These Days That Is Presidential Behavior

When you work at a hotel, one of the unfortunate skills you pick up — as long as you’re paying any attention — is how to spot people who are, more than likely, using illicit funds such as stolen credit cards.

We have one group check into two rooms and, after only a couple of days, they are showing very obvious signs: they keep extending their reservation day by day — you never know when the real card owner is going to twig to the issue, after all — spending exorbitant amounts of money at the bar and in the cafe, and tipping incredibly high amounts — still always put on room charges — in spite of wearing very ratty clothes and never appearing to go to work at any point in nearly a week at the hotel. 

They single themselves out further by being poorly-behaved guests on top of that: they have pets in the room that are clearly not house-trained, the housekeepers complain of the pet and smoke odor whenever they go to clean the room, and they are up at all hours and harass me — the night worker — to open the cafe so they can grab snacks, even if it’s only going to be twenty minutes until it’s officially open.

Finally, the biggest red flag pops up — they want to move into the Presidential suite. Not only is this also a hallmark of people burning through money that isn’t theirs, this is our most expensive room, and we only have two of them. They are frequently needed for VIPs coming in for several-thousand-dollar conferences and events. We absolutely cannot afford to have these people destroy one.

Thankfully, they ask me first, probably assuming that since I work my shift alone I won’t be privy to their antics. I lie and say that both Presidential suites are occupied, and in the morning I alert my manager and the morning shift to their new angle. Everyone agrees: these people cannot be in the Presidential.

Or at least, I think everyone agrees.

A couple of days later, I come in and get a call… from the Presidential… with this group’s name on the caller ID.

I have a coworker on the evening shift who is notorious for giving people whatever they want, whether it makes sense or not. We all complain about the messes he creates in his wake, but unfortunately, he’s incredibly popular with guests — because he gives them free things, duh — and he makes so much money off of the bonuses he gets from guests leaving him positive comments that any redirection falls on deaf ears, and nothing he does is quite egregious enough on its own to warrant a write-up.

He moved this group to the Presidential.

I tell my manager as soon as he comes in the next day and he’s floored. He had just had a conversation with my coworker that night about how sketchy these people were, so it wasn’t like he was unaware. I wish him luck and head home.

The next night, the group is gone. Apparently, my manager went to the GM, who heard these terrors were in our most expensive room and said, “HECK NO!” They were told very firmly to leave — though not before one of their cohorts got caught smoking crack in the parking lot, so that was fun, too. They had caused incredible damage to the rooms they’d been in for more than a week, including a broken window. We’re in tornado country. It’s hard to break those windows. They were charged for all of it, but who knows if we’ll actually get to keep it if it turns out it wasn’t their card, as we suspect.

Thankfully, the Presidential is only moderately trashed. My coworker has had a couple of days off since the shift where he reassigned them, but I doubt his return to work will be pleasant.