Hotel Workers Share Crazy Things That Happened At Their Job

Working at a hotel might seem like a pretty nice job; you get employee perks like discounted stays, and if you’re a housekeeper, you don’t really ever have to deal with anyone, since you’re usually only cleaning rooms once everyone is checked out and long gone. But sometimes, people go to hotels specifically so they have a place to do some weird and crazy things….

Night shifts are probably when the weirdest things happen in a hotel. Whether guests go wild from drinking too much or simply view a hotel as a place they can get away with anything, hotel workers have seen their fair share of nonsense. The common areas aren’t safe either. After you hear what these hotel employees have to say, you might reconsider your next travel accommodations.

Bella and Edward Forever 

I knocked on a hotel room door one day; I worked in house cleaning and was ready to do my daily routine of changing the towels and linens. There wasn’t a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door, but then I heard a voice from inside that responded to my knock. The person had told me to come inside. So I did….

I needn’t have bothered to go and change their sheets, as the guests had already taken care of those themselves. The couple who were staying in the room had actually replaced all of the sheeting with their own bedding. It wouldn’t have been that unusual except for the fact that they were grown adults, and the bed set was printed with images from Twilight. Reddit User: poodle234

The Haunted Hotel Dining Room 

My mom used to be a manager at this huge old mansion. The whole staff believed this place was definitely haunted. One night after one of the weddings, my mom and some of the other staff were cleaning up. They placed the chairs upside down on the tables to mop the next day. My mom stuck around to close shop…. 

As she’s making her way to the office, she passes the dining room and sees that the chairs are still placed on the floor around the tables. She puts them back up on the tables. Around 2 am, she’s going room to room to turn the lights off. The last room she has to turn the lights off for is the dining room. The chairs are back on the floor around the tables Reddit User: [redacted]

Naked and Not Afraid 

I used to work at a hotel in my hometown, and I’m really glad I don’t work there anymore after all the strange things that always happened there. It may be a small town, but that’s where the interesting stuff happens, right? Some of the weirdest stuff happened to me at this place. So once, we had this guy wander into our employees-only kitchen completely naked….

I send him back to his room. He gets on the elevator, and I think that’s the end of it until I have to use the elevator a minute or two later. When I get onto the elevator to go up to a guest’s room, he’s just standing there. And he’s still naked. At this point, I decided that it was time for the police to come and help out. Reddit User: Gogo726

Unexpected Company for the Night

My dad used to work in a hotel. A few years ago, he heard a scream from a maid as she’s cleaning one of the rooms. He runs in, and there’s a giant python just chilling in the bathtub. This thing is apparently like four feet long. They tried to track down the couple who had just checked out of the room, but the number they’d given the front desk wasn’t working….

Eventually, animal control showed up and took the snake, thank goodness. That poor maid was terrified to clean the bathrooms for a while after that incident. Four feet of python is definitely a huge shock when you’re not expecting it. I definitely wouldn’t be booking into that room ever, and good luck to anyone who did in the future. Reddit User: [redacted]

The Mystery of the Bubbly Water

I had a weird guest who was part of a land survey crew that would come in every week. One time she called the front desk and said, “There are bubbles in my toilet. Why are there bubbles in my toilet?” I told her they might have flushed the water pipes; I was just talking nonsense to her to give her an answer…. 

She then says, “Hold on, I’m going to bring some down.” I said, “Ma’am, that’s really not necessary,” but she was already off the line. About 5 minutes later she came down the elevator with a wine glass full of clear water. “Well, it was bubbly a minute ago!” I had to walk in the back and beat my head against the wall for a bit. Reddit User: dsetech

Stranger Than Fiction  

I’m not actually a hotel worker, but I’m super keen on traveling and have a story that I want to add. I stayed in a resort where it was a series of clay huts that comprised the hotel; this was in Namibia. You book a hut, chill, and go about your life. When I arrived, I found the door to my hut with scratches on the outside and several bolts….

