In life, mistakes will happen. Most of the time, it’s as simple as admitting what happened and moving on.

This hotel employee thought she was dealing with exactly that when a customer called to explain that he had accidentally booked the wrong hotel.

Unfortunately, the reservation had been paid for with reward points, and her manager had made it very clear that employees were not allowed to touch those bookings.

That should have been the end of the conversation.

Instead, the employee found herself fielding call after call from support representatives, each one armed with a different version of the same story and convinced she should make an exception.

Before the whole thing was over, she started to wonder if anyone was actually telling her the truth.

Read on to see how it all played out.

“Don’t you think your manager would want you to make a judgement call here?” No. No, she would not.

The guest calls me very early on Saturday morning and opens the conversation with, “Hi. Good morning. I really really screwed this stuff up.”

He tells me that he is booking a room for his oldest son and nephew because they were staying in the general area for a funeral of a friend of theirs. However, he tells me he was sleepy this morning and selected the wrong hotel.

The hotel he wanted to choose is about 20 minutes away driving from where my hotel is. Understandable, so I pull up his reservation and see that he has unfortunately paid for the entire stay using points.

This is my first hotel gig, so what my manager says to me is the Bible, because I literally do not know this industry yet. She also has a tendency to micromanage, and I do not care enough about this weekend job to go against what she wants. So she tells me to never under any circumstances touch reservations booked through points.

She tries to explain the policy, but the rep won’t listen.

I inform the guest that I am unable to cancel his reservation because of the way that he has booked it and gave him the support line number. He is a bit frustrated, but he understands that it’s his fault, so he called.

The first rep calls the front desk like 15-minutes later and its obvious the guest changed up the story.

Now it’s that his father has died and he’s getting his underaged kids to a funeral for their grandfather. I didn’t bother correcting the rep, I just told him that I can’t do anything about it because of policy. He scoffs at me and says he wants to speak to a manager. I try to explain that she won’t be in for a few days, but he cuts me off and says, “Just transfer me.”

Done. Transferred. And sent to voicemail.

Then a second rep calls, and a third.

Then, the second rep calls. It’s a woman this time saying that the son is the one on the line with her now, crying about the messed up reservation. But the son seems to think that it is MY fault for booking him at MY hotel instead of the other one.

I tell the rep that I didn’t even make the reservation. She insists that someone at my hotel must have made the reservation. One quick confirmation number over and she says “Okay, I’ll handle it on my end,” then she just hangs up on me.

Weird. But okay.

The third rep calls. It’s a different male rep who says the wife of the person who booked is very upset because she insists that her husband wouldn’t have made that stupid of a mistake and clearly we did something to swipe the business from the other hotel. Thankfully, I didn’t have to tell the rep how stupid that sounded.

The third rep was a little harder to handle.

So he starts telling me to just cancel the reservation on my end so he can get them rebooked. I tell him no. That is against policy as per my manager.

He says that he is just trying to help the customer, and I just need to push the button.

I say that I can’t and he asks why. I repeat that it is against the policy set by my manager, and I will not be cancelling the reservation.

He AGAIN just tells me that it’s not a big deal and he’s never heard of such crazy policy from a hotel and that I was holding the customer HOSTAGE and keeping his kids from seeing their dead grandfather.

Frustrated, she sent him to her boss’s voicemail.

May I just remind everyone again that my hotel and the hotel they wanted to go to are LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR AWAY FROM EACH OTHER. So I finally get sick of him and transfer him to my manager’s voicemail.

Now the guest calls again.

He is frustrated, but trying to keep his calm when I tell him that I am not permitted to touch his reservation because of how it was booked. So he asks me the question from the title, “Don’t you think your manager would want you to make a judgement call here?”

On check-in day, the son and nephew show up.

… No. No, she would not. And I say, “I apologize sir, but I am nobody to go against company policy and speak for my superiors. She’s the manager for a reason.”

He relents and leaves her a voicemail.

Guess who shows up the next day at check in?

The son and nephew who are BOTH in their early 30s and inform me that the funeral home they have to go to is actually only 5 minutes away from my hotel. It took all my power to not scream.

Wow! What a mess!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a hotel guest who complained about noise from an event, then reported the employee who agreed with him.

Let’s check out what the readers over at Reddit think about this whole thing.

Here’s a valid point.

For this person, cancelling the room would’ve been a new problem.

The hotel employee should’ve asked for the name.

You’d think they knew.

This whole story is pretty crazy.

On one hand, the hotel employee did exactly what she was supposed to do. Her manager gave her clear instructions, and she followed them. That’s usually the safest thing an employee can do, especially when they’re new to a job.

At the same time, the support representatives should have known how to handle the situation without calling the hotel over and over again. Instead, they kept pushing for an exception and made an already frustrating situation even worse.

Then, as if things weren’t strange enough already, the actual guests showed up and revealed that the hotel was right where it needed to be the whole time.

Sheesh. Everyone involved could have handled this a lot better.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a waitress who refused to return a tip after a party returned to the restaurant with a complaint.