“What In The World…” Hotel Workers Expose Their Weirdest Experiences At Work

We have all traveled and it is very likely that during our travels, we have stayed at a hotel or a lodge. The normal courtesy is to have an enjoyable stay and leave things in a decent state, but that is only a courtesy reserved for the polite.

Read these 40+ stories of the other half who decided that etiquette and manners are optional and that they can choose a path least traveled. These disturbing, and wild stories of things that hotel workers have seen experienced, and noticed in their line of work will shock you- that’s a guarantee.

1. The Messy Family

It was a family retreat/kids' birthday party. 

The adults were getting wasted while the kids were in the presidential suite raising hell.

They had decided to have a fully stocked ice cream bar and allowed the kids to do what they wanted with it. M&Ms crushed into the carpet, chocolate footprints on the walls, and whipped cream everywhere.

Fruit punch was even spilled on the bed. In total, we had to charge them about $7k in damages, which they took to court because they thought "The Cleanup would be included, that's why we did it at a hotel!"

Oh and just as a bonus, they also smashed glass all over our dog hiking trail, which I had to clean up. What kind of family does that?

TheWastelandWizard

People left a bear in the room. First, you gotta understand that a lot needs to happen for this to occur. Our lowest floor was still about a meter and a half from the ground, and each outside room had a balcony rail.

However, a guest had decided to want to unload his motorcycle from his truck and leave the ramp down, so (I’m assuming) he could ride the bike up when he was done.

The guest that was staying in the room had room service, decided to leave the food uncovered and the balcony doors open, and later went to the hotel pool/spa to relax.

Upon returning, they had gone to us at reception and said that there was a bear in the room. Puzzled, we quietly approached the room and slowly opened the door.

Lo and behold, there was a bear eating room service and making a mess of my afternoon. We called Parks Canada to deal with it and the guest was not charged a cleaning fee.

little_asian_man_89

A woman with mysophobia, which is a fear of germs, stayed with us at our hotel. She never let the cleaning ladies into the room as she preferred to clean it herself.

One day she leaves to go out and removes the do disturb sign. 

The maid took that as a chance to go clean up the room and make sure everything was okay.

That was when she called down and said the room has a strong chemical odor and that she found bags of pee and poop in the drawers.

MentalBrutality

Three guys in one room left ALL of their windows open and lights on overnight in the summer. I had never seen so many different types of bugs flying around the room, it was terrifying.

We ran in spraying bug killer like our lives depended on it, then ran out and left the room for an hour. We came back to a floor that was almost black with dead bugs. I can still hear the crunching.

scarlett_pimpernel

The other time, I was balancing month-end books when the front was swarmed with police cars. They raided a room with no notice to us at the front desk.

Turned out a guy was making illegal substances in one of the rooms with two “ladies of the night” and a dog. 

There was a short standoff before everyone was arrested.

Their car was seemingly forgotten about in the parking lot, but it disappeared a week later. We were unable to charge for damages since all of their cards were stolen.

TheOriginalSefina

I worked security for a while at a really large hotel. Two stand out in my mind. The first was a guest who went out by ambulance because of some "allergic reaction" (what the guest claimed at least).

When we checked the room he left it was full of diarrhea. The smell was horrible, I have never smelled crap like that and hope to never again.

The second wasn't something left but an assistance call. An elderly man was unresponsive when we got there. We used a defibrillator on him till the ambulance arrived and he actually survived.

He came back to the hotel some months later to thank us, it was great. Most of those calls didn't end well so having one who survived and came back to say hey was nice.

-Velvet-Elvis-

Pizza was left, and not just like leftovers but an entire pizza. And not a single slice of it was in the box. The first red flag we found was the slice of pizza smeared all over on the TV.

Then we saw two slices side by side like they had worn them for slippers and dragged their feet across the floor. One slice in the dresser, one in the nightstand, one in the sheets, and one in the bathroom sink.

We cleaned the room as normal and put all the pizza in the box. The whole time I'm wondering why someone would do this, was the pizza not good? Was one slice enough and you had to buy the whole thing?

