Well, She’s Sure No Precious Cinnamon Roll

I work in a hotel. I am covering the front desk while the front desk person finishes delivering lunch stuff. A lady comes in. The check-in goes fine, and as I’m handing her the keycard, she sees the front desk person bringing back the trolly with a couple of dirty dishes, etc.

On one of the plates is a cinnamon bun. The guest points to the bun.

Guest: “Can I have that bun?”

I’m alarmed that she’s about to take a bun off an obviously dirty plate.

Me: “Ma’am, that’s a dirty plate!”

Guest: “Yeah, but they didn’t touch the bun. It’s fine.”

Me: “I can’t let you, unfortunately.”

Guest: “Can I have a fresh one, then?”

Me: “That comes with the breakfast package, and you’ll get a fresh one tomorrow. They’re great.”

Guest: “Isn’t there another one I can have?”

Me: “We bring them in fresh each morning, one per guest, so we don’t have anymore, I’m afraid. But the cafe that bakes them is about twenty steps from here, and sometimes they’ll have stuff still available, but they’re often sold out because they’re so good!”

Guest: “You’re going to eat that bun as soon as I leave, aren’t you?”

Me: “I assure you, ma’am, I’m not.”

The guest leaves angry that I won’t let her eat a garbage cinnamon bun.

Fast forward to a couple of days later at checkout time. I get a call from the front desk as a customer wants to escalate a complaint about an employee. I head to the desk, and there is the cinnamon bun lady.

Me: “Hi, ma’am, I can speak with you over here.”

I direct her to speak with me in the waiting area.

Me: “I’m very sorry you’ve had a bad experience. Can you tell me more about it so I can make things right?”

Guest: “When I checked in, your employee wouldn’t let me have one of those free cinnamon buns and was very rude about it.”

I blink a couple of times and then it dawns on me; she has forgotten it was me. I don’t quite believe she doesn’t recognize me.

Me: “Can you tell me what they looked like?”

She describes the “rude employee” as having grey hair (yes!) and glasses (nope), being tall (the complete opposite), and not even being in uniform! (Management has a different dress code and I feel like that’s the norm?)

Guest: “How do I know that wasn’t someone just stealing my information?”

Me: “All right, I have their description. Did that person give you a working key card?”

Guest: “Yeah.”

Me: “They would have to enter a functioning staff number to program your card, so I can assure you that was an employee.”

Guest: “Well, do you know who that is?”

I still don’t this woman is being serious.

Me: “…yes.”

Guest: “Can you make sure she’s not allowed to be rude anymore? People won’t come back when you have staff like that. I’m going to leave a review and forward it to your boss.”

I still can’t quite believe she didn’t know it was me, but regardless, I can’t imagine getting this angry over me not letting you eat food off a stranger’s plate. Like… how are you not dead?

She emailed my boss her “review,” and was immediately clear that she was just extremely angry that I told her “no”.