A sign saying “do not open at night” hung there too. Strange. I didn’t sleep that night, as I could hear a child wailing outside in pain and scrabbling at the door. Once, I heard the door trying to be wrenched open. The next morning, I spoke to the other guests who had had a similar experience. Turns out that it was monkeys that mimicked human sounds to make people open the door and attack them. Stranger than fiction. Reddit User: Piggies_Love_Figgies

The Mysterious Case of the Radio 

I speak to the front desk agent to get my morning notes on the day, and she tells me that a guest on the second floor has called a few times about hearing a radio coming from somewhere. The guest calls again while I’m standing at the front desk, so I head up there to investigate. I immediately hear the radio….

I check everywhere in the room and can’t find the source of the noise. I check my in house list, and there are no guests in any of the rooms beside, above, or below them, but we check the vacant rooms just to be sure someone hadn’t left one on. We never did find it, and we never had a complaint about it again. The whole thing was just weird. Reddit User: [redacted]

Mr. Pie Guy in the Hotel 

We had a guest we ended up calling Pie Guy. He would come into the hotel without a reservation, pay in cash plus the $100 cash deposit, and the next day, we would find his bathroom and bathtub full of the remains of several expensive pies. He never came to the desk for his deposit, as he knew he wouldn’t be getting it back….

We added his name to the “do not rent” list, but he kept coming back using different names. One time we found a torn-up list in his room with the words “pie” and “pants” scribbled over and over again. It’s at times like this when I really wish I could be a fly on the wall and figure out what on earth that guy was doing in there. Reddit User: ladywug

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures 

This one lady came into the lobby of the hotel I was working at around 11 pm. She then asked for the workout room, so I opened it back up for her, figuring she was one of those 24 hour workout people. There are some people like that, clearly suffering from jet lag or they’re just really into the fitness scene, I suppose….

I went back in at around 3 am to close it up again. You’ll never believe it, but she had set up a bed for herself on the treadmill. When I discovered what had happened, I ended up giving her our last room after she had a fight with her husband and was refusing to sleep with him. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Reddit User: greenmouse19

Bring in the Sniffer Dogs 

My family is in the hotel business. One day, a particular room just started to stink for no apparent reason. We checked everywhere multiple times, looking for the source of the scent; no dice. We sprayed everything in the room numerous times with deodorizer to no avail. We left the room open daily for months to air it out without any change….

Finally, we somehow tracked the smell to the table lamp. We were dumbfounded, asking ourselves how it could be emanating from there. A guest had broken it and put a fish in it, then glued it back together. My brother and I died laughing and actually applauded this guy’s ingenuity. He got us good, and I’m not even mad at that. Reddit User: [redacted]

When You Forget Your Luggage

We hosted a reptile expo in one of our Regency ballrooms over the weekend. The day after they left, I stumbled across an almost paralyzed crested gecko. I started panicking because I knew nothing about reptiles, but I figured it was so easy to catch because it was cold. I used the heat lamp we had in our kitchen to warm it up for a little bit….

Then I just held it until we got a hold of the correct pet shop that was missing the gecko. But they said they weren’t going to make a 5-hour trip for one gecko and said we could keep it. So that’s the story of how my front desk manager got a free crested gecko. I hope he’s nice and warm right now with his new owner. Reddit User: HadToDelete

Something Wicked This Way Comes

I worked at a hotel that was owned by a college. The rooms inside the courtyard were rented out to customers, but the outer rooms were meant for long-term stays and college kids. There was an old man that lived in the very front of the hotel. He was a germaphobe and was terrified of spiders, among other things. One night he came down to the lobby and was in tears….

I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that there was a spider in his room. I opened the door to see that every inch of his room was covered in old newspapers. I found the spider in the bathroom and killed it. Just as I was about to flush, he screamed, “NO!” He didn’t want me to flush it because “it might crawl back in.” Reddit User: [redacted]

In the Wrong Window

We once had a couple check-in at reception, and they were given a park and display permit for their car. The hotel only had three car parking spaces that are usually reserved during booking. Others have to park on the streets around the hotel, displaying the permits that are provided at cost by the local council. About 40 minutes later, the husband comes to reception shouting and complaining that he’s received a parking ticket…. 