I'm doing the final checks in the room and it still smells like pizza. I flick the lamp on and look for the final slice. I finally find it, shadowed in the lampshade.

This individual had smeared the last slice on the inside of the lampshade. That was the final piece of the puzzle (or pizzazule). This person bought an entire pizza just to hide it in his hotel room.

aNathan113

25 years ago I worked at a snooty part of a snooty ski resort in Park City, Utah. Most of the regular guests were just typical old rich white dudes, but during Sundance season though, the celebrities come out.

There is a certain musician, entertaining us for decades now, who has a disgusting hobby. Or did, in the early 90s at least.

Next time you're cutting Footloose, or getting close to the Danger Zone, just know that Kenny Loggins gives his entire family coffee-ground enemas, which leaves a giant mess, and leaves it for the hotel staff to clean up. Twice in one stay.

REO_Jerkwagon

It was a hallway. I worked the front desk. A little league baseball team was staying the night and a guest complained to my manager about bats flying around.

My manager assumed the baseball team was just being rowdy and headed up to tell them to calm down. 

Noise complaints were not unusual given that it was a hotel.

So here’s the surprise, it turns out it wasn't baseball bats at all... Just a normal ol' flying bat hanging out in the hallway.

[deleted]

Found a syringe under a mattress, AFTER I felt a prick on the end of my finger. I was tucking in a sheet under the bed, and there were actually two uncovered "insulin" needles under there.

I got rushed to the hospital for hepatitis shots and a tetanus shot. I also got two different HIV prevention medications for a month, and monthly blood tests for about a year.

I'm fine, and it barely stuck me in truth, but I was already afraid of needles and disease I still feel traumatized.

I was not going to post at all, but I've always wondered if there was anything else I should have done. The doctors assured me that these were more precautions than necessary.

dan_fortesque

I had a small family of regulars for about 4 years and always had to open a door to air out the part of the restaurant they sat in after they left.

Then upon their last visit, we come to discover “mom” smeared her feces ALL OVER THE STALL. We understand when people of lower or tragic and likely embarrassing loss of faculties just can’t “get there”.

It is, however, difficult to forgive the crap-smearing folk, despite my wanting to be kind to all of earth’s creatures, please don’t leave your fecal-crazy relative unattended in my VERY public bathroom.

StonerStepDad

This experience was the worst to clean up, not because it was gross, but because it was annoying and time-consuming. The mess was made up of popcorn.

A baseball team stayed in a couple of rooms and I guess they had those like caramel popcorn balls? That they had just thrown all over the room.

It was all over the walls, and furniture. It was even stuck to the carpet and was almost impossible to vacuum. Like I said, it was a mess.

slpofrsn

My ex-wife projectile vomited all over a room at the La Quinta in Somerville after way too many SoCo’s at the Rattlesnake. I cannot drive 93 Northbound out of Boston without some degree of shame.

Sorry, La Quinta workers. I did the best I could, but there was only so much that could be done. Also, this is one of the many reasons she is now my ex-wife.

[deleted]

They left empty boxes of fried chicken and the bones laying all over the floor between beds, powder on the dresser, and a lamp thrown through the glass door dividing two rooms of a suite once.

Dirty diapers and birthday cake were smashed into the walls. People get really crappy when you have to kick them out for trying to have a party.

I think the only one that tops that was a guest's corpse (full disclosure - I wasn't the one who found that). 

The guy downed a fifth of wild turkey and a bottle of something else.

Never found out why. For those with dark humor though, we Googled him afterward and found out he owned a funeral home.

My manager asked me why he would bother to do it in the hotel considering that (I was the one who found out about that) and my first response was ” You NEVER mix your business with pleasure".

skekVex

I was road-tripping alone and decided to support the local economy of this small town I was stopping in and staying in a small family-owned motel instead of a chain.

It was infested with bedbugs. Obvious... the next morning, that is. (I arrived late at night and went straight to bed.)

The worst thing was that I was moving myself out to college and had all my worldly possessions in the car with me. 

ALL of my clothing, ALL of my bedding, the few pieces of furniture I was bringing...

