone.”

My coworker holds steady and doesn’t humor his lies. And when someone won’t believe your lies, what’s left for a grown-a** man to do but start screaming and making threats? So that’s exactly what he does.

He insults my coworker, sits down at the high-top table in the lobby and just stares at her maliciously, and then gets back up to scream some more. He demands to see the manager, so my coworker called her and she said they’ll be here as soon as possible.

More screaming. More insults. More threats.

Coworker: “Sir, you need to leave.”

Guest: “I’ll figure out where you live and what your full name is so I can get back at you! If you try to throw me out of here, I’ll call the cops!”

Coworker: “Good idea, let’s call the cops!”

And she does. My manager arrives and tells this guy he needs to get his stuff and get out. Of course, he refuses and wants a full refund. Nope.

The police get here, and he slips out the side door to try and get in his car. The police stop him and tell him he can’t drive while he is so drunk, and that his wife needs to drive and he would just have to come back and get his car when he is sober. Most importantly, they tell him he’ll be arrested if he comes back inside to start his s*** again.

He finally leaves, but apparently, while he was pouting while we were waiting for the police to get there, he made another prepaid non-refundable reservation through a third party, most likely as an attempt to prevent us from throwing him out.

Well, later that night I got a call from a third-party customer service representative saying that she, “had a client on the phone who says he was forced to leave the hotel for no reason and was denied a refund.” She asked if I could explain, and I did. I told her that he’d been removed by the police after drunkenly threatening the staff.

Third-Party Rep: “Well can you at least cancel and refund his reservation for tonight?”

Me: “Uh, no, I’m not authorized to cancel any prepaid non-refundable reservations.”

What part of “non-refundable” does she not understand?

Third-Party Rep: “So you’re refusing to give my client a refund?”

Me: “No ma’am, I’m saying I can’t cancel third-party reservations.”

Third-Party Rep: “I’ll tell my client that you’re refusing a refund then. Can I have your name for the record?”

Imagine the sheer audacity it takes to, after making threats and being evicted by the police, go crying to the online travel agent and asking for a refund because he was unfairly denied a room!

No, sir, you can’t stay until 8 PM without paying for it. Seems a logical conclusion to make, but with people like them, logic doesn’t enter into the equation.

CONTENT WARNING: Death

A worker from a company who stays at our hotel comes down. He wants a key card to check his friend who didn’t show up to work today, won’t answer calls, and won’t answer the door. My manager on the phone tells me to bring the key card myself and come with. It’s late. I’m twenty-one and the only worker there.

I knock on the door a few times, yelling. After a minute, I open the door. Sadly, the guest has passed in the night.

I call my manager and coworkers, then the cops, who get there and confirm the situation. As the expired guest is rather large, they also call firefighters. EMTs and the coroner are also summoned.

I’m not asked much. They mainly talk to my manager and the guy’s friend. The police are there for hours, taking evidence. It takes six people a long time to get down the stairs. The guest has a dog in the room with him. Since the owner is dead, animal control shows up.  

Another guest comes up to me with a sneer on her face.

Guest: “Why is animal control here? Did someone hurt a poor dog?”

I’m not supposed to say anything.

Me: “I don’t know, ma’am.”

Guest: *Getting mad.* “I have a right to know by staying in this hotel! It’s public information!”

Me: “I really can’t say, ma’am.”

Guest: “Give me your name so I can report you to your manager and then your manager’s manager! This is the worst I’ve ever been treated at a hotel.”

She then goes over to bother cops and animal control herself and then storms back.

Guest: “Animal control told me more than you out of the kindness of their hearts.”

She finds my manager and somehow p***es her off so much that my manager says:

Manager: “I will give you your money back if you leave the hotel right now.”

The guest agrees. I process the refund and give her the receipt.

Guest: “How am I supposed to know I’ll get my money back?”

Me: “It says on the receipt.”

Guest: “That proves nothing! I want to know when your owner will be here next!”

Me: “He’s out of town for the next few days.”

She keeps demanding, so I have to drag my manager away from the grieving man and police to deal with her. She writes all our names down to report us to “the regional manager” and walks out scoffing, howling about how rude we all are.

I watch six people carry the body down the stairs in a bag and wonder how some people can be so entitled.

