A few years ago, I met a guy who worked at a fancy hotel. He had some fascinating stories to share. Mostly about bedbugs. So many bedbugs. If you think fancy hotels are immune from bedbugs, you're mistaken. Every establishment has dealt with bedbugs––and they spend a fortune working to get rid of them. Still brought chills to my spine, though. As someone who has had one terrible bedbug experience, I can safely say I still have PTSD more than a decade later.
But bedbugs are not the only things you find in fancy hotels. Turns out they're pretty fascinating places to be. That's what we learned after Redditor catstevenseagal asked the online community,
"People who work at 5 Star Hotels: what type of stuff goes on that management doesn't want people to know?"
"But he sold the story..."
"Our concierge was Les Clefs D'or, had all the connections, this dude could get you into the French Laundry same day. He would often greet guests with sangria and sprigs of mint from his garden. Sometimes he had lemon slices from his tree too! He loved to tell guests all about his garden and they ate it up.
Yeah, that's all BS. Mint, lemon, and any other garnish we got from the local grocery store. The sangria? Cheapest boxed stuff we could find. But he sold the story like no other. At the end of the day, it worked."
I KNEW IT.
It's all about the image.
"The kitchen staff..."
"I worked at a Ritz Carlton a few years back, it's literally the same as anywhere else. The hotel staff is amazing at their job, but on their personal time, they're just as f***** as everyone else.
The kitchen staff had a few folks with drug issues and had to be sent home a couple of times because of it. In my time there I saw two waiters get fired due to embezzlement. The turnover rate for management was very high because they didn't pay enough for the area. The staff parties were WILD, to say the least."
Sounds a lot like working in a restaurant. Lots of people––especially back of house––have criminal records. Most of them are sweet, though. Most of them.
"Every single hotel..."
"Bedbugs. Every single hotel from run-down motels to 5-star resorts has dealt with bedbugs."
"We weren't allowed..."
"We weren't allowed to greet celebrities by name since they wanted to be anonymous, so we would use their alias that day. Some were greeted by sex workers who were always super nice to everyone. A regular would rent out a room for a day, once a month, and make 30-40k that day from clients. Celebrities, business guys, you name it. Crazy."
Things That Are Normal Where You Live But Crazy Anywhere Else | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
"So yeah..."
"NEVER EVER EVER (I REPEAT!!) USE A CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN FROM A HOTEL OR BANQUET HALL!!!
Picture this: it's an expensive ass Sunday brunch. Well, little Timmy just double-fisted strawberries directly into that chocolate, bit into both strawberries then triple dipped into the chocolate AGAIN! And some old rich lady just sneezed on it. And somebody else just dropped their snack into it. The best part: that chocolate gets strained and saved for the next week's brunch. Chocolate is waaay too expensive to throw away.
Chocolate also does this thing where it'll seize if it has the wrong moisture content (from people dipping fruit, and the juices going into the chocolate.) So it'll get so thick it won't run through the machine. Wanna know how they fix that? They add canola oil until it's smooth again.
So, yeah, next time you're at a wedding and they have a chocolate fountain, think of this post. Think of this post when you dip into that dirty watered down with oil chocolate."
This just made me nauseaous. Not that I'd touch one to begin with but... gross. So gross.
"Never trust glass in rooms. GRAs are so stretched thin on time that they will clean the glasses with the same rags they clean the bathroom, after all their goal is to make the room look clean.
I worked as a GRA in a five-diamond for years and there was over a year period that went by where we didn't get a clean glass delivery. We didn't have dishwashers in the room, so management was complicit. This was in a five-diamond, one of the top resorts in the world. Never trust glass in hotel rooms."
Somehow this didn't surprise me either and yet... I am still shaken to my core?! What is this sorcery?
"Hockey players are the nicest athletes..."
"I worked at one of the premier hotels at a ski resort in the country; top 10. Met celebrities, royalty, politicians, athletes.
Hockey players are the nicest athletes by a wide margin. Royalty is great or more likely, awful. A-list celebrities want to be left alone or treated as just another person. Politicians are bigger aholes when they're with their families. Saw lots of sex, drugs, underage drinking, sex workers, the usual."
"In some places..."
"Dead people. In some places, there's a reasonable chance somebody has died in your bed. Obviously, it varies with the type of hotel and its clientele, but in some places you get deaths weekly (not that the hotel is unsafe but you have unfit old people over-exerting themselves). One place I worked maybe 40% of the beds had been died in."
"This week..."
"What goes on in the room next to you. This week we had to evict and arrest a couple for causing over $15K in damages to a room. This was done quietly late at night and the nearby rooms never found out."
When done correctly... no one will ever know.
These businesses have a reputation to uphold. They're not about to let something like that come out and make the news.
"We don't bat an eye..."
"We don't bat an eye at prostitution or whatever goes on in the rooms as long as it doesn't affect other guests. Half the women that come to the bar are working girls looking for a sale. The only thing that the hotel industry ever really reports is human trafficking. There are tell-tale signs and if something doesn't add up we do report it to local authorities."
If any of these stories made you think twice about working in hotels, we completely understand. And if any of these stories made some of you think, Wow, I really belong there! then by all means... go and fill out an application. Then come back and tell us some other dirty little secrets.
Have some experiences of your own? Have you also survived the hospitality industry? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments below!
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