I work in a hotel, and tonight, gentle readers, we shall discuss guests who are incapable of accepting reality, logic, or even a simple “No”. So, regular guests, y’know?

The night in question is unfolding as many such nights have — uneventful for the most part, but with just a few nuisances to deal with. A recalcitrant air conditioner was threatened back to functionality. A cash-paying guest was upset we couldn’t break a hundred. A few mistakes were made by the New Guy. He’s eager, but there isn’t a lot going on upstairs.

I am finally sitting down to my now-room-temperature chow mein noodles when in walks a gentleman. There’s nothing definite, but he’s got a vibe to him that has my attention. He has a reservation, all very standard and nothing untoward, until we get to the part of the process where I ask him for ID and a credit card.

Guest: “Oh, it’s already paid for.”

I double-check.

Me: “Hmmm… Looks like it isn’t. They would have taken your card information for the reservation, but this isn’t paid for already.”

Guest: “Well, they charged me eighty bucks.”

I triple-check, firing up the OTA (Online Travel Agency) extranet portal. Nope, NOT a prepaid reservation. The guest grumbles but provides a card.

Me: “Thank you. I’ll just need some ID.”

And here is where things start to go south.

For the sake of brevity, I shall summarize the various excuses he gave for not giving me proper identification. Please note that he circled around between these miserable excuses for excuses, offering each one at LEAST three times each.

He rummages in his wallet and then produces a different credit card. This one’s cracked and split. Notably, it’s not one of those [Warehouse Membership Store] cards with a photo on it — though we wouldn’t take one of those, either.

Guest: “It’s got my name on it, right?”

Me: “That doesn’t make it a valid ID, sir.”

Then, he tries this:

Guest: “Yeah, my wallet got stolen with all my ID and stuff in it.”

Would that be the big fat wallet you’ve been pulling your cards out of, sir?

Then, he says:

Guest: “The website at [OTA #1] said you guys don’t take ID at check-in.”

While OTAs will freely promise any and all manner of things to make a sale, that’s not one of them. Plus, while one is owned by the other, he’s very clearly booked through [OTA #2].

Me: “Well, if they said that, then they were wrong. We do require ID, please.”

Next try:

Guest: “No, see, I stay at [Our Hotel Chain] all the time because they never ask for ID.”

Me: “That is… not a brand standard. Whatever experience you may have had elsewhere, we require photo ID at check-in.”

Finally, he relents and gives me… a photo of his driver’s license on his phone.

Guest: *Smugly* “There. That’s a photo ID.”

Gentle readers, what I wouldn’t have given to have had a picture of a hotel room handy right then.

He claims that his phone ID is okay because Colorado uses virtual ID now. This is correct — sort of. They have a no-contact phone app that can store your official ID/driver’s license. However, you’re still REQUIRED to carry the physical identification, ESPECIALLY when traveling to a state that doesn’t accept it. Also, he doesn’t even have the official app, just the aforementioned photo on his phone.

Me: “Why are you driving without a valid license?”

Guest: “I’m a cop.”

I will eat. My. Hat. If he’s a cop and is trying this hard to get around a lack of ID.

His final tactic is to threaten — nay, DEMAND — to cancel if he has to show physical ID.

Me: “Oh, okay, not a problem. I can do that for you.”

Guest: “Buh?”

Me: “There we go, all done. Canceled without penalty. Have a wonderful night.”

He was a bit taken aback but realized he’d gone and messed it up. He slunk off into the night.

Ahh, but our story does not end there!

As I settled in to eat my cold and sad noodles, I noticed something on the cameras. A woman was standing in front of one of the side doors, waiting impatiently with a small terrier. Aha, they were hoping to not have to pay the pet fee, in addition to very probably using a card that wasn’t his.

The two of them met up and had a considerable discussion. They were too far away for me to hear, but if my lip-reading is accurate, she called him a “complete dumba**” at least four times.

Without other options, the lady came in (without the dog) and asked for a walk-in room. She had no problem with providing a valid card and ID. She was a little taken aback when I provided her with the Pet Agreement form, but seeing my smile, she realized that the jig was up and signed it. There we go, five minutes total, all done, sleep well.

And with that, she headed to the side door to collect her Emotional Support Dumba** and her dog, and they headed up to the room.

Thus ended a rather prolonged ordeal that, again, was very likely an attempt at using a credit card that wasn’t theirs.

The tables at my wedding were decorated with candles in votive cups. When the party was over, my aunt grabbed the box and started placing all of the cups and candles into it.

Sounds nice, right? Well, this person was known for doing things like this and then walking out with what she had collected.

I waited until she had filled the box. Then, I swept over and took the box out of her arms, gushing:

Me: “Thanks so much for collecting these for me. It saved me so much time.”

My aunt left empty-handed.

