People Break Down The First Thing They Do When Entering A Hotel Room
Reddit user BlundeRuss asked: 'What’s the first thing you do when you get into a hotel room?'
My family went on a lot trips when I was young, and we always stayed in hotel rooms. Around the time my brother and I were old enough to stay in a room by ourselves (our parents would stay in another one, usually across the hall), he also became a bit of a germaphobe.
At the time, I actually believed hotels changed the sheets on the beds daily, so when my brother fretted about the cleanliness of the hotels, I reassured him they were fine. He believed me at first, since I was his big sister, but by the time he was 12, he got suspicious.
During one of our trips, he decided to test this by making a mark on his pillow cover with a pen and turning the pillow cover inside out before we left for sightseeing the next morning. When we returned, he turned the pillow cover back, and his mark was still there, proving that the sheets hadn't been changed. He only had to do this one more time, during our next trip, for me to realize this wasn't a one-off.
Ever since, and even now in adulthood, my brother and I always intentionally spill something on our sheets during our first night in order to get clean sheets, at least for the duration of our stay. This, in fact, is the first thing we do.
I'm not the only person who does something a bit quirky like this when they first enter a hotel rooms. Plenty or Redditors have stories about this and are ready to share.
It all started when Redditor BlundeRuss asked:
"What’s the first thing you do when you get into a hotel room?"
Preparing For Sights
"Go to the balcony to see if it's going to be public nudity or private nudity during my morning coffee."
– hoffarmy
"I love that this doesn’t change your plans, just prepares your mind. Excellence."
– sewahyelah
Show Me The Truth
"Put my bags up on something and check the mattress. I also bought a UV flashlight but after using it at home I’ve decided that bringing it to a hotel would be unnecessary torture. Nothing is clean when you shine the thing on it. And I mean nothing."
– Fatguy73
Temperature Check
"One of my close friends travels a ton for business. She also loves to sleep in a f**king ice box."
"She has found some resource for how to basically jailbreak hotel thermostats. Each hotel thermostat has a specific key sequence that unlocks the lower temps that the hotel normally doesn’t allow guests to set because, you know, money."
– Sp4ceh0rse
"I do this in every hotel."
– jubilee__
Sweet Relief
"Set bags down."
"Look at room for cleanliness."
"Take a dump."
– PuzzledCitron8728
"I showed up early to a hotel after 12 hours straight of driving. Took forever for them to get me in the room (really it was probably only 30 minutes and they were super accommodating)."
"Anyways, I had been feeling the tyrannical gouging of a sh*t demon trying to claw it's way out for about half an hour beforehand. I ran down the hall, opened the door, threw my bag at something, and was kinda hovering over the toilet just in time. Hadn't put cheek to rim yet and my darling baby began his exit."
"It wasn't until after I looked up that I realized neither door was the self-closing kind and you could see all the way in from the hallway."
– coreylahe
"You’ve unlocked a childhood memory. I stayed in a lot of hotels while growing up and I saw someone in your position once, trail of belongings leading to the toilet. So I went and shut the door for him."
– scarfknitter
Disney Magic
"Find the bible and flip through it. When my sister and I were kids, we went to Disney, and I think she asked why is there always a bible in the drawer, waved it by the spine and 20 bucks fell out. So I always check now."
– TyWiggly
"I found $100 that way. 5 crisp 20's,. I was pretty broke at the time too."
– weisblattsnut
Always Check
"First, I look at the area between the mattress and headboard for any signs of bed bugs, then under the sheets. I’ve never encountered them, but I’ve heard so many horror stories that I’m paranoid about them."
– triceraquake
"As someone who worked in hotels, I always double check the door locks and then inspect for bed bugs."
– Chatterbxer
Yikes!
"Look for cameras. I'm a paranoid f**k."
– Gubble_Buppie
"If anyone wants to see an overweight guy in his mid-40s eat pringles in his underwear while reading Stephen King novels, then they have my flabby white blessing."
– oppernaR
"They sell surprisingly easy to use scanners on Amazon. I found a camera in an air bb bedroom alarm clock, threw a towel over it and got the whole stay for free. Some will detect signals but the best way is there’s a looking glass that’s red and it emits a light and you turn off all the lights and look around the room. Any active camera will shine like a cats eyes when you skim over it."
– Vacation_Kinkycouple
The Things We Find
"I check in odd places to see if anyone stashed drugs or money. You would be surprised at all the sh*t I’ve found over the years!"
– Deathbot-420
"We found an axe under the bed once."
– Punkstarbabe
Ick.
"Yank the comforter off the bed and throw it in the corner. they rarely wash those things."
– whatever32657
"I discovered this recently while calling home to say good night to everyone. Dried food stuck to the comforter. Threw that bad boy off the bed."
– DuchessofSquee
"I cleaned an air BnB for a little while and I was so disturbed when they told me they didn't wash the comforter because hotels don't.... Like I guess I get it because they're heavy and they're trying to save water on the washes but yuck dude... Cleaning that air Bnb made me NEVER want to book one because of the sh*t the owners wouldn't LET me clean... I don't think I'd ever survive as a maid for a hotel, I could never travel again lol."
– ModestMeeshka
It's A Process
"Make a condom for the TV remote control. Take the ice bag from the ice bucket and put the remote in it. Now I never have to touch the remote."
– dontknowafunnyname2
"I'm sure disinfectant wipes could do the job."
