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Isn’t it insane how some people blame their teams for everything that goes wrong?

This employee shares how their manager overreacted to a complain from a guest.

There are Times When You Should Interrupt a Busy Desk. Health Situations are One of Them.

So I woke up to a group chat alert on my phone that started with the words URGENT! READ IMMEDIATELY IF YOU’VE BEEN ON DAYS OFF BEFORE COMING TO WORK!!!!

I’m one of the employees this applies to me because I’ve been on my days off and I’m going back to work tonight.

This is where it gets weird…

The text message tells me that a health issue has arisen with a guest and to go to the hotel’s notation system for full details as they can’t go into full details on this group chat for privacy reasons.

So now, I’m logging into the notation system.

According to the notes, a guest called down to request trash pick up and to swap out some towels. No big issue so far. The houseman goes up to deliver and swap out the towels and pick up the trash.

Afterwards I’m assuming he went about his duties as usual. Let’s fast forward to a about an hour and half later. The same room calls down, this time it’s the mother.

Apparently the person who called the first time was the guest’s son who’s about 13 or 14 years old. She’s not frantic, but she’s highly concerned. You see, her son has just been diagnosed with pink eye.

UH OH…

She was out running errands like getting his eye drops and getting Lysol and disinfectant wipes, etc., to handle cleaning the room herself until the condition goes away. She was gonna let us know on her way back in.

If you’re wondering why she didn’t let us know on her way out it was because apparently the desk was swamped with a large school group that arrived earlier than expected and was checking in.

So the desk was busy.

Not a great excuse but I understand. Besides, she stuck the DO NOT DISTURB sign in the door, and told her son not to call us. The problem at this point is the fact that kids don’t listen.

Immediately the manager’s go into panic mode. All towels that have been collected are immediately thrown into the washer to be washed multiple times.

That’s INSANE!

The houseman is told to wash his hands and face thoroughly, and unfortunately must be sent home for the next three days.

He’ll be paid for the full day today, and luckily for him, he’s only going to miss one actual day of work since his days off started the day after tomorrow. If no symptoms arise, he can come back after those days off.

All other emotes employees had to do the same. With exception of the desk, housekeeping and maintenance wear gloves, so they’ll just have to stick with washing their hands and monitoring for symptoms.

On top of that, the back of house (housekeeping and maintenance for those of you who aren’t in the hotel business) and the front of house (front desk, lobby, basically everywhere that the guests can see) must be cleaned and disinfected three times a day for the next few days.

Things didn’t go as she had planned…

On audit (during my shift) I will now be expected to wipe the desk thoroughly for the next few days as well.

The key point here is that this happened for two main reasons.

The first was because of the towels and the trash. And those of you in the business are probably asking how this swap out happened if there was a DND on the door.

After all, do not disturb means do not disturb. Well, when the houseman saw the DND, he did what he was supposed to.

He radioed to the front desk about the DND sign, and we called the room to let the guest know that the items he requested were outside but he needed to open the door.

The second was because of a lack of communication between the guest and the desk. I get that the guest saw we were swamped and figured the DND sign was enough to keep us out.

They were not expecting this…

It probably would’ve been, but we still need to know because when your only defense for our safety is a DND sign and hoping that your kid listens to you instead of acting like teenager, please, to anyone who reads this this who is not a hotel employee but a guest, please, please, please, interrupt us.

And before anyone decides to give hate to the guest, please don’t. It was an accident caused by a mistake. We’re not happy about it, but we’re not being vindictive about it, so neither should anyone here.

In their case, their room will not be serviced until she gets us verification from a doctor that her son’s pink eye is gone. Towels, sheets, amenities, etc, will all be left outside the door.

As well as a myriad of other precautions are being taken.

YIKES! That sounds like a stingy situation!

Let’s find out how people on Reddit reacted to this one.

This user thinks the employer needs to rethink their policies here!

Exactly! This user has never heard a story like this before.

This user knows how important sanitizing everything is!

This user thinks this guest won’t get the hate here!

Exactly! This user knows the manager is the corrupt one in this story.

Some managers really need to manage better!