Former Hotel Employee Answers All Your Weird Questions
Have you ever tried to take a towel from a fancy hotel? Have you ever wondered what went down in your hotel room just days before you checked in? In an “Ask Me Anything” thread on Reddit, one former hotel staffer, who had worked in the hotel industry for almost 10 years, let everyone on the internet ask him anything and everything they wanted to know about hotel life.
From the nastiest things he’s ever seen to the most bizarre item a customer left behind, this former hotel worker answered everyone’s interesting questions.
What has been your weirdest experience?
Honestly, after a while, nothing you see or hear feels weird. Off the top off my head, some of the weirdest things were:
A guy stabbing another man in front of the golf clubhouse.
Traveler weddings were probably the weirdest thing to witness.
Did you ever find dead bodies?
I found one dead body in the hotel I worked in, but he had a heart attack. There was another hotel nearby that had a high suicide rate in bedrooms.
How often did the hotel get bed bugs and how was it handled?
Bed bugs are very rare. It gets reported and then a special company is called in to test if there are bed bugs. I worked in fairly well-established hotels, so it was never really an issue.
Do hotels really care if you steal the towels?
No one really cares if you take the towels. If a hotel doesn’t have a laundry room, the towels are rented, so you are roughly stealing something worth less than a dollar. It all adds up, but these things are built into hotel room prices. It’s pretty impossible to prove if someone stole one or not, and I never came across someone who cared enough to investigate.
What are some trade secrets you can let us in on?
If you have an issue, the nicer you are, the more help you will receive.
You can easily negotiate the room rates.
If you have a food issue and there is nothing wrong with the dish, the person you complained to is going to get yelled at by the chef.
Most waiters and waitresses will probably automatically dislike you if you’re a vegan.
If you leave a negative online review somewhere, never list a worker’s name. Most people feel down when they read a negative review about themselves and hotels always read the negative reviews at management meetings.
What is the best way to get an upgrade?
You can either be super nice and say it is a special occasion, or be an absolute pain.
If someone who’s being a pain needs to be upgraded, I’d choose a room with either poor wifi or where something bad happened that week in the room, such as smoking in a non-smoking room or a room where the TV or phone is broken. (It’s worth it when the guest comes back down three to five floors really mad!)
Is there anything that guests think is really clean but rarely gets cleaned?
The dirtiest items are probably your dishes and cutlery and depending on the establishment — cups and glassware. If you want to figure out whether the staff pays close attention to detail, check the top of picture frames for dust.
This post was written by Ellie McDonald. For more, check out our sister site Now to Love.
More from FIRST
Why You Might Want to Avoid the Coffee Maker in Your Hotel Room
Here’s Why You Should Never Use a Hotel Hair Dryer
How to Avoid the Online Hotel Booking Scam That’s Been Stealing People’s Money for Years
