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.
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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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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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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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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Security / Bodyguard
Have you ever had to disarm an attacker?
Investment Banker
What's a 100-hour work week like?
Professional Gamer
Is the stereotype of gamers as overweight dudes living in parents' basements accurate?
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 have definitely held my ground, never lost my cool though. Thank goodness, because I would have hurt someone if I did! I find that how I look and deliver my words will severely impact how far someone thinks they can take something. One New Year's Eve when we had an all-night party I had to work until 2 am and I happened to have the opportunity to grow a full beard while on vacation beforehand. I kept it for that night and made sure to keep my security-style earpiece in and also shaved my head. That night I was more cop than front desk. Telling people "no," which almost never happens, was okay on that night because it prevented, rather than caused chaos. I do recall one guest saying to me "Are you crazy?!" before storming out of the lobby when I told him he couldn't extend his stay because we were MORE than sold out, but I have to think, what good would it have done myself or the hotel if I had told him otherwise? There was nothing I could do for him so I had to be brutally honest. If I see that guy on the street ever I might have to kick his ass though.
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