Last year, I got a job in a huge hotel, and I had the best hotel manager I’ve ever had!

After a few months, she had to resign due to moving to a different city with her family. She started training this new guy to take over. He was very closed-minded, and they clashed when trying to do the handover as he wasn’t really taking in any of what she said.

Maybe a month later, [New Manager] decided to demote me from Front Office Manager and hire a random person to do my job. (I then had to train the new guy, which didn’t make sense, and he never had any hotel experience.)

Another month later, I started getting pulled up by [New Front Office Manager] to talk about the way I was treating guests.

New Front Office Manager: “You’re being too friendly, and it’s creating an unrealistic expectation of how guests will be treated by staff.”

BRO, WHAT?! It honestly was unbelievable.

One example he gave was helping a guest take their luggage to their room. That’s A VERY NORMAL HOTEL THING, but I “wasn’t allowed”.

He started being more and more rude to me over a couple of months, even being degrading in front of hotel guests and residents. (I actually had a few come up to me and advise me that the way he was treating me wasn’t acceptable.) He yelled at me for STILL being too helpful, and he even started getting into arguments with the residents and guests. He brought me to tears a couple of times.

I started keeping note of all the ridiculous things he was doing and started looking for a new job.

I finally found a new job, put my two weeks’ notice in, and started asking for help to put together a letter to send to Human Resources so they could hopefully do something.

Once I left, I finalised the letter and sent it to HR and the CEO. This is what I sent them:

Letter: “Hi there. I just wanted to reach out and just advise of the experiences I had at [Hotel]. I’ve never sent an email like this, so I’m unsure of how to word it.

“I understand that things change within businesses, but I just don’t agree with the way [Hotel] is currently being managed.

“There is zero regard for guests. I have been told that I’m being too friendly and helpful to our guests, which I really don’t understand. I’ve been commended for my customer service skills, and I love making sure the guests have a good experience and remember [Hotel] as a nice, friendly place to stay. But I’ve basically been asked to throw my customer service in the bin. Helping people with enquiries is now just seen as a waste of time.

“I also feel like I’m walking on thin ice whenever I’m working. Some days my Front Office Manager will be in a ‘bad mood’ and raise his voice at me multiple times, to the point that he’s brought me to tears.

“As an example, I was training [Coworker] and needed to go to the bathroom, and [Front Office Manager] wasn’t in the office, so I put the ‘Back in five minutes’ sign up and gave [Coworker] my number to text if anything happened. When I returned from the bathroom, [Front Office Manager] was in the office and asked me to ‘come have a chat’. Then, he proceeded to tell me I should have ‘peed my pants’ if I had to and that I should’ve waited for him to return or called him to advise.

“There are many, many similar situations that have occurred during my time, and looking back, I wish I had kept a journal and made note of every time I and other staff were treated poorly by management.

“Over the past few months, I have personally had residents and guests come to me and advise me that the way management speaks to people (including me) is unacceptable, and I feel helpless in the situation.

“I have decided to move on from [Hotel] for my mental well-being. I really hope this email does not get disregarded. I really enjoyed working at/with [Hotel], and I made friends with owners, residents, and other staff, so it does hurt to leave, but I feel that this is bullying and it needs to be addressed.”

I signed it off with my contact information for any further details they needed.

I didn’t hear anything back for a while until I heard from a friend that worked in another location of the same hotel brand that both the new front office manager and [New Manager] resigned a couple of weeks after I sent my letter. I considered that a win!

I live and work in Hawaii. I am approached by a tourist at my hotel’s help desk.

Guest: “How can I mail a letter to the United States?”

Me: “We’re in the United States, so any regular postage will be fine for a standard letter under an ounce. Hand it to me and I can mail it for you.”

Guest: “No, you don’t understand. I need to send this to Maryland. That’s in America!”

Me: “Yes, I know. It’s one of the states of the United States, just like Hawaii.”

Guest: “Oh, bless your heart. You’re just not getting it. How… do I send this letter… to—”

Me: *Interrupting* “Sir, actually, for just the cost of a local Hawaiian stamp, I will make sure that gets to Maryland for you. Just one of the amazing services we’re happy to offer our guests from the United States at [Hotel].”

Guest: “Oh… well, that’s customer service!”

Islanders know how to choose their battles.