Fortunately, isolating everything that had been in that room in trash bags, and buying bedbug spray immediately prevented it from infesting everything I owned. But all the time I spent anticipating the worst got me hugely stressed out.

Ink-Flamingo

My girlfriend worked the front desk at a hotel that was connected to a hospital, so they frequently had visiting outpatients staying there. One day a lady came down and was clearly disoriented.

She ripped out her tracheotomy in the lobby. They rushed her over to the hospital, got her fixed up, sent her back to her room.... and then she came downstairs and did it again. One of the worst shifts she ever had.

[deleted]

Not a cleaner, but a hotel user. My family and I once walked into a hotel room only to find it in complete disrepair. The toilet was beginning to overflow, the fridge was not plugged in, and had some sort of fruit or something in it.

The bed was unmade and smelly. It didn't even have a closet. The worst thing to come to after a 5-hour drive with the family. The pool was immaculate, I slept there instead. It was a good day.

I-Only-Eat-Poop

This leans more toward weird than bad, but I forgot that a guest decided to extend his stay and so when a maid went to clean his room she called me up saying she wasn't able to get into the room. I went up and unlocked it for her.

Upon opening the door we peered into the room and she immediately yelled and hollered about how she wasn't going to step inside that room and quickly just left the scene.

The guest, a sweet and somewhat nerdy 20's something computer programmer had what I can only describe as an immense amount of voodoo items in this room including this strange statue of a raven, a large tome, candles, and other items.

Felt bad for invading his privacy when I realized he had asked to extend his stay. His door always had the "Do not disturb" sign on it and I had just assumed he forgot to remove it before leaving as many guests do.

WoodBog

The homeless man came into some money somehow, we never quite figured out how, but either way, he stayed in the same room for about 2 months.

Eventually, we convinced him that he needed to go elsewhere as we had a big conference or something like that, that was going to fill the whole hotel.

I was a bellman and the hotel had a courtesy shuttle for the guests. I was instructed to give him a ride to the new hotel he would be staying at.

I helped him get the remaining stuff from his room and the moment I entered, I knew the room would be out of service for a while.

 There was trash everywhere, the bathtub was used as a waste bin, the were dirty stained towels pouring out of the closet, and he had stripped the bed a put his sleeping bag on the mattress.

The worst part was the smell. Even though he had been staying there for at least 2 months by this point, I am 99% sure he never once used the shower. It was the strangest, most disgusting thing I had ever seen.

The room was out for almost 2 weeks while it went through a deep clean, but it still had that smell for the rest of the year and a half that I worked there.

Neoscarian

Used to work in the laundry, one day my housekeeper friends came and got me to look in a room - everyone else had already come and had a peek. Someone had a lime jello bath in the jacuzzi tub.

They had to get it professionally cleaned and taken apart because it was inside the jets and even then I think they had to completely replace it but I wasn't working there by then.

imminent_riot

The worst ever one I can remember is when there was a Christmas party or wedding or something going on where people got extremely drunk and one particular gentleman, upon checking out said he had a lovely stay and left fairly quickly without any free breakfast or anything.

Now when the housekeeping went in they were met with the most god-awful smell, I think someone described it as the smell of sewers mixed with the smell of the bin lorry on a high summer day, but could not find the source.

That is until they whipped off the duvet to be faced with the bed absolutely covered in diarrhea. 

When I say covered I mean covered and the man tried to hide it with a duvet cover!

It was so bad it had leaked through the sheets, mattress protectors, and most of the way through the mattress, it was sickening.

This lovely gentleman thought he could get away with that without a word but luckily we take contact details and a credit card on check-in! Let’s just say it was a bloody awkward phone call I had to make!

peafowl_vomer

I used to work at Club Med, and every year this Japanese guy would show up. He was covered from neck to toe in dragon tattoos and looked like he would snap your neck if you looked at him sideways.

He would put on a bright pink wig, a pink singlet, and a denim skirt, then he would head off to the golf course to play a few rounds dressed like that. I avoided his gaze like it was the freaking death star.