The permit he was given was obviously no good. We asked if he actually displayed it in the window as we had told him to do. He put it in the window as soon as got upstairs to the room. That’s when we realized he’d put it in the bedroom window and not the car window. He’s not the smartest guy. Reddit User: spbslinky

Be Our Guest 

This story happened last week, and it’s pretty crazy. I saw a really drunk Korean guy inspecting a coconut tree very seriously. Apparently he decided he really wanted to climb a coconut tree at 1 am. I didn’t see him fall. I just heard the thud. Nothing serious happened to him. He got the wind knocked out of him and passed out….

The security guards tried to help, but they got shouted at by his equally drunk girlfriend. She sobbed over him for a while, and then I think she went to sleep on top of him. The next morning, I saw them both at breakfast, though. One of the strangest things I’ve seen. You want to pay 200 dollars to sleep outdoors, be my guest. Reddit User: squirrelbeanie

Something Fishy in the Hotel 

Not from me, but my sister works in the hotel business, and a colleague of hers told her about a time when a man checked in and wouldn’t let anyone go into the room for over a week. They were all suspicious of what he must be doing, as the corridor outside the room started to smell really bad. One day he went out, so the staff snuck in to see what was going on…. 

I bet they wish they hadn’t. He had dead fish hung up all around the room. It’s really no wonder that the corridor outside had started to smell bad. I’m not sure what happened, but I’ve never heard anything like it and hope never to experience that myself when I’m staying at a hotel or if I ever end up working at one. Reddit User: bebelabeaux

Caught Red Handed and Naked  

I’m a current night auditor; I was working at a hotel in Montana during the winter a few years back. There was a pretty bad blizzard one night; it was in the negative 30s, and I found footprints in the snow outside during a walk. It got stranger because they led me to a naked man who had busted into our housekeeping room….

I quickly contacted police, who happened to be around the block. Found out the next day that he had broken into someone’s garage and been rummaging through their stuff before the owner of the house’s garage caught him and chased him out, where he ran to the hotel. Luckily the police got the guy and got him some clothes too. Reddit User: Krelen

Watch Out for the Hotel Rat 

I worked at a larger hotel/event space. Someone accidentally let loose a lab rat in one of the rooms. The guest at least had the courtesy to call down to the front desk and let us know that they needed help catching the lab rat that had managed to escape. Maintenance and the guest, after looking for hours, could not find the rat and eventually gave up…. 

We had multiple call downs to the front desk over the next few weeks from terrified guests who spotted our naked tailed friend. I don’t know if they ever caught that giant rat. But one day there will probably be a story about the ghost of a rat in that hotel. This is one of many absurd stories that came out of that place. Reddit User: salamandereere

The Pigeon With a Woman’s Spirit

My coworker was an adorable little old man who was very hard to understand. He was the housekeeper on weekends, so I would work with him most of the time. He was the weirdest thing at the hotel, but we all loved him anyway. The weirdest thing he did happened one day in the winter; he brought a freaking pigeon into the hotel….

It was snowing outside, and the hotel was moderately busy that night. But he kept this pigeon with him the entire time, and the darn thing never wanted to fly away; it would just walk around with him or stay on his cleaning cart. The reason he kept it close is that he said it was a woman in its past life, and she was cold and lonely. Reddit User: [redacted]

A Pizza Prank 

I was back after a few days off my job at a hotel. I needed some time to recover because of all the craziness that happens at that place. So, back on the job, I was busy doing my nightly floor check. I smelled something awful in one of the stairways. Opened the door to one of the fire department water valves…. 

I ended up finding the source of the bad smell. I found that someone had stuck a frozen pizza in there (in the box, thankfully I suppose) and had just left it there to rot. I’m still not sure who would have done that since we have bins all around the place and also in the rooms. Probably some teenager who thought it would be funny. Reddit User: AshleyJewel913

Paging Doctor Messy Room 

Here’s a crazy hotel story. I work in a hotel myself, and we had a guest claim his room was dirty. It wasn’t. Our housekeeping manager would even check every room herself. The guest then continued to get mad because we wouldn’t give him the room on a complimentary basis after his complaint. But we didn’t expect what we found after he left….

