Three Locks, Zero Ways Out. Inside the Claustrophobic Hotel Emergency That Left an Innocent Couple Trapped at the Worst Possible Moment
Pexels
When you travel widely, it seems inevitable that you will come home with plenty of stories of strange things that happened on your adventures. But if your hotel stays are limited to your own state or country, you would expect that things would, to you at least, feel a bit more run of the mill. Because you’re used to how hotels and transport, restaurants and tourist attractions work in your own country at least – right?
For the couple in this story, their hotel stay was only upstate, so that the girlfriend could be with her friend while she was giving birth. It was a totally normal, albeit exciting time. But an error on the hotel’s part led to an hours-long drama that ultimately concluded with the fire department being called, as well as a sensational story to tell.
Read on to find out what happened.
Guest here with a wild story
So I wanted to share a wild hotel story that happened to me a while back. I was traveling upstate with my ex (we were still together at the time), and we booked a hotel for a couple of days.
Check‑in went great. The front desk worker was super nice, recommended a place to eat, and honestly made a good first impression.
After we got our keys, I unpacked the car, we grabbed food, and when we got back I started setting up my PlayStation.
I was planning to drop my ex off at the hospital for her friend’s birth and then come back to the hotel the next day to play games and kill time.
And for a while, everything seemed totally normal.
Once everything was set up, my ex said she needed more pillows. So I went to the front desk and asked. The staff member said she’d try to get us some, so I went back to the room.
This is where everything went downhill.
The room door had three locks: the latch lock you can crack open to see outside, the key‑card lock, and a regular deadbolt.
When I got back, I locked all three. About an hour later, the front desk worker came with the pillows. I looked out the window, saw it was her, and went to unlock the door.
But that was when everything started to get weird.
Two locks opened. The deadbolt did NOT.
I tried everything. Nothing worked. I ended up yelling through the door that the deadbolt was stuck. The front desk worker even threw her shoulder into the door trying to force it open. Still nothing.
She called the hotel owner, who had a master key for all the deadbolts. Even that didn’t work.
It got so bad that the front desk worker literally gave me permission to escape the room “by any means necessary” as long as I didn’t break the window. I was on YouTube trying to figure out how to unlock a deadbolt from the inside.
Of course, they had no choice but to call the fire department.
About fifteen minutes later, the fire department showed up. They yelled through the door for me to stand back. Meanwhile my ex was just lying on the bed like this was all normal.
The firefighters used some special tool to open the door, and once they got it open, I grabbed our stuff and walked out. The front desk worker was apologizing non-stop.
Turns out the room shouldn’t have been rented out because they’d been having issues with that deadbolt. She thought it was fixed because other staff had been using the room.
And before anyone says I shouldn’t have locked it — she personally recommended locking the deadbolt because of the crime rate in the area.
And he really wasn’t impressed by the service from that point.
We got moved to another room, got the pillows, and that was it.
No free night, no discount, no compensation. Just the story.
Honestly, I’m not even mad. It wasn’t a fancy hotel, more like a motel, but the whole situation was so ridiculous that the story alone was worth it.
I never thought I’d be the guy who needed the fire department to get out of his own hotel room.
It’s some crazy negligence that led the hotel staff to having to call the fire department.
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
Because as it was, things were fine – but if there had been a fire or the couple had needed to get out in an emergency?
This would have been a totally different story.
Trending and Popular
Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.
This person, unfortunately, had been in a similar situation.
And others explained how, in past decades, situations like this were so much worse.
Meanwhile, this Housekeeping Supervisor proved that this kind of thing happened to staff as well.
Honestly, it must be quite scary to be locked in a hotel room and have no clear way of getting out – even if his super chill ex-girlfriend didn’t seem to agree. But it’s a real issue for the hotel to deal with, and honestly, they are lucky that this couple weren’t more upset about being allocated a room with a known lock issue. Because the real truth is that even though nothing bad actually happened, it could have – perhaps the guests could have had a medical emergency or there could have been some kind of emergency within the hotel, and they wouldn’t have been able to get out to save themselves.
It’s fortunate that the couple and the hotel staff found the issue when they did, meaning that they were able to rescue the couple and allocate them a new room. But you’d think that they would have given them some sort of compensation for all the drama, even if that was just a bottle of wine or a money off coupon or something. Because when they paid for this hotel room, they did not sign up for this.
Trending and Popular
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