Anne_Uumellmahaye

My roommate works the front desk at a big hotel. One night a guy comes back to the hotel, drunk, at 9 pm. Around the elevators is a large mirror. He immediately stares at it then kicks the thing with a running start and shatters it.

When we asked him what that was about he saw it in a movie once and wanted to try it. The mirror costs $2,000 to replace. He wasn't even upset. He just said, "Don't tell my wife."

paisleyplaid

I used to do housekeeping, and now I work the front desk. The strangest room I've walked into was a room completely covered in feathers.

Like those cheap colorful ones that you get for arts n’ crafts. There were so many feathers you could barely see the floor.

Another time when I was cleaning what was an elderly couple's room I found an adult mag secretly stashed underneath the mattress. I just left it there but I was pretty grossed out at the time lol.

thrillapino

While working at a four-diamond hotel, there was a guest who had a suite with a jacuzzi tub where he had placed all of his belongings in the tub and proceeded to use the tub as a toilet for a few days.

I should mention that his belongings were all VERY nice items including multiple designer bags and suits.   

The hotel was eventually contacted by his family who let us know that he had gone MIA after refusing to take his antipsychotic medication.

They came and picked him up and forced him to check out but never returned for his poopy belongings. They remained in the tub.

fluffyshorts

Something I can unfortunately contribute to. I used to be a housekeeping manager at the Most Magical Place on Earth, and we used to host the global cheer competition, UCA.

There were two tiers of competition, collegiate and then high school. The collegiate cheer teams were purely athletes. Up at seven in the morning to stretch and practice for like, ten hours. Crazy dedication.

The high school cheer teams are... High school cheer teams. They were some of the least considerate guests we had and would leave horrendous messes all over the rooms.

Think... Multiple bags of chips were blown open all over our carpet and linens. Melted gummy bears on the furniture. A mess.

I had a housekeeper tell me that a room had a horrible smell, but she couldn't find it. I walk in, and she's right. It smells like rotten beef. I look and can't find anything.

We then realize it is coming from the mattresses. We pull the linens off and find... Nothing. Then she suggested we pick up the mattress. Underneath was a mostly empty bag of peppered beef jerky, filled to the brim with used, diapers.

They were swollen and had stained our mattress. It was one of the most disgusting things I've ever inhaled. Hotels are hell. People are gross.

Escafablio

There was an untraceable odor in the room that wouldn't stop smelling horrible after we cleaned and searched everything.

I'm pretty sure the dude hadn't bathed in a while and must have sweated all night in high temp with the sweat going down into the bed making the stink linger.

It was disgusting, had to take breaths through an open window and then put a sheet. Take a breath then do the pillows etc. We brought in a machine but there was still a lingering smell for a couple of days.

DeathScytheExia

Our hotel allowed dogs. All you had to do is say we have a dog and we would be like that's fine, we have a whole floor reserved for people traveling with pets, here is your key.

So this family came, refused housekeeping service for a couple of days, and then checked out. I get a call from housekeeping asking me to document something. So I go up there.

They had a dog in the room that they were hiding. They didn't want to take it out of the room so they had it climb on top of the AC unit and crap into the vents.

The entire unit is just full of dog crap. 

The maintenance guy is freaking out, no way I'm cleaning that we need a new unit.

I'm standing there taking pictures and the carpet feels squishy because they also had the dog pee in the space between the AC unit and the bed.

They slept in that room for three nights. Two adults, three children, I'm guessing a large healthy dog, and an AC unit full of crap. Freaking people.

blackbellamy

One of my best friends' younger brother (around 18-19 at the time) was staying in a hotel with some friends and his family. He was out drinking with his friends and got pretty drunk.

Wakes up vaguely remembering throwing a fire extinguisher. As he's walking down the hall with his dad he starts noticing that none of the boxes on the wall has any extinguisher.

Then he notices the same on the first floor. He then remembers that he had thrown a bunch of them off the 8th-story balcony and watched them explode. He ended up confessing and his dad had to pay to replace them all.

Childish_Brandino

Working the front desk during the night shift, had to stay a little longer to give a hand moving something from the archives.

