Trending Now
If you have a weak stomach, then a job cleaning up after the public is probably not for you – and after reading through these 15 cleaners’ most memorable stories, you might want to rethink even staying in a hotel, never mind cleaning one.
Consider this your fair warning that absolutely none of these tales are easy to read (but they are interesting!).
15. Hidden meat.
I worked at a ski resort in the hotels, one night a group of kids shows up in very expensive cars and asks for a large room for a couple nights, we had space so no problem. They handed over their Black Amex card and went on their way.
No real issues over their stay, some noise but nothing unusual for a group during ski season, checked out early without stopping at the desk but card is on file so no problem.
When the staff went in to clean the room they were immediately hit with the smell of rotting meat, look around and there is high quality raw cuts of beef absolutely everywhere, counters, washrooms, on the stove, in the stove (uncooked) and blood on the ceiling. Room was set to 25’ so the meat had quickly started to turn. Burned spoons in the bed and tinfoil everywhere.
We called and let the know that the charges would be about 8k for the damage, they simply didn’t care.
Wasn’t till later that an retired rcmp who worked on security detail mentioned that drugs are oftentimes hidden in meat for transportation as it masks the smell and just looks like a bbq cooler. It had to be several thousand dollars of good quality meat completely ruined for a weekend bender.
14. None of this makes any sense.
My first week working maintenance at a hotel was enough to convince me that that job just wasn’t for me. My third day I got to call over the radio from housekeeping about a clogged up toilet. Now being a red-blooded meat eating man I’ve had the deal with a clogged toilet or two in my lifetime, none of that had prepared me for this.
When I got to the room there were 3 housekeepers standing in the bathroom doorway looking absolutely flabbergasted. When I walked into the bathroom I fully understood why. Standing straight up out of the toilet like something off south park was the biggest turd I’d ever seen. I guesstimated it as being about the length of my arm from fingertip to elbow and about the circumference of my wrist. This thing was so big the toilet seat was down and the top of the turd was still a good 6 inches above the seat.
So I’m sitting there brainstorming exactly how I’m going to get this toilet plunged with a log that size chilling in there making it harder and came to the unfortunate conclusion that I was going to have to take the turd out first. Okay, okay this is why they pay me the big bucks, job security right….damnit! So I glove up and have a housekeeper holding a bag open so I can transfer the treasure.
The housekeeper confirms that she’s ready for it so I grabbed that thing and gave it a quick heave, it made it about halfway to the bag before the weight of it snapped it in the middle and it landed and splattered on the bag holding housekeepers shoes.
She screams one of the other housekeepers throws up and the last one burst out laughing, I’m standing there with small handfuls of turd at a complete loss for words… So after some crying, cleaning and a joint I head back to the room to plunge the now log free toilet and it won’t plunge.
So I head down and grab the snake get all set up and it makes it about 6inches into the bend and hits something solid that won’t move.
End up pulling the whole toilet and the drain beneath it was clog free. So we take the toilet out back and flip it and wouldn’t ya know it stuck in the bend was a whole fucking cucumber.
Eff hotel maintenance.
13. That’s really…something.
I was not a cleaner but was at the front office.
So anyhow there was this guest he ordered bunch of escorts and had an orgy involving human feces.
The room walls, bed, towels and bathrobes were full of it. If I remember correctly hotel got the money from the guy but cleaning that room took a whole day and it was out of order for a month.
12. So many questions.
I was cleaning rooms at a motel that had a contract with with a railroad so we very rarely saw customers that weren’t railroad employees on a layover for their next trip. It was a great job as far as the customers go. We became a second family to them. They would tell us stories about their family and friends back home and they would get to know us as their extended family and friends. Quite possibly the most wholesome situation ever.
Anyway, when I first started, I found a fried chicken leg bone in the shower, discarded in the soap dish. I can’t get that out of my mind.
There’s so many unanswered questions… Did he always multitask by eating in the shower? How do eat chicken in the shower and not get soap/shampoo in it? Does fried chicken just taste better in the shower? Did he prefer leg meat or were breasts too hard to eat while bathing?
This happened 5+ years ago and it still haunts me!
11. New life forms.
Not a motel/hotel but a Mall and not a cleaner but a maintenance tech. This is not as disturbing as most everyone elses posts but one time a food court tenant broke their lease and just left one night never to return and they left all of their product and equipment.
We were told to leave it as is while the mall was taking this tenant to court and what not. 6 months go by with no one ever entering the space then we get the word that we’re to clear it out so they can lease it to someone else. It was quite a sight. 2 walk- ins (that were off at least 5 months since no one was paying for power) were full to the brim with the most rotten food id ever seen. Looked like new life forms.
The worst part was as soon as we walked in the kitchen the first thing we see is the floor covered with rat droppings scanning from the floor up to the cook tops we see that these people left while they were cooking. 4 pots sitting there all with food. 1 of them was a giant one with what I think was sauce at one point, hard to tell because there were at least 5 extremely bloated dead rats floating in it, so bloated they nearly filled the whole pot.
The smell of that place is something ill remember forever, and I was wearing a mask. Needless to say I requested a raise that day.
10. Cold-blooded.
Had a wedding party and the linebacker sized boyfriend slung his girlfriend over his shoulders when they came back from the reception since she was too drunk to walk. Anyways, she liquid s*%t sprayed the entire hallway and everyone walked in it. Then the party wanted a credit on their room because they walked in their friends shit and felt they deserved a free night.
So somehow, our housekeeping manager found the woman’s ID and wallet. The big boyfriend must have dropped it accidentally. So in the morning, down she comes in the only outfit not covered in poop. An MSU cheerleader outfit. Completely mortified, she comes to the desk and asks for her stuff. Her big boyfriend tried to intimidate us for a minute when we told her we were going to charge her for cleaning fees.
