I imagine there are more jobs in the world than we think where there are hazards we honestly can’t really fathom without doing them ourselves.
I also think pretty much any job where you have to clean up after other human beings probably falls into this category, and there’s no way that hotel maids haven’t seen some stuff in their day.
These 17 cleaners are recalling some of the more memorable days of their careers, so buckle up – it’s about to get wild.
17. Well I don’t like this.
When I was 18 I worked at a hotel for a year. One day, this room was late for checkout so I was sent to go knock on the door. I knocked and a guy responded “Leave me alone, I’ll be out in a little bit”. Okay, rude, but whatever.
I relayed the message to the girl working the front desk. I pass the front desk about 30 minutes later and she says he still hasn’t came out of his room and sent me to knock again. I knock, no response, I ask if he’s okay, still no response…he’s just in there….groaning.
We end up calling the police, they enter the room with a key card, turns out this guy had been in a car accident on his way to the hotel and had been bleeding internally during his entire stay. He was taken to the hospital where he later died (we only know that because he left all of his stuff behind and his family came to pick it up eventually).
Upon entering the room to clean it, there was copious amounts of blood, vomit and shit EVERYWHERE. Bloody handprint smears and poop all over the bathroom floors and walls, even in the shower. It trailed all the way from the bathroom into the bedroom and onto the actual bed.
I told management that I wasn’t comfortable with cleaning it up and they essentially guilt tripped me by telling me that if I didn’t do it my pregnant coworker would have to. I tied trash bags around my arms/legs and went at it, took me over an hour, had to wet vac the carpet and parts of the bed.
They ended up renting the room out that same night, instead of having hazmat cleaners come in.
16. Don’t use those kettles, friends.
I asked this of a hotel manager when I went for a job interview recently. All the answers involved s*%t.
S*%t left neatly inside a pizza box was mentioned as the oddest, and the worst was s*%t in a kettle.
Who s*%ts in a complimentary hotel tea kettle?
15. Full-body chills.
Years ago my wife worked as a live-in innkeeper. It was a tourist town during the offseason so the place was empty.
One night this guy who had rented a room called the front desk around 10ish pm. He claimed the room needed cleaned and demanded she come and clean it. Of course, she apologized but said “sorry the housekeepers are gone for the night.”
She was the only employee so she did all the cleaning too. He wouldn’t take no for an answer and said he had spilled something that would ruin the carpet if it was not cleaned up immediately.
Fortunately I was living with her so we both went to check out what was going on. We knock on the door, the guy opens the door and looks terrified when he notices me. He ended up saying we weren’t allowed into see the mess and to just worry about it in the morning.
Morning comes and he left before I had to go to work. So I was curious to see what was up so we both checked out the room and what do you know, it was spotless.
I’m positive he was making up the whole thing and had bad intentions. I’m not sure what he had planned but the room was fine and the way he acted when he saw me really didn’t sit right. We reported the whole thing to the police.
About a week later a front desk lady at a nearby hotel went missing. I think it was a red roof inn. They never did find her. No idea if it was connected or not.
14. I don’t know if this is the “good” stuff.”
worked in a hotel through college as night auditor so usually i only got to hear the good stuff.
always hosted large groups for conventions, etc. One time was boys tennis team from out of state. every one of their rooms had s*%t in the toilet tanks, AKA an upper decker when they left; something like 100 rooms.
another time was a cheer squad and the pubic restroom was out of service for a week because they broke the toilet flushing so many tampons since they were all on the same cycle.
and lastly, had a homeless person break the lock to the roof access and was living up there for like a month before being found. he had basically set up a fully furnished home complete with a FULL SIZE MATTRESS. and lawn chairs. when they cleaned it up, found his “s*%t corner” with a mound like 3 feet tall.
13. I’d be more than quite upset.
I worked in the industry and I was at the front desk for this one, the guest discovered it. Our guest was just enjoying his morning bagel, toasted in our fancy toasters.
Wife comes in the room and says there’s a weird smell. Looking around, they check inside the toaster and the last guest of the room had disposed of their used condom in there.
Half the bagel gone, the guest was quite upset.
12. I have so many questions that will never be answered.
Big rubbish bag full of frozen.. crows? Ravens? Black birds anyway. Just sat there in the hallway. Didn’t really know what to make of that so I called Head of Housekeeping and it became her problem.
Very weird indeed.
11. You just never know.
Not me, but my Mum had a brief period cleaning in a Travelodge next to a main road. The worst story she told me was a couple had checked in late one night and were still there come check out time the next day. She knocks on the door, guy puts his head round and she says it’s check out time but no need to rush as she has a couple more rooms to do first. He was pleasant and about 30 minutes later the couple had checked out and left.
Soon after she goes in and is immediately confronted by a pungent odour. Virtually every surface in the bedroom and bathroom was smeared in shit of varying viscosity. The bed was covered, the walls, the carpet, everything, the only thing that wasn’t was the shower cubicle itself which presumably they’d used to clean themselves off. I believe she just retreated out of the room and some Hazmat suited professionals were brought in to go over the room top to bottom.
To this day I’ve never been fully comfortable in a hotel room wondering what might have happened in there before.
