One of the things I honestly miss the most about being a child is how blissfully unaware I was of just how filthy some places are. As a child I never got onto an airplane and wondered what that smell was. I don't recall a single time I walked into a hotel room, a friend's house, a restaurant, etc and ever contemplated how sanitary it was - or wasn't.
And then, somewhere along the lines, my innocent childhood blinders fell off and I could see everything. Everything. The sorts of things you can see when you gain germ-vision are just ... just ... whyyyyy?!
Reddit user Latterwatercress asked:
What was your "They didn't clean this hotel room very well" moment?
Some of these people absolutely did not need to be germophobes to be able to tell their rooms weren't cleaned. I'm not talking about one little bug or a layer of dust. You're about to enter an article full of bodily fluids, sh*t tons of literal sh*t, and at least one potential homicide. Honestly, we're all over here questioning whether any hotel room we stay in ever again will really be "clean."
Yup. Now we're traumatized. Our hats are off to you hotel workers who have to clean up after guests. Apparently the human animal is truly a horrific beast. (Some responses have been edited for clarity and language... especially the poop stories. Obviously.)
Reddit user Latterwatercress asked:
What was your "They didn't clean this hotel room very well" moment?
Some of these people absolutely did not need to be germophobes to be able to tell their rooms weren't cleaned. I'm not talking about one little bug or a layer of dust. You're about to enter an article full of bodily fluids, sh*t tons of literal sh*t, and at least one potential homicide. Honestly, we're all over here questioning whether any hotel room we stay in ever again will really be "clean."
Yup. Now we're traumatized. Our hats are off to you hotel workers who have to clean up after guests. Apparently the human animal is truly a horrific beast. (Some responses have been edited for clarity and language... especially the poop stories. Obviously.)
Hanging Undies
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When I stretched out on the bed and looked up at the ceiling fan, there was underwear hanging on the fan blades - both male and female varieties.
They must've been moist, so the previous hotel guests placed them there to dry. In any case, the cleaning staff apparently never noticed the undies hanging from the fan.
Poop or Cigar?
Just a literal log of old sh*t that falls out from the covers. I don't think the staff actually cleaned the bedsheets. Happened when I went on vacation as a kid with my family.
We just checked in to the room and me and my cousins wanted to make a bed sheet fort and when we pulled the covers from the bed and u-ntucked it from the mattress, out rolled the ashy brown log. To be perfectly fair, it could have been an old cigar, but we didn't want anything to do with it either way. My family screamed at the staff for awhile and we left the hotel.
- Wiknetti
Dirty Vegas Room
Las Vegas, summer 2012, we got our room from some online travel site. We go to Vegas, we're in one of the nicest rooms in The Luxor. The morning after we get there, the manager knocks on the door, says something like we shouldn't have been able to book the room or some sh*t? Apparently since it was EDC that meant it was a 'special weekend.' I don't know if this is anywhere close to the true story or not, because my friend is kind of a stupid little ass who never admits fault. Either way, we have to leave.
EDC is huge. We can't find a room. There is a little shitty motel just off of the strip, it's room rental is literally a head shop. It's $80 for the night.
We go in the room, there's one bed, the bed is so stained with semen that it is clearly used exclusively by sex workers and never cleaned. Nothing against sex workers - everything against people who don't clean up after themselves! There are three giant mirrors on the ceiling. The floor is gross, everything looks unkempt - but we have literally 0 other options and it's late.
My friends talked me out of sleeping in the bathroom. But my logic was that at least the hookers at some point used soap in the bathroom.
We all slept on the floor, my friend who was driving us most of the way home didn't even sleep in the room he paid $30 toward. He slept in the car.
The TV was clearly moved so that they could have sex on the stand at some point because I moved it to sleep on something that wasn't the godawful shag carpeting I assume is full of crabs or lice.
We were so screwed with literally no where else to stay, that we slept in room, went back to the Luxor an showered the second we could. I threw away my clothes I slept in.
My friend laughed at me as I tried to figure out a way to sleep without my arms or hands touching the ground, but said that he understood why.
Belated Honeymoon
Last December, my wife and I took a very belated honeymoon (about 10 years late) to Disneyworld. (She's a big fan, I am... accommodating.) We stayed in the Contemporary and when we got to the room, the cleaning staff had left rags everywhere and had stashed the cart and bag of trash in the bathroom. Nothing horrifying, but I dropped a lot cash for this. I went to the front desk to get somebody to get the trash out of the room and the guy at the front desk said "What? That sucks." I was like, man, get your manager please. Then I got the apology and a free meal on our meal plan.
Poop Pile
When my son was really small he had some medical issues, and he pooped in the bed when we were on vacation.
I felt terrible about it but called the front desk, told them, asked if they could send someone sooner than later to clean it up, and if I had to I'd pay extra. I totally understand that cleaning up feces creates a health hazard. I offered to pay extra if I had to or hire someone to come in and get it done. I really couldn't at the time and needed to concentrate on my son.
They said that wouldn't be needed and this was no problem.
Anyways, went out for the day. Returned end of day, open the door and the place smells much worse than when we left. I approach the bed and it was made, but looked a bit lumpy in the middle... Looking around the room everything else was done, garbage taken out, towels replaced, etc. But pulling back the sheets, there was the whole reason I called the front desk in the first place, still there, horribly.
I don't know if they just didn't tell the person who cleaned the room or what was up and they somehow just missed it, adjusted the bed as was but never pulling back the sheets? I have no idea, but they missed it.
So I called down, alerted them, they felt bad and couldn't explain it, we ended up with a new upgraded room as I'm sure they felt bad. But man I don't know how they missed that on the cleaning even without a heads up.
Not A Murderer
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It's a little long, but worth it.
