It's been a week since this happened with no further notices or updates, so I'm going to guess it's okay to tell the tale.
First, though, let me ask you a question:
Have you ever tried to keep cats out of the bedroom?
If you have, then you know. If cats are denied full run of the bedroom, they will make it their life's mission to get into that bedroom. They will lurk outside the door for hours on end and meow and scratch at the carpet until they tear up hunks of it. They will sprint inside the instant the door opens even a crack and scurry under the bed where they know you can't reach them. If the door is left open while the cats are in some other part of the house, they will tumble over themselves and slam into walls in their all-encompassing need to rush inside. If shoved out and dispatched to the hall with the broom, the cats will resume lurking and plotting other ways to get into that bedroom. They know no other purpose. Their life has no other meaning.
The situation is much the same with locals and hotels. Deny them entry and they crave it all the more, and they will do anything, go to any length, to get into a hotel. They will use expired out-of-state drivers licenses. They will employ friends and relatives from out of town. They will make reservations online solely for the purpose of getting into a hotel, any hotel, which denies them entry.
Now, you may ask, why are locals denied entry to hotels? For many good reasons, but the most succinct answer is found in the hotel that not long ago and not too far away from me which had to strip two of its rooms down to the bare concrete and cinderblocks and start over after some locals set up a meth lab in them.
That's why. And that's also why we here at Elongated Hexagon Inn deny rooms to locals. There's no reason for anyone local to stay here; we don't even have jacuzzi suites, like some properties do. We just have rooms. Expensive rooms, yes, but just plain rooms.
Last Sunday, a local made a prepaid reservation via one of the online travel sites. There are many such sites; they breed in the damp, like mildew. This guest brought her boyfriend along with her to check in. We shall call them Lady and Methmouth. The manager explained to Lady that due to the nature of her reservation, the room had been paid for through the online site, but that we needed to collect a credit card for incidental expenses. Somehow, sitting halfway across the lobby, Methmouth got it into his drug-addled head that we were refusing them service, which is actually what we should have done. He started yelling across the lobby to Lady and the front desk staff. We suspect it was at this point that Methmouth began his plan to get money back from the hotel, as we do offer the "Please Steal From Us" Guarantee, which states that if you are not completely satisfied with your stay, you get it for free.
Twice before I even came on shift, he had called down to complain, saying first that the tub would not hold water and second that the room was just not what he had expected. Considering that what he likely expected was a 1970's vintage trailer bedroom with blistering particle-board paneling that reeked of meth fumes, this is not such a stretch. Anyway, though, he settled down and we hoped that would be the last we would hear of him for the night.
It was not to be. On one of his first rounds after the other staff departed, leaving only the security guard and myself, the security guard noticed so much water pooled in the hallway that it was reflecting the hallway lights back at him. This was a problem for many reasons, but perhaps the most alarming reason is that the room was on the fifth floor. Water on the fifth floor is not a good thing because in due course it becomes water on the fourth floor, water on the third floor, and so on.
He knocked on the door and found what he thought was Lady and Methmouth coked out of their heads. He would know. He comes from a background in law enforcement. Calls were made and managers were awakened. Two managers conferred and agreed to let Lady and Methmouth stay even after this, but we would need to get the water up. And so the security guard had to go up to the fifth floor at one in the morning and suck up about ten gallons of water from the carpet with a very noisy Shop-Vac. I was down at the desk dealing with extremely irate guests wondering why the hell someone was vacuuming at one in the morning, including one guest who uttered the immortal lines, "Jesus Christ! I've never seen anything like you guys!" before slamming down his phone. As you can imagine, this resulted in several Please Steal From Us Guarantees being issued in the morning.
Meanwhile, over the next two hours, Methmouth wandered the building and made sure to talk up both the security guard and myself.
