| Originally posted to Reddit. See Thread |
| This entry was featured in a YouTube video by Hellfreezer among other writers' works. See Video |
I have never issued a command to a guest. ....except this guy.
It's something like 8:30 or 9:30 at night (not even that late) in the middle of the week early one Summer. I'm working my evening shift alone and quietly at our property which is directly across the street from a Fancy Inn and right around the corner from a Modest Inn.
In wanders a middle-aged guy who, at first estimation, I decided was seriously drunk. "Wandered" is exactly the right word for how he transmitted himself from the door to the desk, because every other step he had to re-scan the whole room and figure out where the my desk was - where the only desk was - like a poorly-programmed robot. His radar didn't make contact every time, either, so he ended up visiting several pieces of furniture on the way to my station, and during his trek he probably discovered more desks than he would have in an Ikea showroom.
Finally standing before me, literally swaying, he says - or rather he sort of loosely emits - the purpose of his harrowing journey.
"I need my room keys."
Not very polite, but he's trashed and that's just how it goes sometimes. But I'm confused as to why a guest just needs keys all of a sudden, coming in off the street.
Okay, I'll be happy to help you. Do you already have a reservation here?
After a long pause: "Um, yeah. I believe I do."
I get his name, which takes some effort, and look him up. No dice; the computer hasn't got him at all. I then ask if he has already checked in, just to throw more information on the fire, and I get exactly the same response.
At this point I'm certain some critical information is getting lost in the drunken haze that is this man, so I ask him for his license (which I would need anyway) so I can just get his name off of there. Still no cigar, so I take that hard left down that dark road that every desk agent hates because it always ends with unpleasant phone calls and awkward refusals to write keys: Is it possible it's under a different name? Did you check in with anyone else or is it just you? You know how it is, when you suddenly discover that you're also being paid to be a private eye in little three-minute increments.
Ultimately I decide that this guy does not exist in our system. Does not have a reservation, never had a reservation. So I guess at this point he's so trashed that he thinks he make a reservation he intended to make but never came up out of his booze plunge for air long enough to actually do so.
Mr. Boozetafarian, I don't have you in my system at all. Would you like to set up a reservation for tonight so we can get you into a room?
He says okay. Cool. I go through the motions, and he forks over his card which is good for the room rate. I made sure to pronounce the price clearly at least three times before executing authorization - just to make sure that very large number actually makes it through his skull. I'm still pretty sure it didn't. I write him his keys and tell him how to get to his room, and even offer to walk him to the elevator (on the other end of the building). He makes some pass about how he can do it himself and begins his epic quest to locate the other end of the lobby which, judging from his navigational capabilities, is spinning about as fast as a neutron star. I write up the obligatory note on his reservation summarizing everything I've just told you, and settle in to continue redditing.
About twenty minutes later as I'm returning to the desk from having delivered some ultradeluxe premium 40-grit bath towels to a guest room I discover Mr. Boozetafarian in the middle of my parking lot stumbling over chocks and narrowly missing slamming into people's cars. From the looks of it he's attempting to find his room by following some invisible, geriatric arthritic dragonfly who is likewise unsure of which way is up. It is at this moment that I decide he is not, in fact, drunk. He's strung out on something else entirely - something strong.
I ask the newly dubbed Mr. McPillsDrugs if he needs help (you gotta make them think they asked you for something, you can't just go patronizing people) and he says his keys don't work so he's trying to find his room. Glossing over the baffling idea that he is scouring the parking lot for his room and the highly abnormal fact that he'd been wandering roomless for twenty minutes, I usher him back to the lobby and tell him to give me his old keys so I can write new ones.
We arrive in the lobby and he's complaining about how he can't get into his room, number 999. This is odd, because I had just written him keys for room 888, which was in fact his room. He slaps onto the counter a key packet containing two shiny, brand-new, fresh-out-of-the-box Modest Inn keys. Not our keys. Hmmmmmmmm.
At this point the guy owns our room. He's signed the papers* and his card has authorized, so I may as well give him new keys to our room just in case his keys actually don't work on the correct door. I write him keys and again offer to take him to his room and he again refuses. The moment he's hauled his dragon-chasing posterior out the door I ring up the Modest Inn. Since the hotels in our cluster are pretty tight with each other I have no problem getting the agent over there to confirm that they do in fact have a sky with 999 diamonds for this particular Lucy.
Now I feel bad, because I just sold this severely incapacitated (as I now know) guest a room that he should absolutely not have bought. Also I don't want him on my property because if a guest is gonna kick the bucket it damn well better be during one of my audits, not during an evening shift. (Audits are boring**.) I write myself a killer key*** and sprint up to 888 and discover that he hasn't even entered the room, which is exactly what I wanted to find. I kill the door and set about trying to find Shrooms McDope which took about eight seconds because - you guessed it - he's still testing the physics engine in our parking lot. This is when I stop being suggestive and straight up tell him what to do - in the way a school nurse tells a nosebleedy kid to keep his head back and stop eating pencil lead.
Mr. Cloudrider I found your room. I just called the Modest Inn they said that they have a room for you over there. Come back to the lobby and take a seat and I'll call you a cab.
Normally I wouldn't call a cab for the 200-yard walk to the other hotel even for drunk guests because that's a bit of work and a hefty price tag for such a short distance. But this dude would definitely end up face down in the stream between here and there or repainting someone's hood and windshield with profound thoughts, audacious ideas, and all the other contents of a human skull. So I called him a cab.
I explain to him that he would need to pay for the cab (like $10) but I'd be releasing his credit card authorization and would not be charging him for the room. Just to keep my bases covered I add that he would still be paying the Modest Inn for the room over there. This whole time I'm pretty sure I may as well be explaining all of this to the breakfast room toaster, but clearly he picked up a thing or two because when the cab showed up ten minutes later he produced his credit card as he got in.
I call the Modest Inn back and warn them to expect their catastrophically high guest who will probably need help finding his room.
* This will probably end up being a post in r/legaladvice: Aside from being unethical, is it illegal and/or non-binding to enter into a written contract with a high/drunk person? Would wastedness work in court to void a sale?
** Audit is actually my favorite shift to work, aside from evenings on specifically Sundays. Audits are, in fact, boring but are also quiet enough that you can get everything done quickly and have hours to work on personal projects or melt away on Reddit.
*** At our property the only way to kill a guest's key is to write a new key and use it on the lock in question. This essentially serves to update the lock with a new ACL that does not include the keys being carried by the guest.