The most depressing s* I saw was a tired looking couple who brought in their bespectacled, NASA shirt wearing, 8 year old geek of a son in to have some fun. The parents couldn't have been more discouraging to him. He was excitedly bouncing around the room pointing out things that he thought were clues clues while the parents dismissed every idea he had and told him to stop getting so excited. The parents took charge and proceeded to ignore the obvious clues he was pointing out and spent most of the time pursuing dead ends. Sad part is his instincts were more often than not correct but his parents just didn't listen and refused to let him explore and try stuff out.

Hopefully his curiosity and enthusiasm survives them.

At our establishment we have a room called "Jailbreak" with a fake door towards the very end (it's covered with plywood). this girl takes one look at it and says "jail...break...." and charges the door full force and breaks through.

Just started working at escape the room and we have rules about not jumping out the windows and not sticking keys into wall sockets because it has all happened before.

Escape room employee here. In one of our rooms, we have an actor pose as a spy, and the people in the room had to solve a case to figure out who the traitor was. After they finished the puzzles, it turns out the traitor was actually the spy the actor was playing. The spy then pulls an obviously prop gun (orange tip and whatnot), and the group has to {defuse} a fake bomb. One of the groups that did this room was a police squad that was doing this to bond. When the actor pulled the fake gun and said some cheesy lines, the actor was promptly tackled and restrained until the cops realized it was all a game.

People have tried to climb through the ceiling tiles on multiple occasions. We now have to mention in the pre-game spiel that it's not necessary to climb through the ceiling tiles...

One of my co-workers said that a group started getting really destructive in the room, to the point where they literally threw the computer on the floor to see if something was hidden inside (there wasn't anything hidden inside, they need to use a special magnifying glass to read the monitor). We abruptly removed them from the room after that. They actually ended up coming back another day and were extremely well behaved. I guess they learned their lesson.

Someone cleared all the boxes and locks off of a table in the corner, laid down on it, and went to sleep until the group escaped.

I own an escape room and I once guided couple into one of our more moody ambiance room and they told me "we would totally base a sex dungeon off this vibe. See, you even have a desk in here to get started!"

Also one time I asked the group if they had ever played an escape game before, and an elderly gentleman responded "one time my wife tied me up and gagged me. Does that count?" His friends thought it was hilarious, but the high school couple that was obviously on a first date they were paired up with did not find it as funny.

We give people a box for them to bring in, so they can store their belongings while they play. One time, about halfway in, an inquisitive older man started going through their own stuff. He pulled out a purse and shouts guys "guys, I found some... this is our stuff isn't it" It was hilarious.

Employee here. One group gave up after 5 minutes, and decided to drink alcohol rest of the game. They paid 120€ for the game.

At my Escape Room it's a fairly common occurrence for first generation kids to bring their parents (from various countries - Vietnam, Bangladesh, Italy, Spain, we have many many people in this city) with them to the room, even though they don't speak English. I always feel bad for this reason, because a lot of the puzzles directly depend on English wordplay and stuff like that. But they seem to have fun just being with their kids, so we all have fun together.

One time a family came in that seemed to fit this profile...They went through the room, the children solving most of the puzzles, and the father following them around silently with a notepad and pen, nodding and writing things as they found clues.

They got out, I took their picture, and they left, and everyone seemed to have had a good time. When we clean up the room, we have to rip several of the pages off from the notepad so people can't see the clues or even the indents of the clues people had written down from previous games. I was looking forward to seeing what language the father had been writing in the whole time.

I reset the room, then get to the notepad, only to find: [deleted]

Finally, my time to shine!

We had a group that was evidently high. They weren't disruptive or anything, so we just briefed them, and took them to their room. So far so good.

We have cameras and microphones inside the rooms, that way we know what hints to give out, another important thing is that the room they were at had a small fountain, and since the particular aesthetic of this room was dusty, that water was filthy. I'm talking murky, brown-yellow, mud-water.

At one point one of the guys says he is thirsty, and proceeds to stick his mouth onto the fountain's stream and take a hefty gulp of the s-water. We spend a second of shock/guffaw, and tell them that drinking the fing water isn't part of the puzzle. The guy reads the hint and just says, "That's alright." He proceeded to do the same thing four times and drank the whole fountain (small fountain, but still like a gallon of mud-water).

We've had more inconvenient things happen, but that still remains as the worst thing I've ever seen.

One situation quickly came to mind when I read this. In our prison style escape room we have a laser maze that players need to crawl/climb through to deactivate and move forward. Two players are required to finish (or so I thought) the laser maze because there are 3 buttons to be pressed, where the third button is out of reach from the other two.