Back in the mid-1990s, I worked in the warehouse for a company famous for its outdoor clothing and a trim level of a popular SUV.

For some reason lost to history, the designer of the building decided that the best place to install the main employee time clocks was directly beneath a forklift access gate to a mezzanine level. This gate allows the forklift to raise or lower pallets from this level, but doing so blocks access to the time clocks. Obviously, the forklift operators do their utmost to avoid using the gate when people are likely to use the clocks, but tardy employees happen, so the area is roped off while the forklifts move pallets.

A memo goes around the building one day after an incident involving an employee being “injured” by one of the forklifts using the gate. The lift operator had just lifted a pallet to the mezzanine when a tardy employee ducked under the rope and began to clock in. The lift operator could not see this, and as he moved slowly forward, the employee was gently brushed by the side of the forklift. 

She was uninjured but insisted on filling out a report on the incident. This resulted in an investigation and check of the security cameras, which revealed that she had, in fact, moved under the rope and violated safety protocols.

This level of infraction usually resulted in a written warning, but she was fired the next day. During the course of the investigation, a memo was sent to her immediate supervisor noting that “Jane Doe” was involved in the incident. The supervisor responded with a “Who the heck is this Jane Doe person? I don’t have a Jane Doe in my department.”

After a lot of scrambling around, it developed that “Jane Doe” may have been EMPLOYED, but she wasn’t WORKING. Every day, she would enter the building, clock in, and then leave. At the end of the shift, she would re-enter, clock out, and leave again. Nobody noticed because of the crowd of people at shift change going back and forth.

It further developed that a relative of “Jane Doe” in Human Resources had been actively deleting her name from personnel records along with two other people to hide their existence while they collected paychecks from NOT working. This scheme had apparently been going on for around thirty months at the time…

The final fallout was all four were terminated and criminally charged. If “Jane Doe” had not insisted on the incident report being made, they would likely have gotten away with their fraud for years further.

There was a dentist convention in town. I was working in a Michelin-starred restaurant, and these guys were well-off, so we got a lot of them through the door.

This couple came in looking a little “boisterous” but nothing to raise alarms. Then, they ate for four hours, and they took breaks, which constantly messed up the timing of the kitchen. This included a half-hour “cigarette” break — on phones, making out, [drugs], etc.

After four hours and three bottles of wine, they ordered another bottle of wine. We cut them off, and that’s when it got really fun.

The “gentleman” went to the restroom (to do more drugs again, based on the white stuff dripping out of his nose), and as he returned, he walked by two tables and made a jacking-off motion toward them while making obscene noises, yet still continuing toward his table.

The next thing the couple did was complain (lie) that everything wasn’t good, and even though they’d eaten everything and had been given good service, they refused to pay. We locked and blocked the door because the bill was $1,100. Eventually, we threatened to call the cops, so they paid, left no tip, and laughed their way out the door.

After calling my manager a “sleazeball” and telling him he “should be a used car salesman”, the a**clown dentist gave him a twenty-dollar bill and told him with a smile, “For your service.”

My manager wadded it up, threw it into the back of his head, and then shut and locked the door.

I used to deliver pizzas in the early 1990s. A convention was in town, and most of the attendees were staying at the local [Hotel Chain], across the street from the convention center. We got a call for thirty pizzas to be delivered to a suite of two rooms that had been merged into a single large room, near the top floor.

I got there with the thirty pizzas, grabbed an empty rolling luggage rack (to avoid making three trips up and down the elevator, thus risking the “thirty minutes or it’s free” guarantee), and got the entire order there with five minutes to spare.

I knocked on the door. I could hear laughter and screaming and music on the other side. No one answered. I knocked again, louder and longer. I could hear the music quiet down and whispering and giggling on the other side. Still no answer.

I knocked again, very hard, and kept knocking, for three minutes. Then, at ten seconds past the deadline, a man in his late forties yanked the door open with a triumphant laugh.

Customer: “YOU’RE LATE! THE PIZZAS ARE FREE!”

Me: *Without missing a beat* “The f*** I am. I’ve been here for five minutes. Don’t try that s*** on me. I heard you all in there, and I know you’ve been ignoring the knocking at the door. Pay up, or I’m calling the cops.”

He deflated like a shot-gunned balloon. I could hear shocked whispers and muttering inside the room, and then some teenagers started peeking over his shoulders and describing to the others what was happening.

The bill came to $199.97. He didn’t have the money ready; they had to start scrounging amongst themselves to pay the bill, indicating that they’d intended on ripping me off from the get-go.

They finally gave me $199.99 in loose change, singles, fives, and tens. I started counting it all out while they furiously stood there.

Customer: “Don’t you trust me?!” 

They then grabbed the cart of pizzas and slammed the door, and I could hear maniacal laughter explode again on the other side of the door. Two cents’ tip, after all that hassle. Guess they figured they’d shown ME. A**holes.