He tore the sheets, stabbed the wall with a knife (we had kitchenettes in the rooms), and cut the wire for the TV. Needless to say, he was charged for all the damages, and a police report was made. He was a doctor. This means that he had plenty of money to pay for the room, so he was just a cheapskate and now has a record. Good luck with medicine. Reddit User: AshleyJewel913

The Worst Kind of Family 

I had a guy pay for some family members to stay the night. He ended up getting charged for the damages, and the family members ghosted him. They spray painted the bed and broke the air conditioner. They also decided they wanted to smoke in the room. Keep in mind, the entire hotel is no smoking. They tried to take the smoke alarm off the wall….

We have special alarms that would tell the alarm company and us any time they went off. We went upstairs to knock, and they refused to open the door but said there was no fire. To replace everything cost about $500. The guy who paid was so angry. He then said the family members would never hear from him again. Reddit User: AshleyJewel913

A Bride and a Cosplayer Walk into a Hotel 

Please keep in mind that I’m not a worker but a guest at a hotel. So I was staying at a hotel hosting an anime convention, and it was also hosting a wedding the same weekend. Well, apparently the bride overheated and then fainted. I’m actually also a nurse and not just an anime fan all year round, so I needed to help….

I offered to stay with her and provide my skills until the paramedics were able to arrive at the hotel. I can just imagine what was going through the heads of those EMTs. They walked into a convention and then saw a girl in full cosplay tending to the bride. It was probably a pretty weird sight to see that day. Reddit User: CheshireGrin92

This Story Really Nailed It 

A friend of mine used to work at one of the big hotels in Stockholm as a cleaner. He has some strange stories. He was just about to finish cleaning a room and only had the bathroom left. He then looked into the shower and saw a bowl of human nails. I’m talking about a whole cereal bowl of toenails and fingernails….

I’m just thinking, there’s a bin for a reason, it’s probably worse than a guest leaving behind their rotten food in a bowl in the bathroom. He called management, but they didn’t mind it and just threw it away. I wish I knew what that guest’s obsession was with keeping their leftover cuttings after they clipped their nails. Reddit User: Be5turgotEUNE

The Broken Bathroom 

I work the night shift. I got a call from one of our drunken guests saying that the toilet was leaking water. So I went up to their floor and was greeted with water in the corridor outside their room. I then knocked on their door, and when they opened it, I saw that there was water in the whole freaking room….

The man showed me the toilet, which was basically broken in half, and said that it was like that when they checked in. It obviously wasn’t like that when they checked in because housekeeping would have alerted management. As I tried to shut off the water, his wife came in; she was completely naked. Not my best night. Reddit User: Iurrys

Luggage Trolley

I worked the graveyard shift at the front desk at the hotel I was employed at. We had a woman who easily weighed 400 pounds who then got really drunk at the bar and sat on the floor. When the bartender told her she couldn’t do that, the woman took a swing at her. I immediately called the police, who arrived about five minutes later….

I see four cops walk into the bar. A minute later, one of them walks out and asks if he can borrow my luggage dolly. These dudes had to wheel this woman back to her room on the luggage trolley. All I’m saying is that I was very thankful that her room was on the ground floor. Hotel life. Reddit User: feldspathoid91

A Real Life-Sketch Show  

I was on a work trip to Holland with a few of my colleagues, including my old manager. We all got fairly wasted in Amsterdam after a meeting, as the client was paying. My manager was pretty sheepish on the flight home the next day, but I just assumed it was because of the hangover. Later a video surfaced of him wandering around the hotel….

He was completely naked and had walked out of his room instead of to the bathroom. It was like something out of a sketch show, as he managed to find a small fake plant to try and hide his modesty while getting another key from reception. It turns out the client also partially owned the hotel we were staying at, so they shared the video with everyone. Reddit User: WhatsTheStory28

The Ultimate Monster-in-Law

I worked at a hotel bar in Vermont: a super popular place for events and weddings. We have a wedding in the house, and the whole party is down at the bar celebrating, and the mother of the bride is drunk, falls asleep sitting up, and is left in her stool by her family. We’re closing the bar, trying to wake her up; she’s totally unresponsive, so we call our security to figure out the situation….