He was promptly shouted down by our 5’ nothing housekeeping manager. That woman was pure fire, grit, and hillbilly rage. Mean while the entire wedding party is heckling her and her man while we rang up the charges. She was crying, he was pissed, and breakfast closed so they couldn’t get anything.
Fun times. I don’t know if any of those people are friends, but how cruel can you be to heckle your friends while they get charged? Same people who demanded a free night for poop shoes.
Cold blooded friends right there.
9. Nothing at all.
Nothing.
Literally nothing.
Someone had backed a pickup truck to the window (rural hotel) and stripped everything out. The bed, lamps, table, artwork, blinds, carpets, bathroom fixtures, drapes, outlets, light switches, everything.
They were at least kind enough to switch the water off in the sink and toilet, and were kind enough to trip the breaker before removing the outlets. They had removed a good few feet of drywall but must have stopped because it was too loud.
8. What is the reason, though?
Hotel Quality Assurance Inspector here. I have had to clean up these “spiteful s*%ts” for housekeepers left as an “F.U.” to management for whatever reason. Actions like these NEVER affect management because the housekeepers are left to clean up after you.
They’re paid minimum wage at best and have hours cut fairly frequently during times of low occupancy and because you, as the guest, get pissed off about not having something exactly as you want it or goods or services are currently unavailable so you leave a shit in the room for the housekeeper?
Go s*%t in the manager’s office in front of them, send it to them in the post but stop doing this in the rooms! The housekeeper or custodian don’t deserve it. Grow up. If you can’t speak to management about an issue you have about WHATEVER don’t think shitting in the room has ANY effect on management!
You just made a hard, low paying job worse on someone who doesn’t deserve it. P.S. a very polite “F**k You” if anyone reading this has done s*%t in a hotel room because they were upset.
You’re affecting the wrong staff member you annoying twat.
7. Open the door slowly.
I used to work in hotels and my manager always told me to open door slowly when visiting rooms, because she had once open the door to someone who had committed suicide.
6. These stories are scary common.
Not a cleaner, but used to work in room service while attending hospitality school
The two things that can come to mind are dead people and s*%t.
Both incident happened while doing the daily refills, but separate occasions. It was a very popular 5 star hotel with its own spa, great view, inside a historical building of a touristic city.
For dead people: My colleague and I opened the room and found an elderly couple hugging on the bed. We knew they weren’t sleeping as the curtains were open and they were fully dressed in elegant clothing.
Later that day the room service manager talked to all the students in that day regarding the incident, apparently the hotel has at least 3-4 cases a year, and it is a popular “final destination”.
For s*%t: Our bathroom sinks are built into the furniture, sinked inside so that the edge of the furniture hides the sink’s ends. This not an IKEA style furniture but rather a big chunk of marble like material.
Housekeeping did not yet check the room but we already went in to refill the fridge and check last consumptions. The whole room smelled like s*%t but we didn’t see s*%t anywhere, so just passed the information to HK.
In the late afternoon they were still doing the room and had to call up the mechanics, as the guest managed to put some s*%t inside the sink-furniture and smear it all over the inside wall.
Some people are just absolutely creative with their poo-crayons..
5. People are nightmares.
Grown-a$$ men of all ages purposefully opening the door naked to the 13-year-old girl working under the table to help her mom pay bills.
Same grown-a$$ men invited me into the room “to talk.”
Encountering poop was far less disturbing.
4. When weird turns into something else.
So this was actually from my time being a concierge to a private apartment building in the Asian corner of Melbourne.
This one resident would get a milk crate delivered each day, 18 litres of milk. Weird, but ok.
Then, this smell on the 6th floor got increasingly bad. Like really foul. So foul the whole hallway reeked, & other residents were complaining every other day.
Finally tracked down it to milk boi’s room.
Turns out, he just chills there all day every day, drinking unpasteurized milk. But he couldn’t get through 18L a day, surely? No, no he couldn’t.
He would just open a “fresher” one, leave one partially unfinished. Every room in the apartment was filled with unfinished, fermenting/mouldy, unpasteurized milk. On room was practically empty, except for the corner-landslide of partially finished, unrefridgerated, off 2L milk bottoms.
Obviously, this guy had some kind of mental disability/fixation. Pretty sure his parents bought him the apartment a whole country away, and this is just what his life devolved into.
We organized the clean up services, and charged it back to him. Didn’t have an issue with it after that though. … although on the milk deliveries didn’t stop, just went down from a crate daily to a crate each week.
Ps. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW HE WAS ABLE TO LIVE IN THE STENCH
3. No thank you.
$50,000 cheque in the middle of the floor
insurance documents and a will under one of our mattresses
Sex toys of all varietiesBut the most gory of all was the suicide. Suicide by hanging in the bathroom.
He downed a bottle of strong spirits, cut his own throat and nestled the rope inside of the cut.
He succeeded. No family according to police, hearse took him away and we were left with the cleanup.
2. After this thread, I believe it.
One of our operating theater cleaners once told us that she’d seen far more gross things in hotel rooms than after surgery.
1. There was that.
I’m not in housekeeping, but at my job some people rented a room for the purpose of luring in a guy they had beef with so that they could tie him up, stab him to death, and leave him there to be found the next morning. So that.
I also worked at another hotel where a body was found, but I never learned the specific details of what happened. It was an older guy, so I believe he probably died in his sleep and our staff found him the next morning when he didn’t leave.
The worst that I was involved with personally was when a housekeeper came to me shouting that she’d found a firearm, but it turned out to be an airsoft gun.
My boss later accidentally shot a hole in the office window while he was looking at it.
Yeah, I have so many questions about human beings that are just never going to be answered, apparently.
If you’ve had a job cleaning hotels, tell us your own best/worst story in the comments!
