When company policy clashes with human empathy, doing your job can leave you feeling like the villain.

So, what would you do if a polite, well-dressed woman started sleeping in your hotel lobby each night, without causing trouble, but the company policy doesn’t allow it?

Would you bend the rules and risk your job?

Or would you follow protocol and ask her to leave, even though she clearly had nowhere else to go?

In the following story, one hotel worker finds themselves facing this very decision and is having a hard time with it.

Here’s the full story.

AITA for kicking out a homeless woman from the hotel I work at?

So, I work at a 5-star hotel, and more than a month ago, a woman came to the lobby at around 22:00 and asked if she could stay for a while inside.

She was presentable and polite, so we agreed.

At around 4 AM, she left.

The day after, she came back with the same request, and again we allowed her to stay and sleep for a while, until she left at around 5 AM.

This kept on repeating for the next days, and she started coming earlier, asking for food and drinks from the bar, and staying until later, and asking for breakfast in the morning.

The supervisor was not happy when he found out.

We got a warning from our supervisors saying that this cannot keep on happening, and the next day, when she came again (3 weeks after her first appearance), we had to kick her out at around 2 AM.

However, she kept on coming every day.

She has now been coming to the hotel every night for 5 weeks straight, where she has asked more than once if she could shower in one of the rooms, storage her heavy bags which she carries every night and even paid for a room (more than 200$ per night) in one of the nights.

They tried to help her in other ways, but she refused.

We have offered to help her several times, giving her recommendations for homeless shelters and the like, but she keeps on denying.

The reception team has even offered to get her a room at a cheap hotel, to which she says no, and she claims to have no friends or family who can help her.

The part I cannot understand is: she always has clean clothes, smells nice ,and is polite.

She often uses her MacBook and iPhone at the reception and has never disturbed anyone.

I know from a logistics point of view, we can give her shelter and leftover food, but it’s part of the hotel’s policy that NO ONE can sleep in the lobby, not even guests.

The last few times we had to kick her out, she complained that no woman should be left alone in the streets at night and it really makes me feel bad to ask her to leave.

AITA?

Eek! That’s a tough spot for anyone.

Let’s see what advice the people over at Reddit have to offer.

This person thinks everyone has done all they can.

She should really consider this.

According to this comment, you never know what someone is up to.

Here’s someone who sympathizes but thinks the woman may just be playing games.

There’s nothing more they can do.

It’s sad that this woman is going through something, but it’s not the hotel’s responsibility to help her.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.