Well... About 20 years ago my girlfriend at the time (now Mrs) were about to leave for a concert out of town early the next morning and carpool with a friend to the show (about 8 hours drive). We decided to get a hotel room to be closer to the people we were riding with.
We went to the front desk of the University Blvd Holiday Inn and got a room (on the cheap). We opened the door and found that the room was absolutely trashed with beer bottles and clothes still littering the room. Obviously, we didn't want a trashed room and went back to the desk where they gave us a different room. The second room was actually clean and we proceeded to celebrate finding a room, then getting some sleep.
We left early the next morning and made it to the show. Afterwards, we opted to make the brief drive from the show to a city on the coast about an hour from the show to meet up with friends for a few days on the beach. We may have extended that stay a couple days, too.
After about 5 days we returned to our city and went about our lives. Several days later one of my friends pages me that my grandmother has been trying to reach me for a few days. So, I called her up. .
I was NOT prepared for her response. She was screaming and carrying on. Well, apparently the police had been actively looking for me as part of several MURDER investigations. See, that first room we went into had more than clothes and malt liquor everywhere. There were a couple stolen guns, wallets from robbery/homicide victims, clothes with blood on them and lots more evidence of plenty of crimes.
The desk clerk had never fixed the registration in the books and had me as the last person in the room. Come to find out that the maintenance person for the hotel had been letting his homies stay at the Inn without permission. One of those cronies was apparently a pretty infamous gang banger. When I went in to sit down with the police, it was pretty quickly figured out that I was NOT who they were looking for and I was let go.
So... they didn't clean the room.
- WayL0st
Loaded And Loaded
I worked at an extended stay hotel for one of the major brands. One day a nice Japanese couple checked in to their room. Wife, husband, young child. About an hour later the husband comes down and begins to explain that he was pulling out the sofa bed for his child, when he realized that somebody had forgotten their bag of used heroin needles and their LOADED GLOCK, under the mattress. He calmly placed the gun and the bag of needles on the front desk as I rushed into the back office to get our GM as I was not equipped to handle the broken English conversation that was about to go down. I called the cops to come claim the weapon and was conveniently tasked with showing the housekeepers how to properly inspect the sofa mattresses. I don't work in hotels anymore.
The Poo Cruise
This was our room on a cruise many years ago.
First evening of a three day cruise. I'm fifteen. My brothers are younger. My mum is the only adult on the trip. Because I'm a teenager, like hell I'm going to spend time with my family. I find a guy my age and sing karaoke with him.
When it gets late I get back to the cabin. My mum is suffering from mild sea sickness. Brothers are asleep. I'm left with a top bunk. Great. I climb up, without turning on any lights so as not to wake my brothers. I spread open the blanket and...
It looks like poo. It can't be poo. I turn on the small mounted reading light, and yeah it's poo. Mostly dry. Three distinct piles on my snow white sheets.
I climb down. Mum doesn't believe me at first. When she goes to see for herself she tells me she's too sea sick to go to the reception, so I can take her bed and she will sleep in the chair.
It's f*cking poo! If they missed that, what else did they miss? But it's late, I'm so so so tired, I'm an awkward fifteen year old. Last thing I'm going to do is talk to someone. I resign myself to sleeping in the chair and prop my feet against the vanity desk. Now the light is on, because mum had to see the poo for herself.
As I lay in the chair staring at the ceiling I see poo. In the ceiling. I start to laugh. It's too absurd. I turn on all the lights and there are brown stripes in the ceiling! That's not all! If I look closely, it's also in the carpet. Faint, because they got most of it out, but it's there.
Mum says we'll sort this out in the morning.
I'm too angry to sleep!
I go to the information/reception alone. (Before cell phones, and it didn't occur to me to use the cabin phone.) I have to wait, the man at the desk is helping a drunk passenger. When it's my turn, he doesn't believe me. I get angry, which makes him believe me even less. He's condescending towards me. He goes on to say how every cabin is cleaned between trips and nothing like that has ever happened.
Well it happened now. To me. I threaten to throw all the soiled linen into the hallway and he finally agrees to come with me. We have to wait a bit for another staff member to take over the desk, and he's scoffing and puffing. He really doesn't want to do this.
I show him the poo in the bed and on the ceiling and floor, and now that I'm looking at the backside on the chair it's smeared into it as well.
The man is reeeeeaaaallly dismissive. He calls the cleaners, who come and change our sheets while me, mum and my sleepy brothers wait in the hallway.
They find poo in the shower as well.
They clean up the cabin, and the receptionist briefly blames the previous cleaning crew, but that's all we get in the way of apologies.
We don't get an apology, we don't get a new room, we don't get complimentary nothing. We go to sleep in the same room.
Except me, because I'm angry, shaky and full of adrenaline from having argued with an adult.
Youth Group
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I've worked in the hotel industry for many years in corporate sales.
A few years ago I got a call from a Director of Sales at a hotel who was upset at one of the groups we had booked into her hotel. It was a youth - religious group (read cheap, low-rates, and pretty un-supervised).
Many of these groups like to bring in their own food and coolers and snacks to keep meal costs down. Totally fine.
What's NOT fine is deciding to make grilled cheese sandwiches with the iron & ironing board.
So of course this group checks out on a Sunday, and in check all of the business travelers on Sunday night... and they wake up Monday morning to freshly press their suits & dress shirts for their important business meetings, only to have the irons leave giant iron sized grease stains all over their suits as they get ready to go to a conference or important meetings.
So this hotel not only had to replace over 100 irons & ironing board covers - but comp rooms & pay for dry cleaning (or in some cases reimburse) for a ton of expensive business clothes.
Needless to say, that "youth group" wasn't invited to stay with our hotels ever again.