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Imagine working at a hotel. If a guest told you he didn’t want anyone to know he was staying there, would you respect his wishes?

In this story, one front desk worker finds herself in this situation when a guest tells her that he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s staying there. When his son comes looking for him, she has a decision to make. Does she tell the truth, lie, or say something pretty vague?

Keep reading to see how she handled the situation.

Forget You for respecting my dad’s wishes of privacy

About a month ago, Mr. A comes to the front desk asking for a room. He’s a regular, he’s friendly, everyone likes him.

I get him checked in and he starts to explain that he had an argument with his son and how he didn’t want anyone to know he’s staying here.

We’re front desk. We take privacy very seriously.

She lied for him.

A few hours later, his son wanders in looking for his dad, Mr. A. Son asks me if his dad has checked in / is staying here / etc.

And per Mr. A’s request, I said he wasn’t staying here. Perhaps I should have said something like “I’m sorry, I can’t provide that information,” but I always feel like that’s a dead giveaway for “he’s here, but I can’t tell you anything else.”

After he left, I called Mr. A and informed him of the situation.

Mr. A thanked me for not revealing his information, how he appreciates the staff, how we treat him so kindly, blah blah.

She’s not sure if he really wants her to lie for him.

Son comes back two more times. And each time, I inform him of the same thing.

I update Mr. A each time, and on the third call, I had the sneaky feeling that Mr. A low key wanted his son to know he was there. The response he gave was either him annoyed I was updating him or he wanted to tell me to let his son up but was still angry / had pride that didn’t let him.

I inform the next shift of what’s up, and then head out.

She wasn’t expecting this!

Today, I noticed Mr. A is back. And in the evening, Son shows up again. He wore a hat and I was sitting so I didn’t see a face. I heard the door open, so I greeted them like usual.

“Forget you”

It took a second to process. I thought I misheard.

And they both (he and his date/gf/side chick?) start heading upstairs. The girl asks something along the lines of “who was that?” and he replies:

“Just some liar”

She eventually figured it out.

Again. It took a second to process. It didn’t click who he was until I saw him go towards Mr. A’s door.

“Oh that makes sense” I loudly exclaimed to the empty lobby. Perhaps in reach of Son’s hearing? I don’t know. Then I laughed.

I didn’t have any beef with him, we were always cool – but he was ticked off at me.

But look who’s talking – Son once came in and asked if I can pull up his dad’s old reservation and charge his dad’s card that we had on file so he, Son, could stay the night instead of sleeping in his truck. His dad wasn’t there. His dad wasn’t going to join him.

Finally, a movie quote.

Anyway – I’ll end with this Keanu Reeves quote from one of his movies that I happened to see on Instagram early in the day:

There are seven billion people in the world. So when one of them behaves badly toward you, he’s actually doing you a great favor because he’s saving you time. He’s telling you that he’s not worth your while. He’s freeing you to say, “Thank you for the information. I will now move on to the 6,999,999,999 other people, some of whom may have some value.”

Lmao that timing though. Instagram’s algorithm is predicting my future now HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA.

Was lying the right thing to do? It probably depends on the hotel’s policy.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks OP should’ve handled it differently.

Another person thinks being consistent is what matters.

Everyone seems to thinks she messed up.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who got back at slacking coworkers with fresh-baked treats.

But this person shares how they would’ve responded.

I don’t think lying was the right way to handle this unless the hotel’s policy is to lie. Saying something like not being able to share that information seems like a good vague way of handling it whether the person is there or not.

The son was rude, but she created the drama.