She Knew Hotel Night Shifts Could Get Weird, And One Call Took the Title for Strangest of Them All
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Most of us live our day to day lives by waking up in the morning, going about our daily business, and then going to bed at night – day after day, for our entire lives. Only some folk – those who work night shifts, are jet lagged, as well as the nocturnal folk including new parents and people struggling with insomnia – get to truly experience what life is like in towns and cities during the dark hours, when more folk are sleeping.
Sure, if you’ve gone on a night out that has stretched into the early hours of the morning you might have got some idea of what your neighbourhood is like in the early hours, or if you’ve caught a late flight – or an early one – perhaps you’ll know of the shopkeeper who sweeps the pavement outside their store before the first light of dawn, or how the nearby bakery smells before the sun comes up. But for the majority of folks these things are a mystery – as is the way that, through the night, those folk who are awake can get very weird.
Fortunately for those of us who don’t want to stay up at night, people like the woman in this story have plenty of experiences to share.
Read on to find out what happened to her.
The typical calls on audit
It was a fairly quiet night at the hotel, with nothing too pressing happening: no sports tournaments had begun and the concerts and summer events were still over a week away.
I was finishing up my pre-audit task list when the phone rang. I did the usual greeting and the man on the other end went off. Just straight off the bat.
“When I called earlier they said that my reservation wasn’t there and I finished talking to ExpOTA and they said it was and that it wasn’t cancelled and this hotel is right near the park the concert is being held at and I already paid for my reservation. We have an elderly mother who has this on her BUCKET LIST.”
I was just sort of floored because I had said little more beyond the hotel name and this man was still going off.
Let’s see what else the guy had to say.
“When we emailed your GM, he said he could see our reservation and that it had been cancelled and I want it reinstated, we did not cancel it and OTA says it is not cancelled either! This is discrimination! She’s 85 and wheelchair bound!”
I didn’t know who this man even was, I had no names or confirmation numbers, so I waited for a pause in his tirade.
Finally, when he breathed, I asked, “What date is the reservation for and the last name it’s under?”
He replied, “You already have that! You guys all cancelled my reservation! Remake the reservation now! It was $109/night for three nights. Your GM said he would already do this! I have the emails from him right here!”
But this hotel front desk worker needed more than just this guy’s angry responses.
I asked, “…Did he send you a confirmation email? What were the dates of the reservation and name on it?”
The guy said, “No, no, no. You ALREADY have this information! Our credit card was already charged twice for this whole mess! It’s like you don’t know how to run a hotel!” Note that I still didn’t have that information for literally any part of looking for a reservation.
He continued, “I spoke with your GM and he said it was fine, I have the emails! Look!” At this point I wondered if he was pressing the phone to the computer screen, but then a woman in the background of his side agreed that she could see the emails, which… did’t help me see them?
The guy then told me, “See? I have the emails, your GM said it was done but to call back and see that it was all good!”
Yikes. Things were about to get even sketchier.
I asked, “Can I have your name?” I was trying super hard to be patient and debate if this was a prank or not. “I can send my GM an email to reach back out to you if you don’t want to provide it so he can clear up any confusion.”
Then I heard a whisper, presumable from the woman in the background, “****, just hang up and call back in like eight hours, it’ll be a different person then! Just get her name!” It’s actually surprising how few people realise that if they whisper right next to a phone, it still gets picked up by it.
The guy then told me, “You do that. I need your name though, for when I complain that you didn’t help! For the review!”
I gave him my name, he hung up and I typed up an email to my GM about this weird… scam? I’m not even sure what they wanted, they can’t get a reservation made without giving me their names to begin with.
This was a super weird situation, and the hotel worker did really well to stay calm with this.
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They did everything they could – and as for the scammers?
Better luck next time.
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Let’s see how folks on Reddit responded to this.
This person agreed that they did really well to stay professional.
While others thought that, if it wasn’t a scam, it was a mistake on the caller’s end.
Meanwhile, this Redditor confirmed that overnight, people get weird.
The fact that these people called at night time with a very dramatic and elaborate story, coupled with their refusal to actually give a name is what makes this situation so sketchy. Because anyone who calls a hotel – or most places, to be honest – knows that they will have to give a name in order to have the person on the other end of the phone pull up the information about their booking or request. Because these folk handle hundreds or even thousands of customers every day – giving this vague information is never going to be enough.
But the really sketchy part is the fact that they needed to get the hotel worker’s name so that, as the whispering woman inadvertently revealed, they could make sure they dealt with someone else next time. Because they’d figured out that this woman wasn’t gullible enough to fall for their bait, so they hoped that someone else would be. Who knows what they were hoping to get out of this, but luckily, she went with her gut.
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