– Pheobe0228
Check For Monsters...People Monsters
"Make sure no one is hiding under the bed or in the bathroom 😂😅"
– HeadInTheClouds916
"I travel a lot for work…and I’m shocked no one else mentioned this. First I check the closet, under the bed, the bathroom for a hiding serial killer…then check the mattress for bedbugs…"
– pdxmikaela
Today I Learned
"Check for cleanliness and then take pictures Traffickcam."
"Traffickcam is an app where you take specific pictures of your room and then upload them to their database. They use these pictures to check on the location of human trafficking victims."
– slappymasterson
"Take a picture of the room and post it on the Trafickcam app so if the room or similar has been used by human traffickers maybe it will help find someone."
– CatsInTrenchCoat
And thanks to those last two stories, I'm a little scared to stay in another hotel.
Hospitality Workers Break Down The Worst Thing They've Ever Found In A Guest's Room
A hotel room is a unique concept.
On one hand, it is an inherently temporary piece of property. A guest is exactly that--a guest. They stay for some interval of time and leave the room behind for another guest to occupy it again in the future.
And yet, there is a strange feeling of privacy and ownership felt by the guest throughout the stay. It's "their room" even if that's not exactly true.
Sometimes, that feeling of ownership goes pretty far. Some people get WAY too comfortable during their stay and make it their own in the absolute worst way possible.
thesavagepotatoe asked, "People who work in the hotel industry, what's the worst thing you've found in a guest's bedroom?"
False Alarm
"I didn't work there, but was in a hotel's conference room for a class to be an EMT (emergency medical technician, aka the people who work on ambulances). We're in the middle of class and hear a bunch of sirens."
"The instructors pause to wait for them to pass, but we realized they all came to the hotel. They all ran into the hallway to see if they could help with whatever emergency was happening, but it was mostly cops."
"Then we heard them say the room number of one of the instructors. All our heads turned to them like a scripted comedy movie and he looked an equal balance of confused and mortified."
"To avoid having to carry equipment in and out of the hotel every day, they'd been storing teaching equipment in the one instructor's room."
"Housekeeping had walked in and saw two bodies crumpled on the floor behind the bed and panicked, calling 911. They were the dummies used to teach CPR and intubation."
What Exactly Happened Here
"Semen covered tv with a teddy bear's head half ripped off" -- JazzlikeHour4
"Next time dont rent room to bears" -- Peterpumpkin_69
"I've seen similar. Abandoned and mutilated sex dolls too." -- dropthemasq
A Variety of Offenses
"It's a three way tie between the guests who wiped in the towels and rubbed it against the wall (then laughed at housekeeping when they came in for service)..."
"...the young lady who stuck her tampon on the wall and the blood acted as a glue and cemented it there..."
"...or the guest who left three week old milk in the refrigerator (but where only in for three days, so that milk was already 2 1/2 weeks old when they brought it in)"
"Although.... most of our guests don't do these kinds of things, luckily we usually have a good crowd. But when someone wants to be the outlier, they make it count."
-- llcucf80
A Laundry List
"My mother and sister work/worked in the same hotel since I was 8. I worked there for a few years, but I did laundry."
"There have been dead bodies, sh*t smeared, drugs and syringes (my sister had to get tested for AIDS and Hepatitis)."
"There's occasionally the guy who greets them at the door naked, and tells them to 'come right in.'"
"The occasional 'forgotten' wedding ring that ends up in lost and found until there's been no claim for six months, then the finder gets to claim it."
"Teenage sports teams can be disgusting beyond belief. Truckers are amazingly clean, friendly, and polite."
Time Capsule
"I cleaned out a rental unit and among most of their furniture being infested with fleas and bedbugs, they tore out flooring, cut some wires to the bathroom, and left a mattress with a dark body shaped stain."
"The fridge was unplugged but still full, sat for a couple weeks while the eviction was being posted, and a bone-thin cat wandering around, desperate for any food/water."
"After our initial walk through we had to call police because we found drug paraphernalia, needles and pipes inside the couch."
"This wasn't a slum either, just an older neighborhood from the 70's in a decent suburb, but holy sh** are some people incapable of living civilized."
-- syfyguy64
A Rented Terrarium
"Haven't worked in a hotel before, but when I rented a room one time I didn't realize that there was a small window opened, so when the night came around my room was absolutely FLOODED with mosquitoes and I'm talking hundreds of them."
"I tried to kill some, but I had to give up as they were crawling all over the ceiling and I didn't even make a dent in their population after 20 minutes of trying."
"I went to sleep with maybe 60 dead mosquitoes on the floor and like 80 splattered across the wall, never mind the hundreds upon hundreds still alive."
"I felt ashamed and so so bad for the cleaning lady that came in the next morning, but she got everything out. It was mad impressive."
-- roach_dad
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
"A filthy glass sex toy inside the rooms coffee pot. I showed it to one of the other girls."
"She removed it and cleaned it off and took it home with her. She said since it was made of glass it would be safe to use after being washed."
-- reneejames67
Whole Room to Himself
"A rabbit...just by himself. They left him behind." -- klag103144
"Guest was magician. Trick went wrong, turned self into rabbit." -- Stan_Achton
"Awww people are mean." -- Amie80
How Big We Talkin'?
"A gun under the mattress."
"A huge, I'm talking like GIGANTIC, black strap on."
"Someone had a meth lab in the bathroom, and were printing fake credit cards..."
"The interesting part is that I've never worked for like, a shi**y hotel. Two of them were a normal, nice Hyatt. The enormous sex toy was found at the luxury boutique property where I work now."
Tis the Season
"My [mother in law] said when she used to clean rooms, some hunter had butchered a turkey in the bathroom."
"Makes me wonder what kind of person would think something like that would be ok."
-- zrennetta
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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.)