10. A sad end.
This guy came in for a medical conference or something, he was a med school student. Very nice, we all liked him.
The event ended and he extended for another week. NBD. His week ended and he didn’t check out, the housekeeper went into the room and saw his feet at the foot of the bed so she thought he was sleeping. I called him, no answer. Went into the room and he was dead.
The police ended up putting together a timeline. Something happened and he got removed from his program? I’m not sure the details but the police traced his debit card transactions from bars to liquor stores to strip clubs, he had never drank before according to his parents. It ended with him buying a bag of heroin and dying in the hotel room. It was sad.
9. A mystery I don’t want to solve.
I found a used condom filled with BLACK. To this day idk how it happened. It was just black goo. Similar to cum but black…
According to Healthline.com black cum is actually possible. It can be attributed to spinal cord injury, exposure to heat metals, drug use. If it was cum and it was thick like goo then the ejaculator could have been dehydrated.
8. Just another day.
3 days in a row, we couldn’t reach a guest with a do not disturb on the door and expected to check out, but his card on file still cleared so we just extended him.
One of the porters came down and said how the 5th floor was weirdly rank, and I immediately put the worst case scenario together.
Myself, the porter, and our MoD came in, smell was like a shock to the system. He had a note next to him which I don’t touch, but read before the police arrived. It was to his wife, he knew she was cheating on him with his best friend, and mentioned something about how since their kids were grown up, he had nothing left to live for. Mostly empty bottle of Smirnoff & a couple empty packets of painkillers.
The hotel offered us counselling, which was nice, but we basically just returned to work and kept on with the shift.
7. Disgusting.
Not a housekeeper, but i was a night shift front desk clerk at a Motel 6 (now no longer a motel 6). This place was disgusting. Guests would find heroin needles stashed behind the bed, bedbugs in their bed, gross stains on the walls.
I have personally walked into a room and flicked on the lights to see a dozen or more cockroaches scatter into the woodwork. I think the best part though is one time a guest found a whole ass kitten, and she made a mess in the room.
So I went to that room, found the kitten, and over the course of that night decided to bring her home with me. She didn’t have a collar or any indication of an owner. I’m not even sure where she came from but she’s my cute little cat now.
TL;DR Motels are disgusting, don’t ever trust them, ESPECIALLY if their ratings suck.
6. Someone had a fun night.
Not me but my partner has a few.
The one that sticks out to me is when he described walking in to the sight and smell of several s*%t-smeared and jizz-filled condoms melting/fusing themselves to the burning hot lamp/lampshade which had been left on, next to the bed.
There were also assorted dildos and other sex toys (used, and also shit-smeared) scattered all over the dressers/tables.
Pretty sure he said he immediately turned around and walked back out.
5. I just threw up in my mouth.
I used to work at a very well known hotel chain. I mainly worked at the bar but housekeeping were short staffed so I helped out for one day.
The worst thing I saw was the manager telling us to not change the bedsheets to save time. This was my first day working in housekeeping, I can imagine the other stuff they did that I wasn’t privy to.
4. Pretty messed up.
I found a suicide once. It wasn’t until after I had started cleaning. There were shattered beer bottles and glass stuck to the sides of the dressers from being thrown I’m guessing.
I had stripped the sheets and started to work my way to the bathroom when I found him hanging from the closet area. I was 15 and I quit on the spot, went home and cried.
3. How long are those signs good for?
Not me, but my mom came across a corpse while cleaning one time.
The door had a “do not disturb” sign for far too long, and eventually she went in and found a dead man in the bathtub. Turned out he had killed himself.
2. Everyone loves a cat story.
Kinda wholesome story…
I have a friend that owns a small motel just off a highway. I would hang out with him and chat on some late nights. One night, he got a call that one of the guest heard a loud crash in the room next door. Checked the computer and saw that the room was unoccupied.
Friend and I go to check it out. We knock and there is no answer. He opens the door and there was a cat in the room.
It knocked over a lamp and smashed it. It was super friendly and came right to us. We took it back to the office and looked at the room records. The prior person that was in the room abandoned the cat when he checked out three days earlier.
He was already on the other side of the country when we called him, and he said he was not coming back for the cat. My friend took ownership of the cat and now she is the motel cat. She walks all around the property and takes care of any mice or critters. She even has her picture on the wall as one of the “employees”.
Still was a d*%k move of the old owner to leave the cat behind.
1. I kind of love this.
Worked at a hotel in Alaska as a housekeeper. Shit job but unbeatable location.
Anyway, it was mostly frequented by old people as it was part of a land cruise thing that princess cruise lines does up there.
When I say that those old farts were wild, I mean they were fucking WILD. I found more coke, weed, and pills in those rooms than I saw in my whole college career at a party school.
S^x toys were a daily occurrence. Walked in on several small or**es, and one that involved 10 plus people.
The one that haunts me to this day was a large tub with a handwritten label that simply said “horse cream”. Whether it was cream FOR a horse, or cream FROM a horse is a question that will never leave me.
I don’t think this job would be for me; I couldn’t hack it.
If you’re a hotel cleaner I know you’ve got stories, too, so please share them in the comments!
