A Hotel Guest Showed Up Looking Quite Unusual, Then Demanded Her Deposit Be Waived for a Special Status She Couldn’t Quite Name
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When you’ve worked in the customer service industry for long enough, you’ll get a real feel for which customers you can and can’t trust. It’s not one thing in particular, there’s just a general vibe around folk who turn up acting super entitled or shady. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t treat them equally, because of course you do – there’s always a chance you could be wrong about someone on first impression, and you’re a professional after all. But still, inside you might be a little more cautious.
The front desk attendant in this story has plenty of experience dealing with all kinds of customers, but one in particular stayed firm in her memory, for several reasons. For starters, the hotel guest in question had a very memorable experience. And even more than that, her level of entitlement was truly remarkable.
Read on to find out what happened.
Crazy local guest thinks I should waive the deposit
So I work at a Chromewood Suites and Brampton Inn that is located in a busy metro area – and one day this one lady comes in (you could tell that she’d had a lot of plastic surgery).
Anyway, she lives less than an hour away from the hotel and as you guys know, that is kind of a red flag.
She comes in trying to check in, and the room total plus deposit comes on the screen.
She said every time she stays there, she has a manager waive it (she’s never stayed there before, my system tells me that, and my managers would never do something that stupid).
Let’s see how this hotel attendant responded to the woman.
I told her that we cannot waive it and everyone has to pay it. Again, she told me that we always waive for her, so I told her that my system has no record of her ever staying with us,
She then asked for a manager. I told her that right now I am the manager, and I’m saying we’re not doing that (I’m only front desk but I am the manager on duty when there’s no manager).
She then asked me what happens to guests that don’t have the money for the deposit, so I told her, unfortunately, they can’t stay without it.
She made a really sad face. I asked her which hotels are just waiving for her. Because what’s the point of having it, if it just gets waived for everyone?
And this woman could barely get her own story straight.
She went back and forth between telling me she had the money and that she didn’t have the money.
She also told me she knows very powerful people in the baseball industry. She also told me she has the money but she never has to pay it because she’s a spoiled girl.
She was telling me her famous boyfriend baseball player and that I should go to the stadium nearby that he plays at and get an autograph.
But she told me that he doesn’t play about her.
This situation just kept getting weirder.
I should mention that during this whole thing, she kept going out to her car and spending forever in it – and also guests were making fun of her plastic surgery when they saw her outside.
She left without canceling the reservation, but when I ran a credit card pre auth it failed, meaning there is absolutely nothing on it.
She was also part of our company’s friends and family benefits plan so I had them report her in the morning.
I don’t know what ended up happening, but I do wonder how she ended up being on that program anyway.
This is a super weird situation, and clearly this woman had a lot going on.
But the logic is just as the hotel desk manager said: what is the point of having a deposit if you’re just going to waive it?
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And what was the real truth behind this woman’s strange behaviour?
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Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.
This person thought that if someone was entitled to a waived deposit, the front desk manager would definitely know them.
While others explained how she might be on the friends and family list.
Meanwhile, this Redditor encouraged her to proceed with this kind of person with caution.
The truth is, hotels take a deposit for a reason. If all people were respectful and careful in hotel rooms, they wouldn’t need to take a deposit at all, but sadly, that is not the case. All to often folk are completely disrespectful – breaking stuff, leaving a massive mess, even taking things home that don’t belong to them – and the hotel has to cover the cost of these things somehow. So if you don’t want to leave a deposit, you need to find a hotel that doesn’t take a deposit. But unless you are massively disrespectful to the hotel, you’re going to get that deposit back – they’re obliged to return it – so perhaps if you want your money, don’t damage or steal anything from the hotel room?
It’s clear that this woman had a very large ego, to turn up and demand to have her deposit waived. Honestly, if there was anyone that the hotel regularly waived the deposit for, this staff member – whose job it is to check in customers – would know them, definitely by name but probably they would recognise them too. And this woman falls into neither of those categories. So no deposit? No room.
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