I was called in by the girls from the housekeeping calling me to see something. There was a decapitated deer head in one of the bathtubs...

We learned later that our guest went hunting and he thought it was a good idea to chop up his big game in the bathroom. What a guest.

SunburnSeb

I worked at a certain Inn over a decade ago at the front desk. One day a cleaning lady comes up to me crying and says she quits.

English is not her first language and I wasn’t understanding her. She takes me to a room, opens the door, and it's completely covered in Vaseline - floor to ceiling.

Dozens of empty jars littered on the floor. I turned right around and called the manager who then called in a professional cleaning crew.

mestupsh0w0ff

My first job was as a waiter in a hotel. One day, on the breakfast shift my duty manager came up to me and told me we had to remove a bed.

Apparently, someone had drunk too much and defecated all over the bed in their sleep.   

They then decided to flip the crap-soaked mattress in the morning.

As if that wasn’t enough, they then sprayed a whole bottle of perfume to try and hide their dirty incident selves. I was shocked.

aimstylez

My aunt worked at this super-high-end vacation rental company in Big Sky, Montana that apparently a lot of celebrities would use. One of her jobs was to help prepare the houses for the guests.

Once, this celebrity came to stay at one for his birthday. He had a long list of stuff he wanted in the house, including specific snacks and drinks, certain colors of towels, like 24 black Sharpies, and 2 boxes of protection.

She said that he and his friends trashed the place and were put on the “not allowed to rent from there in the future” list. But she got to take home the fancy bottles of wine that they never opened.

dapperpony

I've got about a thousand or so stories, but the worst one is quite simple in its disgusting originality. The guests fried fish, and then smeared the leftover olive oil from the pan all over the kitchen walls.

They had reserved two rooms, no. 16 and no. 32, and were shocked to discover the rooms were at different buildings/floors. 

They demanded to stay in adjacent rooms but everything else was already booked.

Faced with that they then decided to "cook something, sleep a little bit and leave", which we were fine with considering they had traveled a thousand kilometers non-stop to reach us. It took me weeks to make the smell go away.

katseassavvas

Worked front desk for 5 years. We had government contractors come in for months at a time, several times a year. We got to know them very well.

They would bring gifts upon arrival and we’d hook them up with perks for free. They'd even cook in their room or rec floor and feed us.

Just another day, usual daily housekeeping service going on, suddenly I see the housekeeping manager and front desk manager panic-walking to the front entrance with a hysterical housekeeper.

That housekeeper found one of our familiar guests had accidentally drowned himself in his water-filled bathtub after a hard night out.

Hawaiian_Cunt_Seal

Wasn't so much after they left, but had some guests get into a loud argument in the hall and out to the parking lot. It got so heated that another guest called the cops.

Turns out the guy had a warrant out for his arrest so when he saw the squad cars he bolted it back into the room, dove through the window to get back outside, to then be immediately taken down and arrested out front.

The cops then had to close off that room for about a week because they found thousands of dollars in cash, loads of substances and needles and other substance-related stuff, and a LOADED SHOTGUN all stuffed into the mattresses.

It was the scariest freaking week I've had since I started working here. Thankfully I was at home when the initial incident happened. Somehow on the night shift, I avoid all the crazy crap that happens here.

_Kogami_

Another one of those, “not a hotel worker” comments but… I stayed at this resort in Myrtle Beach once. I was sitting on the bed and had dropped a pen that I didn’t immediately see lying on the floor.

I assumed it may have fallen under the bed. Without looking, I decided to run my hand under the side of the bed from a seated position. BIG mistake.

I brushed against something cold and slimy like what the heck? I picked it up and to my horror, discovered I was holding someone’s used protection apparatus.

Words cannot describe the speed with which I commenced an intense hand-washing session. Never again. I mean, NEVER again.

Donmeister85

I have a good one for this. After a few noise and screaming complaints in a room with only one person, my boss decided that we needed to check on him since he was not answering his phone in the room.

We knocked on the door and asked the dude if everything was ok and the screaming and noise stopped immediately after so we let it go.