We manage to get her into a wheelchair but have no idea what room she’s in for the night. We do, however, know the room that the bride and groom are in, so we wheel her up there, knock on the door, and interrupt the consummation of their marriage and present them with their unconscious and drunk mother-in-law. Reddit User: Kraft_Singles88

I’d Do It for the Money  

I used to work at a casino hotel, so I have plenty of stories from my time there. My favorite is the story of a naked Chinese man who ran up and down the hallway putting $100 bills underneath the other doors. He was caught by security and taken back to his room. The next morning he accused the maids of taking all of his money….

Thanks to showing him the security footage, he was proven wrong in his accusations of the maids and was suitably embarrassed at what he had done the night before. His casino host was told that he was not allowed to stay in the hotel anymore because of the uproar he caused. But I doubt anyone was complaining about the $100 bills under their doors. Reddit User: Greghashomes

No More Orange Juice for Me  

I work as a receptionist at the front desk in a hotel. There was this one time where my eyes happened to drift towards the morning self-service buffet camera. It was 09:30 in the morning, and I saw one guest filling his glass with fresh orange juice from the jug. He sipped twice, and he threw the leftover inside the jug again….

To say that I’ve never drunk from the orange juice jugs again would be an understatement. This is not the only story like this since then. I’ve seen people sniff the muffins and take a small bite and then put it back in the pile of pastries. I’d rather you put it on your plate and face the judgment of being a food waster. Reddit User: Ligkonakos

The Haunted Hotel Bathtub 

I worked in Lily Dale, which is a spiritual town, and I worked at a rundown “haunted” hotel. Yes, this is a real thing. There was absolutely no clean water in the entire hotel. When I started, I was told that room 21 was haunted. When the hotel was closed for the winter, I was tasked with cleaning the second floor…. 

Of course, room 21 is on the second floor, so it was time for me to put my big girl pants on and get cleaning. After I cleaned the bathroom, the tub was empty. I went to the hall to grab a spray from my cleaning cart, and when I came back, it was filled with crystal clear water. There’s no way to explain that. Reddit User: NUm1ChEezEY

Warm and Fluffy, Not Clean 

I worked at the beach of one hotel in Croatia a few years ago. We would carry the used beach towels to the washing room, and it was always a problem because they had too few of these towels. So what the guys in the washing room would do is they wouldn’t even wash the towels. But it gets worse….

They would actually just put them in the dryer, so they appeared all fluffy again and even smelled nice thanks to the dryer sheets. But they were not washed. So, people would get dirty towels back to the beach and the whole summer like that. Never again will I look at hotel towels the same; it’s worth the effort to take your own. Reddit User: tkingsmd

Trying to Get Some Peace and Quiet 

One of the most bizarre instances was a really polite guy we had stay for nearly a month. The managers charged him totally top rate every night. He would come down and re-book for that night or the next two nights, paid in full each time. He came and went during the day, always really shy but polite when he came past reception…. 

Housekeeping said they found a load of towels with blood all over them in his room. One of my colleagues ended up seeing a post on Facebook with his photo, where his family was trying to find him. She let the police know where he was, and they came to see him. He had had some kind of mental breakdown and just left his family home, but as he was an adult and seemed safe, they just left him be. Reddit User: pmmephotosofcutedogs

Bleached Beyond Belief 

I was a night auditor, and never again here because it was just too much. This guy comes to the desk, smelling strongly of bleach. No big deal. He’s probably a swimmer. We take note of him. Later, there are noise complaints coming in about his room. Security does a welfare check. It turns out the guy is completely out of his mind….

He had bleached the whole room. We had to consider calling EMS for our security just for sticking their heads in the room. Not sure how the guy was still alive after being in that room for all that time. The room was a total loss after that. I have no idea what goes through people’s minds but would love to know what was going on in his. Reddit User: Reddit

Taking a Sip of Your Windex Coffee

I was a housekeeper at a hotel for a few years. There were some pretty gross things I saw there in my time, but this was one of the worst. We cleaned the rooms in pairs; it worked more efficiently that way. The one time, my coworker was cleaning the coffee pot in the room. How did she clean it? 

