Most people know that if they leave something behind, they should probably try to get it back sooner rather than later.

After all, businesses only have so much space, and they can’t hold onto every lost item forever.

This hotel employee thought she was helping a guest track down a phone charger that had been left behind during a previous stay.

At first, it sounded like a fairly recent issue.

Then she finally found the reservation and realized that it had actually been nine months.

Read on to see what happened.

Lady lectures me and demands to speak to the manager about a phone charger she left there… nine months ago

Like all hotels, we have a lost and found system because people leave things behind all the time.

The item is bagged, labeled, sorted into a storage box based on the floor it was found on, and then the information is written in a binder so we have an easy way to know exactly what’s in our lost and found bins. I’ll abbreviate Lost & Found as “L&F” for the sake of brevity.

We keep L&F items for 90 days. If they’re not claimed by that time, they become property of the hotel and are typically claimed by whichever housekeeper wants it. If no one wants it, it’s thrown out. The number one items left behind are phone chargers.

Most people don’t bother calling and asking for them to be returned, so after 90 days, they get put in a drawer in the office for the employees to use and to lend out to any guest who forgot their own charger.

The lady didn’t remember any details.

So, Kathy comes in with her husband. I greet them, start checking them in, and then Kathy says, “I left something here during my last stay, and I never got it back.”

I said, “Oh! I’m sorry. What was it?”

She replied, “A phone charger.”

Okay. So I try looking up her last reservation, but for some reason, the system ain’t havin’ it. Name, phone number, email address… nothing I search is bringing up any results.

I ask Kathy if she remembers the room number or dates she stayed. She said no, but “she spoke to the manager on the phone multiple times when she first left it there, and he said he’d ship it back to me, but it never arrived.”

Unfortunately, she was too busy to look harder at that moment.

Right. Okay.

I tell her, “Well, I’m sorry, but nothing is coming up in my search results right now. I can look a bit harder later on when we aren’t so busy.”

She snapped, “It’s very unprofessional for you to not have any record of our last stay.”

Lady… obviously we do have a record, but it’s hard to find when the name isn’t turning up results, and I don’t know what date or room number you stayed in.

I told her, “I understand, and I’ll do my best to find it when I have a few minutes. I can call you when I find something, okay?”

A few minutes later, the lady was calling the desk.

She went to her room, but not ten minutes later she called the desk to ask me if I’d found her reservation yet. My sister in Christ, I haven’t even had a chance to breathe yet. I tell her no, but I’ll call her when I do. She asked if I could physically go back to the L&F and look through everything to see if I can find her charger.

Ma’am, what in the ****…

So, I asked, “Do you remember what room you were in last time, or what date you stayed?”

She half scoffs, half laughs, and says, “No! Of course not! You don’t need that information to find my charger!”

Then, she remembered an important detail.

I replied, “Well, that’s how our L&F is organized, so I either need that or I need to see your reservation, which I haven’t had a chance to find yet.”

Then, she asks, “Can you search by my rewards number?”

I told her, “Yes, but I’ve already tried that.”

She corrected me, “No, no, no, my old rewards number from my old phone number.”

That did the trick.

Why no, that didn’t cross my mind. She read it off to me, and her reservation popped right up. And I don’t know what the **** I expected, but it sure wasn’t a reservation from February 5th. I stared at it and blinked for a second, wondering if she was ******* kidding me. I asked her if the date sounded correct, and she said, “Yes! That’s it!”

My sister in Christ. What the ****. That was 9 months ago. I even said, “Oh, that was nine months ago…”

“I know that. I told you I spoke to your manager multiple times, and he promised to ship it back, but he never did.”

To appease her, I said, “I, uh… let me check our L&F log real quick. Please hold.”

On that day, there were no phone chargers logged.

So I went back and looked at our L&F binder, and there wasn’t even anything logged in there. Not a single phone charger on that day or the next. Which also means that the manager wouldn’t have sent anything back because nothing was found in the first place. I pick up the phone again and tell her.

She’s angry and says that I actually need to go back to the L&F closet and look through everything to make sure.

I assured her, “There’s nothing documented about you leaving a charger behind. And even if you did, we get rid of items after 90 days.”

At this point, she was angry. “You’re telling me you threw out my personal property? That you just get rid of things like that? That’s irresponsible, unprofessional, and disrespectful to the person whose property it is. You should be keeping things until people come back for them.”

At this point, the guest was getting more upset.

Yeah, sure, Kathy, because who knows when Gertrude IV might call and demand to have her ******* toenail clippings from two years ago returned. It’s not feasible to keep all L&F items forever.

I tried to empathize with her, “I understand, but that’s our policy here. I can pass this on to the manager who will be here tomorrow morning if you’d like.”

She got very demanding, “I’d like for you to go look for my phone charger.”

Finally, I asked, “I sa— sigh. Is it a regular iPhone charger?”

She offered to give her a phone charger.

“Yes, it’s an iPhone charger.”

“Well, I’ll give you another one if you want to stop by the desk sometime today.”

“Fine. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

So I pulled one out of our drawer, made sure it was clean, and waited for her to come down. I thought this would be the end of it.

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But alas…

When she kept complaining, she showed the guest the binder.

I gave the charger to her, and she stood there lecturing me about how unprofessional this whole situation is and how irresponsible we are. And then she says she’ll be speaking to my manager in the morning. I texted my manager a heads-up so he didn’t end up ambushed unexpectedly by this woman in the morning.

Sure enough, the next morning, she came down to talk to someone. It happened to be my FOM, who told her the same thing I did the night before. After this lady yelled at her some more, she went and got our L&F binder and dropped it on the counter.

“Look, see the dates here? There’s no mention of any charger found on those dates.”

She swore it was a man.

“But I spoke to a man who said he’d ship it to me!”

FOM went and got GM, who said, “Ma’am, I’m the only man who works here, and I didn’t speak to you about shipping a charger.”

“Well, you’re not the man I talked to! It was a different man!”

“I’m the only man who works here. Didn’t the agent from last night give you another charger?”

Now, she’s leaving a bad review.

“YES, SHE DID. But that’s not the point! This entire staff is handling this extremely unprofessionally. You’re all unprofessional, rude, and disrespectful. I didn’t want to have to write a bad review, but I can see I’ll have to.”

FOM tells her that’s fine and says, “Have a nice day!”

She left, but I can guarantee you that she did not have a nice day. I can’t wait to read her review. That’ll be worth a good laugh.

Geez! Some people get so upset over the littlest things.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a professor who missed a major funding deadline after they told their graduate student to leave them alone.

Let’s see how the people over at Reddit feel about it.

It sounds like there may be more to this.

Imagine not needing your phone for a full year.

They will if you ask.

There are so many left behind that this just makes sense.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a barista whose keen eye uncovered a customer scheme for free coffee.