The next morning, the same shouting and noise starts again. So I knock on the door with another manager, and no answer, but just more and more screaming and customers complaining.

Since he was not opening the door, my manager and I opened it ourselves and saw the biggest mess in a hotel room you could ever imagine.

The TV was broken, beer bottles everywhere, there was protection lying around - can't explain that one -, broken lamps and shattered glass everywhere.

The cops took good care of the situation and to this day, we still don't know what type of substances he used, but whatever it is I do not recommend it.

nicbouchard53

My brother from another mother runs a very large hotel for a very large chain. A very, very famous person who was clearly very, very high ordered room service, and the staff member brought it up to their room.

The famous person opened the door NAKED, and laughed and said "Come in, look what I've done," so the staff member walked into the room.

The famous person starts jumping up and down on the bed, saying "Look what I did" He then throws back the duvet, revealing a huge pile of crap. He had literally crapped the bed.

RenttheJoe

Some guests left the room splattered with glitter and confetti. You basically have to burn the room down to get it all out... Think you got it all? Hit the room with a flashlight. You ain't got nothing!

The second worst was a giant orange spot with two tiny footprints in the middle of the carpet where a pageant mom had spray-tanned her child in the middle of the room... Had to rip out the entire carpet.

eak125

Don’t think it’s the worst. But my husband broke the hotel bed on our wedding night. I feel bad for the hotel workers who found it like that with no context...

I have a great aunt who was a hotel worker who was telling us about the things you can get away with because they will clean it up for you. 

In her words, you can ‘vomit up the curtains’ and ‘poo in the shower’.

I don’t know if she was saying that from personal experience but she must have seen some literal crap in her day. It was almost scary to hear.

[deleted]

Don't work for a hotel but my parents run a B&B and rent properties. This is one of my mother's stories. Somebody had rented out all the rooms in the B&B for a wedding party so it had all been pre-paid online.

The wedding guests come back quite drunk, one of them rushes off early in the morning without saying anything but the rest stay, have breakfast then leave.

My mum gets to work cleaning the rooms - and she has very expensive white linen and towels. Everything is fine until she gets to the room of the person who left early in the morning before everybody else.

To cut a long story short some liquids had come out from both ends all over the place - the sheets, the towels, and the floor. It had even sunk into the mattress.

On top of everything this woman had been heavily spray-tanned and had left orange stains over everything she had touched - you know as if the vomit and diarrhea pool on the bed wasn't bad enough.

She then had to send a very long email to the groom (the day after his wedding + the first day of his honeymoon) with a description, photos, and how much it was going to cost him in charges.

His email response was just "I am so sorry", and he paid the charges in full (which were pretty expensive as the room practically had to be redecorated) without complaint.

Sometimes I wonder if the bride and groom had stayed friends with that woman after that...I would have been mortified.

Gullywump

My dad worked for a hotel and told me they had an older couple complain about hearing movement in their room at night. They didn't know what to say and assumed they were just hearing things.

They later found clothes and shoes in the cupboard under the sink. Apparently, a small person was staying in the cupboard and would go use the bathroom when he thought the guests were asleep.

dalecookie

The royal family of one of the super-rich oil countries would book the entire top three floors of the best hotel in Beirut for an entire month.

The housekeeping bill would dwarf the other bills, as basic things like curtains and furniture would have to be replaced twice a week or more.

Sometimes they would order in “roast lamb” and the restaurant would send the whole thing, head and all. Then the next day the housekeepers would have to play hide and seek to find the head.

2times34point5

Worked at a proper cheap hotel in England. Used to cater for school trips and had a group from London down. One of the kids defecated literally everywhere in the bathroom except the toilet.

He literally smeared it ALL over the bathroom, sink walls, and floor. We opened the bedroom and were almost sick. It was horrifying.

When we saw it, all of us told the owner we weren’t cleaning the room. He agreed, and so we told the teachers that it was up to them. Caused a massive argument.

One of the teachers claimed we were being discriminatory for not cleaning it up (despite one of my buddies on the cleaning team being of the same background).

I reckon that probably tops the list for me.

robhenrymusic