A family came in to play our game with a younger boy, a very fit (relevant) girl in her early twenties, their parents, and their grandfather who had some disability that required him to use those crutches that wrap around your forearms. So they play through and get to the laser maze. The girl got through fairly easily, but they needed to move fast since the timer was running. The young boy had a great idea, "Here! Use grandpa's crutch!" At which point he takes the crutch straight from grandpa and slides it past all the lasers to his sister at the other end. I was fascinated at this point but even with the crutch it was a long stretch to hit them all. The girl took a second to find the right spot on the floor, planted her foot there, went into a perfect perpendicular stretch with one foot on the ground, one foot on the far button, one hand on the middle button, and finally reaching the last button with the crutch.

Did a space stationed themed room. We got paired with a mother and her adult sons. The sons did just fine but mom was clueless. There was a prop fire extinguisher on the wall that she was CERTAIN had to be for something. For an hour she wandered around aimlessly carrying a fire extinguisher.

Pair of drunken female twenty somethings were dragged along to a group event, proceeded to demand DJ services and cartwheel in skirts before collapsing to the ground and splaying out. Odd time.

A customer opened a cryptex at the beginning of the game, figured out how the mechanism was set, the reset it to a secret word and closed it. I guessed PENIS, it was PENIS. Case closed.

Oh jesus, how can I forget this one: a little 12 year kid came up to me before the room and asked: "Are you in the room with us?" I replied: "No but I'll be in the control room" To which he replied: "Okay, good, so we can torture you when you don't give us any good hints"

When they were in the room he proceeded to say: "Give us some good hints you rotten child".

We use to have a giant banana as a mascot and once we had a group of kids that were intoxicated and the one of the guys in the room started crying so we decided to let him hold it. So the guy cuddled with it on the ground and fell asleep about 10 minutes into the game. Had the time of his life.

So ours is a prison themed escape, at one point there are 3 cells that need to be opened in order (one of them has a live actor in it that messes with you the entire time, even after you rescue him). Anyway, each cell is pretty much the same, with a toilet, shelf, and a few other items.

One guy was pretty drunk and repeatedly put bones and other shit in his pants to get a laugh out of his teammates, but they stopped paying attention to him while trying to actually make their escape. He must've gotten bored being so drunk and not caring about the escape room, he leaves the main group and heads back to he prison cell area. I'm watching on the cameras and see he's not with the rest of the group, so I start clicking around trying to find him. Sure enough, he's in a jail cell hovering over a toilet, taking a piss. There's no plumbing, they're definitely just props.

Actual escape room employee here! The weirdest thing I saw was a young couple, in our hardest room (they asked for our hardest), who when they couldn't solve our puzzles took off their shoes and just sat down and talked. When I would send them hints (to get them to start playing again), the lady would call me a commie. It was weird.

So we do proposals. Ring in the final puzzle box, proposal signs, whole package deal, people love it. Dude calls up to set up a proposal, I ask what room he wants, etc. So then I tell him the total price to book out the entire room for the proposal. He says he just wants to buy the two tickets for him and his girlfriend, I tell him we can't have strangers playing a game that their experience is impacted/altered by the fact that there's a proposal going on. Proposal happens in an Escape Room, there's no longer a game, it becomes about the proposal. I know this because I've seen it happen a hundred times.

Anyway, dude refuses to buy out all of the tickets. Says he wants strangers to be there, he's not going to buy the other four tickets. I hand the phone to my manager, they hash out details together.

Over the next three weeks leading up to the proposal, this guy calls every. Single. F_*_ing. Day. There's nothing else to figure out, we've got it all set up, but this guy is constantly badgering us.

The big day rolls around, he arrives early so he can hide out, and this dude is a kid. Like, pimple-faced, voice-cracking, hair-growing-in-weird-places kind of kid. Everybody in the control room is talking about him, because he's been a thorn in our collective sides for weeks, and we're speculating about telling him marriage at his age is a horrible idea, but whatever it's too late.

So he hides, the girl and her friends show up, they get started and we stash the dude in the second hidden room that they'll eventually end up in. Everybody crowds around the monitor to watch and this guy pulls out a bouquet of flowers and unfurls a sign that says "NAME REDACTED, will you go with me to PROM?"

And the entire staff loses their collective s. Weeks of constant pestering, endless phone calls, and the most stressful proposal deal we've ever put together. For a fing PROMposal.

She said no.