She sprayed Windex into the coffee pot, used a paper towel to wipe around it, and then put it back in the coffee maker. She didn’t even rinse it, just sprayed it, wiped, and put it back with a few tiny little drops of Windex still sitting in the bottom. I couldn’t believe what I just saw, but I made sure to remove it and replace it. Reddit User: [redacted]

No More Last-Minute Trips  

I’m aware that this won’t be the worst story, and I’m not a hotel worker but a guest. However, it’s pretty crazy. The one year, my daughter and I decided to book a last-minute ski trip. Unfortunately, this meant we didn’t have a lot of choices when it comes to hotels. We ended up getting a rundown one by the resort….

When we got into the room, my daughter was on the search for an outlet to charge her phone. I spotted one and told her to open up what looked like a covered outlet. But, shock and horror, when she opened it up, a mouse and half of a PopTart fell out. Not exactly what we were expecting, and we’re done with last-minute trips for a while. Reddit User: loskleinos

A Little Book of Wonders

As the owner of a bed and breakfast place for the last eight years, I’ve encountered quite a bit in my time there. The craziest thing I ever found was an old battered notebook with “why I love salad” written on the front. When I opened the old notebook, I’m not even joking, there were literally 40-80 pages on why salad was amazing….

There’d be the occasional suggestion that the author believed salad to be alive in some sense. It looked like it had been written on and off over the course of several years. I still wish that I could be that passionate about salad, since it would make my life so much easier and a lot healthier, although that obsession might not be a healthy one. Reddit User: [redacted]

The Biggest Mess in Hotel History  

A man was having his house deloused and deep cleaned and wound up staying at the local Marriott that I worked for at the time. He was there for something like 30 days or so, drunk off his rocker and probably high on something the entire time. He never once let housekeeping in. After his departure, the cleaning staff finally entered the room…. 

They were horrified not only by the stench of the place but also by the utter wreck he left behind. Basically, every single piece of furniture was severely damaged, the floors stained and greasy, the linens too far gone for further use, and rotten food everywhere. It took a week to get the room back in the rotation. No wonder it took a month to get his house cleaned up and free of vermin. Reddit User: [redacted]

Upper-Class Hotel Room 

After high school, I worked in a hotel on Miami Beach. I was young and fresh out of high school. I was a bellhop in the hotel down there. One day, we got a call to move a guest out of his room. I went up to the room, knocked on the door, and when I opened it, the guest has spray painted the entire room gold….

He said it was 24 karat gold because he stayed in hotels in Saudi Arabia that were solid gold. So he wanted to make his room look like that. He spray painted the bed sheets, light bulbs, and the bathroom; everything in that room was gold. They moved him into a hotel down the beach and didn’t tell the new hotel what he did. Reddit User: randylikecandy

You’ve Goat to Be Kidding Me 

True story: I worked as a cleaner in a hotel and saw some pretty gross things on frequent occasions. This wasn’t gross, but it certainly was the strangest thing I ever encountered, even until this very day. So, I went into a guest’s room to clean it and had been dreading it because it had been booked for a stag party. 

When I walked into the room, I found a goat. But not just any goat. The goat was, in fact, dressed up to look like Abraham Lincoln. I don’t know how it got there or how it was removed, but it made a good story for a while. I ended up just walking straight down to the manager and reported it and got on with the other rooms. Reddit User: [redacted]

The Almost Perfect Guests

I was working at a luxury hotel, and we had a fairly big-name band staying with us. I won’t mention who because I still love their music even after what happened in their hotel room. I was surprised because, during their stay, there were no noise complaints, and they seemed to be the perfect tenants, which is odd for musicians….

When they left and we went to clean the room, every single piece of furniture was nailed to the ceiling in roughly the same configuration that it was in on the floor. I found it to be quite amusing. But it was clear that the hotel management didn’t. Let’s just say they will never be allowed to stay at the hotel again. Reddit User: [redacted]