Whether someone is staying or working at a hotel, they may come across a very particular thing that is jarring to witness once they enter the room. So when Reddit user u/AlgorithmOmegaasked: "Hotel and motel workers of Reddit, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve come across in the rooms?" guests and hotel workers provide their jaw-dropping stories below.
1."A bathtub full of turnips."
2."A few years ago, I was staying in a remote part of Oregon for work all by myself. I got up in the morning and went into the bathroom to take a shower. The curtain had been bunched against the wall. I got undressed, turned the water on, and pulled the curtain fully across the tub. When I did, it exposed a bloody handprint on the white curtain. It scared the living shit out of me. I noped hard out of there and skipped the shower, leaving as fast as possible. As I checked out, I told the front desk employee about the handprint. She sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, 'Probably just some hunter cleaning his kill in the bathtub. They’re not supposed to, but they do it all the time.'"
3."I heard the most blood-curdling of screams coming from the rooms. I ran up and found a very traumatized housekeeper. As she flicked the bedding (to change the bed), unbeknownst to her was a used condom. This flicked up in the air and landed on her head. She was frozen in fear and screaming. I had to help her by picking it off her. Understandably, she had the rest of the day off."
4."Not a worker, but I used to travel for work. Once, we were checking into our rooms, and a coworker and I were going to her room. She opened the door, and there were two people living in the room. They were prostitutes who were friends with the housekeeper. They were given keys to use empty rooms."
5."A guest left a briefcase with £35k in it and we tried to contact them several times to no avail. After six months, the police advised us it was now ours — this went to the staff bonus pot."
6."Former hotel front desk. At a mid-range business hotel ($200+ nightly), we got a frantic call on the radio from housekeeping about a room being nasty. Yeah, it was nasty. Poop was thrown on the ceiling, smeared on the walls, and on the floor. The bathroom had poop in the tub. The room was declared a biohazard, we preauthorized about two thousand dollars on the credit card, and a specialty company was brought in to clean it. The customer wasn't even mad when we called them to inform them of the charges and the ban from the property. The poop wasn’t just in the bathroom; most of it was in the living area."
7."A large sack full of pinecones. We do not have any pine trees nearby so they had to have brought them with. It confuses and haunts me to this day."
8."I had a lady check in early and ask for a late check out. She still hadn’t checked out by 2 pm and wouldn’t come out of the room. When we were about to have her escorted out, she finally left. In the room were hundreds of little white-out bottles everywhere. She had painted every reflective surface with white out, including all the plumbing under the sink, all the fixtures, every screw, and had started painting the mirrors."
9."I worked in a cheap hostel in Lisbon about ten years ago. We had this very odd guest who'd speak in a super low voice and walk really slowly. He'd also leave random bits of toilet paper around the hostel. Once, the cleaning lady found him in his room completely rolled in toiled paper."
10."Dried shit in the bed — twice and almost 1,000 miles apart. A stack of porn mags."
11."As a guest, I checked into a room in California. I turned on the wall-mounted AC unit, and a dirty needle fell out the bottom. Then we order a cot for our kid. We roll it into the room, open it up, and multiple cockroaches fall out and scurry away. We got our money back and adios immediately."
12."For me, it would be about 16 gallons of urine stashed underneath a bed we found while cleaning. It was stored in tons of plastic water bottles varying different brands like Polish Springs or Dasani. Once, I also found 16 severed fingers in a trash can in a guy's room."
13."This story was told by a housekeeping manager during orientation. An old couple who were regulars would always stay at the hotel every summertime, and the lady would always bring her teddy bear. She’d request that the housekeepers make sure to change the teddy bear's outfit daily. Odd indeed for the housekeepers to adhere to those rules, but not until they realized how well this couple would tip and anyone who happened to clean their room for the day would be so lucky. Bear had a name, I forgot what it was, but the staff eventually started greeting it."
14."I have a friend who has a side job of cleaning hotel rooms. He calls me out of nowhere cackling about how there were two inflatable sex dolls in the tub kissing, with one in the middle of the room with a paper saying 'Oh no, I’ve been caught!'"
15."I worked at a motel on the outskirts of the city that used to be down the street from some pretty well known strip clubs in Eastern Ontario. There was a performer who had an extra special act and left it in the bathtub during the day. The housekeeper wasn't too thrilled about finding a gigantic python in the bathtub first thing in the morning."
Whether you work at hotels or have been a guest at one recently, feel free to share the weirdest thing you've come across in a hotel room in the comments below.
