Imagine working the night shift at a hotel, and one of your duties is setting out breakfast in the morning. What would you do if some of the hotel guests wanted breakfast earlier than breakfast was supposed to begin? Would you rush the food out early or refuse to comply?

In this story, one hotel front desk clerk is in this situation, and at first, she tried to accommodate the early bird construction workers who were staying at the hotel by bringing out breakfast a little early. Then, she realized she needed to handle the situation completely differently.

Let’s read all about it.

Me vs. the Construction Crew, or Breakfast at 6 AM Sharp

I work at a small hotel, as front desk clerk.

Last month we had a work crew staying with us as guests.

We have these fairly frequently, men doing construction, roadwork, repairing pipelines, etc., and for the most part they’re decent hardworking guys. Sometimes a little rough around the edges, but no real trouble.

This crew was the exception.

It was awful!

I don’t know what pit of hell their boss had dug them up from, but I and all my co-workers wished they’d go back.

They were loud, crude and foul-mouthed.

They took up all our smoking rooms, and frequently smoked where they weren’t supposed to, like the hall and stairwells, so that other guests complained of the smell.

They were working somewhere with red clay, and it seemed they had never been taught to wipe their boots before coming indoors, so we were constantly sweeping and mopping up after them.

Most work crews go to sleep early, but this crew was hard-partying and would come in drunk and obnoxious at all hours of the night, on more than one occasion scaring potential guests away from staying with us.

The revenge starts with breakfast.

This is the story of how I got back at them.

I’m the only staff on the overnight shift so I also put the breakfast out. Our breakfast starts at 6:00 am. I time everything to be fresh, hot and ready at six, I’ve worked there two years and only been late once or twice when guests needed excess help in the middle of my preparations.

It’s the first week this crew stayed with us. 5:33 in the morning, I’m in the kitchen working to get everything ready when I hear people behind me. Turn around to see four guys from the work crew getting coffee, okay. But suddenly:

“Hey, you gonna put more coffee out or what?”

They not only hogged all the coffee but left a huge mess.

What the? I just put the pot out there, how have only four guys managed to empty it so fast?

Answer: All of them have filled giant takeaway thermoses.

No problem, I tell them, the second coffee pot is brewing right now. I take away the first pot to wash so I can refill it next.

They’ve made a complete mess of the coffee station, I mean, I’m used to most of the guests acting like two-year-olds when it comes to spilling sugar and such, but these guys also haven’t even bothered to put their creamer and sugar packets in the provided trash bin, just left them strewn all over the counter as if to show deliberate contempt for me.

Eventually all the crew members were ready for breakfast.

As I clean up after them and put out the other pot, 3 more crewmembers arrive. The rest straggle in one by one after this, about 12 or 15 in all.

They’re starting to look over the rest of the breakfast area. One of them turns on the TV, flipping from the local morning news channel we normally keep it on to a country music station, and turning the volume to max.

I have to ask him to turn it down because guests are still sleeping in the rooms around us.

A few of the dry foods- and the hot stuff- is already out. I microwave the eggs and sausage, but I always put the biscuits in the warmer at 5:30 so they can heat up perfectly and be ready at six.

They don’t wait until six to eat.

It’s still 20 minutes till six, but these guys don’t care, they grab the paper plates and start filling up.

I haven’t yet put out the tongs used to grab the hot stuff, but they just use the plastic utensils or their hands.

Then they start complaining that the biscuits aren’t hot.

I explain that breakfast starts at six (there’s a big ol’ sign on the wall that says the same thing, and it’s explained to every guest when they check in) and I put the biscuits out early so they could get warm by six.

She couldn’t accommodate all of their requests.

They accept this but one guy asks if he can use the microwave to warm his up.

I have to deny him because it’s a teensy-tiny kitchen and I can’t work around him (and everyone after him who wants to do the same thing) to get the breakfast ready.

I’m starting to get anxious about finishing on time because they’re slowing me up.

I tell him no, but add the reason, and that he’s welcome to use the one in his own room. I try to say it in my nicest, non-confrontational customer service voice, but after that, the whole crew gets more annoying and nasty towards me.

This sounds really frustrating!

They keep asking when I’m going to put this or that out, “Hey, can I get some milk for this cereal yet?” “When can I make a waffle?”

I just keep repeating that I’ll have everything out by six o’clock, as that is the start of breakfast.

