Sometimes karma just needs a little help from someone paying attention.

So, what would you do if you watched a hotel employee mock and dismiss a guest whose belongings had just been ruined? Would you step in and speak your mind? Or would you stay out of it, but find another way to get back at the hotel?

In the following story, one hotel guest finds himself in this situation and opts for the latter. Here’s what happened.

You want to treat my fellow convention-attendee like garbage? OK…there will be consequences.

30 years ago, having just gotten my degree, I went to a national convention to look for a job. (I didn’t get a job, but I did meet an amazing author—Gene Wolfe—and get an autographed book for free. Fair trade.)

The convention was in Miami Beach in July. It was absolutely miserable weather. When it wasn’t horrifically hot, it was raining. Well, it was ALWAYS horrifically hot, but when the sun wasn’t making life miserable, it was due to heavy rains.

Anyway, when the convention finished up and we were checking out of our small hotel near the convention center, my fiancé and I gathered our luggage and went to the front desk to check out and pay our bill.

The desk clerk was listening to guest complaints.

When we arrived at the front desk, the desk attendant was refilling their small, overpriced snack vending machine while treating one of our fellow conventioneers like garbage. As we stood there waiting to pay, we overheard the woman complaining to the hotel guy.

She apparently had been staying in one of the rooms on the top floor, and the roof leaked. The rainwater went into her closet and ruined a lot of her clothes.

The hotel guy listened to her, but it was pretty clear that he didn’t care. She was just another customer who was going to be checking out today and he didn’t have to worry about repeat business, and he was obviously not going to reimburse her for the full cost of the damages from the rain.

He had left the vending machine unlocked.

It seemed to me that she’d be lucky if she got anything.

Finally, he paused the conversation/argument with her long enough to take our money and check us out. Then he told her that they could continue their discussion in the back office.

As we prepared to leave the hotel, he escorted her back to the office so he could (presumably) tell her to get ****** without other guests overhearing.

I watched them walk to the offices. Then I realized that the hotel guy had left the vending machine unlocked, and he’d left the keys in the lock.

They probably never found those keys.

So, I grabbed the vending machine keys and threw them away when we got to the airport.

There were multiple keys on the keyring, and it looked to me as though they were the same.

Since then, I’ve always hoped that I threw away all of the vending machine keys because the hotel staff were stupid enough to leave all of them on one keyring.

Wow! The best part is that no one even knows why the keys disappeared.

Let’s check out how the readers over at Reddit feel about this situation.

This person was not impressed.

Here’s someone who thinks it’s more than petty revenge.

According to this reader, they may have been reaching a deal.

This person thinks he should’ve turned the keys in a few months later.

He sort of crossed the line. For one, he doesn’t know if they reached an agreement, and for two, what he did was actually illegal.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.