Hotel Front Desk
Los Angeles, CA
Male, 27
For the past two years I've worked the front desk at a boutique luxury beachfront hotel in Southern California. My job can range from simply checking guests in & out to many other duties, including: pretending I work in different departments so that behind-the-scenes chaos is never seen by a guest, shielding guests from stalkers that come looking for them, and picking up used drug paraphernalia from a trashed room. Ask me anything.
No. It should and would be against most hotel's policies, but the fact is that any job you can imagine can be filled by the most dim-witted of people, who may make mistakes. If such actions were done in the commission of a crime, then it is most definitely illegal, beyond simple invasion of privacy.
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I wouldn't think it's standard practice to lie to you. Bed bugs as you know can seriously impact the reputation, rating, profitability, and overall health of a hotel, so good management takes them very seriously. They aren't difficult to treat, however they are persistent and take time. What likely happened when you received the letter is you had some persistent bed bugs and you also had a manager inspecting who wasn't properly trained in how to look for the signs of bed bugs. Most good hotel chains will require professional training for all of their management in how to do this and already have the exterminator on call for if bed bugs be detected. At the end of the day, the hotel should take your word for it and offer to seal your bags, move you to another room, while they spray your current room.
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Good question Geoff! I work for a hotel because I want to make people happy, so the last thing I want to do is charge someone a fee if I can avoid it. However, those fees exist because oftentimes when a hotel is close to sold out with few rooms left, let's say it's due to a conference being in town and all hotel rooms are scarce, there are people who will "hold" a room simply to hold it just in case they need it. By the end of the typical hours of check-in, often that person will either cancel at the last minute or not cancel at all (the most frustrating), preventing the hotel from selling that room to someone that really needed it. I've had nice families and others that were stranded due to delayed flights who haven't been able to get a room because someone was just holding a room, expecting they could cancel without a one night's room and tax penalty, and sometimes just forgot to cancel because they were lazy. It's that person who the fee was created for. If a hotel isn't close to sold out, isn't bound to a corporate rule book (ie: small, privately owned property), or the person canceling is part of a regular corporate account, a repeat guest, or just plain nice, then usually a reservationist will exercise some leeway and grant that person a pass.
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Hey dude, I'm married, so no. BUT, it does happen, just not on property that I know of. Female agents seem to get hit on quite a lot more than the guys, at least from what I see.
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Ice Sculptor
What was the raciest sculpture you ever made?
SWAT Team Commander (Retired)
How much protection do those bomb disposal suits really provide?
Private Detective
Has anyone ever caught you surveilling them, and what happened?
Thankfully never! The way that most hotels differentiate the adult in-room movies from the family-friendly fare is by price. So if you see one movie on a guest bill or "folio" for $12.95 and a second movie for $13.95, that second movie was likely porn. It's common for a businessman checking out to say, "Can I pay for the movie with my own card instead of the corporate card?" 99% of the time that movie is one of the adult ones, but I get what he means without having to ask why. If his company is paying for the porn, then that's a company with a wide range of benefits!
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Depending on the financial structure of the hotel and whether or not the food and beverage operation is wholly owned by hotel or a separate entity (say, for instance, just renting the space within the hotel), it could range from $0 income to a decent profit. At my property it's a separate entity from the hotel but a profit-sharing agreement is in place. One problem you will see with "honor bars" or minibars without any direct tracking of items is that guests seem to have very little "honor" when it comes to what was taken and what wasn't. Parents, if you brought your kids on your business trip, PLEASE explain to them why they should NEVER think everything in the room is free. And if they do go nuts on the minibar snacks, don't lie to me and say that the items weren't there in the first place, especially when I've come up to your room prior to checkout and seen the kids eating it or the wrappers are all over the room. For larger corporate hotels, the minibar must retain a profit because business travelers who aren't always footing the entire bill are okay with expensing the costs, and the costs are inflated but necessary considering how many items go missing and unaccounted for. To be honest, if a guest checking out says they didn't eat the item or drink the item, 9 times out of 10 I am going to waive the charge, so that's why they have to be so expensive, to account for all those charge adjustments.
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I buy them, only because there is generally a new person or persons staying in each room on average every three to five days, if not every day, and I don't have any idea what they decide to do in there or what their personal hygiene standards are. I've found a used condom under a bed of a room thought to be ready to sell, which was pointed out to me by the concerned father of two that checked in with his family. On the flip-side, the massive amount of fluids, etc are probably being found on areas that housekeeping isn't trained nor told they have a need to clean, but that a guest thought would be a good place to deposit said fluid(s). By and large, the surfaces that a sensible person comes in contact with are probably cleaner than the ones in that person's own home, because they're cleaned so frequently and professionally. If I find something gross, I will be the first to point it out to housekeeping if not clean it up myself.
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