The other thing they were doing was blocking me. They would crowd around the whole breakfast counter, each of them waiting and staring at the place where whatever it was they wanted to eat was supposed to go like idiots, plates and forks in hand, and there I would be, behind them, trying to put the food in place and having to say “Excuse me,” and “Could I get through here, please?” again and again and again.

Freaking annoying as hell, and I swear some of them were doing it on purpose.

It wasn’t even like the crew had to leave extra early.

But I got that breakfast out on time, finished at 5:58.

Now I’d like to say here that I was more tolerant of them than I would otherwise have been because I assumed they had to leave for work early, like 6:00 or 6:15. If any of them had told me beforehand that they needed breakfast early, I would have happily made it earlier. I’ve done it for other crews before.

But no one at all mentioned it, they just… showed up, right after 5:30, and acted mad at me that breakfast wasn’t ready for them.

Well, after all that, their freaking bus didn’t leave until… get this… 6:45. And the whole time they were hanging out in my breakfast area and lobby being obnoxious as hell.

It gets worse.

Their normal tone of voice seemed to be a hearty shout. They were telling crude jokes and stories loudly. Their cell phones were all going off at top volume with various alarms or blowing up with phone calls from other crew members to make sure they were awake.

They very much enjoyed calling the crew members not yet in the lobby and yelling “WAKE UP!” at them, all together.

The second day was very much like the first, except I hadn’t put any of the dry stuff (cereal, muffins, bread, etc.) out when they got downstairs. I was hoping they’d learned breakfast was at six.

Apparently they were hoping I’d learned to be ready for them earlier–again with no one asking me to do so, no request from them or their boss (who didn’t eat with them) no pleases, or anything, just showing up at 5:30 and being rude– and the mood was slightly nasty from the beginning this time.

The next day was almost the same.

I DID microwave the muffins, so they were hot right away.

Again most of them behaved like pigs at a trough, queuing up around whatever I put out and jostling each other to get at it so that it was difficult for me to put the other food out that needed to go next to it.

Again their bus left at 6:45.

When my manager arrived at the end of my shift, I told him about it, not in a do-something-about-this way, more like in a funny story/stress relief/venting way.

The next day was going to be different.

He said even if they actually requested it, not to make the breakfast any earlier because they were waking other guests with their shouting.

So the third day, I was ready for them.

Reports of their bad behavior elsewhere were starting to trickle in from other shifts, so I didn’t feel at all bad at what I was about to do.

I filled up everything dry very early, got all the cold stuff ready in the refrigerator, and at five o’clock, brought the warmer into the kitchen, plugged it in there, and proceeded to fill it up.

The setup (or lack of setup) continued.

I took everything, including the plates, napkins, and utensils, off the breakfast counter and stacked it in the kitchen. And I took the remote for the TV with me.

At 5:25 AM, I sat down behind my front desk and waited.

At 5:30, they trickled down the stairs and elevator.

I didn’t get up or make any move to fix or put out breakfast.

At least they don’t seem as loud this morning.

I could sense them looking over at me, wondering what was going on.

There were two pots of coffee, so they filled up their cups and… waited. Eventually they even sat down.

The guy who liked the country music channel came over and asked for the remote.

I politely told him my manager said we had to wait until six to turn on the TV because it was waking up other guests.

They were gossiping about her.

He went back to the breakfast area. They were talking about me now.

“Is she gonna make us breakfast?”

“She’s mad”

“We not gonna get any breakfast”

“That lazy witch”

They were really getting impatient.

At 5:45, I got up and went over there.

They all got excited, standing up and stretching, ready to mob any food I put out.

But all I did was clean the coffee area and take one of the pots to rinse out and refill.

One man asked, “Damn, girl, we get any breakfast this morning?”

I smiled as I told him, “It will all be out by six o’clock”

They finally got breakfast.

At exactly 5:55, I started to put out the food.

It was ALL ready to go, so all I had to do was run it out there quickly, and I just said “EXCUSE ME, COMING THROUGH” quite loudly to the one or two guys who tried to stand in my way.

They couldn’t get any food until I was done anyway, because I put the plates, napkins, and silverware out at the very last minute, at precisely 6:00 AM.

The finishing touch? I turned the TV to the Weather Channel, at medium volume, and I took the remote back to the front desk with me.

Two more days of that and they were “trained” not to come downstairs until six.

That worked out well. Keeping the plates and utensils in the back was a pro move.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

An archaeologist weighs in.

One person compares the construction crew to dogs.

Another hotel worker commiserates.

Another person appreciates her effort.

It isn’t easy feeding an angry mob.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman whose classmates insisted she crochet them a free blanket.