Picture it: A man with a mismatched skeleton, one half of which was about four inches higher than the other, with rotted black stumps for teeth, staggering around the building. Also, we noticed, he was on a cell phone in between conversations with us. Then we noticed that every time he came up to us to talk after another bout on the phone, his story changed and was growing more elaborate. It went from his girlfriend falling in the tub, to her having a possible concussion, to her slipping on soap residue in the bottom of the tub, to a possible skull fracture. Also, he made sure to tell us, her pupils were dilated.
I did not and do not believe he even had any idea what those words even mean. Having meth mouth is a pretty good indicator of low intelligence. We suspected that someone on the phone was coaching him in an effort to lay in a scam. We didn't take the bait because to offer to call 911 implies culpability. We didn't offer, on the basis that if she really did fall, and really did hurt her head, Methmouth would have enough sense to call for an ambulance on his own. He never did. Instead, he called other hotels across town looking for another room and telling them that they had checked in here and -- poor, innocent lambs -- their room had flooded through no fault of their own and we weren't helping them at all! If you can even imagine our nerve. I learned about this when another hotel called me to ask what the hell was going on.
It should also be noted that during his conversations with us, Methmouth noted that their car and luggage and ID had all been stolen -- which was part of the reason all of the other hotels were telling him to go to hell when he called them. No ID, no room. Period. Finally, Methmouth called a cab and while the cab driver waited in the lobby, we warned him of what he was getting into. And at last Methmouth and Lady and their luggage all rode off into the night.
But not to the hospital. I checked.
I suspect that having been frustrated in trying to get us to admit to wrongdoing, and not having any way to soak us for money, they gave up. Later, we discovered that in addition to flooding their bathroom, they had tried to soak it up with the comforters off the beds, they had torn the smoke detector off the ceiling, and had also broken the closet door. All of this is in addition to flooding the hallway, and the water that seeped down the wall into the fourth floor hallway. All of it was documented and if they do try to resurrect their scam later, we're going to fire back with drywall damage, and repairs to the room.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we don't rent to locals. Locals are the reason we can't have nice things.
Bonus Scam!
As I started to write this, the phone rang. It was a woman, who sounded drunk, who claimed her grandparents had staid here earlier in the month and were extremely displeased with their room. The manager had agreed to a monetary refund, which was waiting for her to pick it up at the front desk. Several things are wrong with this, but to sum it up, it's complete horseshit. She was able to give me a -- very common -- last name, but had some trouble getting the first name, or the state where her supposed grandparents were from. In the end, I told her she would have to try again tomorrow when actual management is here.
I rather hope she does. It ought to be great fun.
First, though, let me ask you a question:
Have you ever tried to keep cats out of the bedroom?
If you have, then you know. If cats are denied full run of the bedroom, they will make it their life's mission to get into that bedroom. They will lurk outside the door for hours on end and meow and scratch at the carpet until they tear up hunks of it. They will sprint inside the instant the door opens even a crack and scurry under the bed where they know you can't reach them. If the door is left open while the cats are in some other part of the house, they will tumble over themselves and slam into walls in their all-encompassing need to rush inside. If shoved out and dispatched to the hall with the broom, the cats will resume lurking and plotting other ways to get into that bedroom. They know no other purpose. Their life has no other meaning.
The situation is much the same with locals and hotels. Deny them entry and they crave it all the more, and they will do anything, go to any length, to get into a hotel. They will use expired out-of-state drivers licenses. They will employ friends and relatives from out of town. They will make reservations online solely for the purpose of getting into a hotel, any hotel, which denies them entry.
Now, you may ask, why are locals denied entry to hotels? For many good reasons, but the most succinct answer is found in the hotel that not long ago and not too far away from me which had to strip two of its rooms down to the bare concrete and cinderblocks and start over after some locals set up a meth lab in them.
That's why. And that's also why we here at Elongated Hexagon Inn deny rooms to locals. There's no reason for anyone local to stay here; we don't even have jacuzzi suites, like some properties do. We just have rooms. Expensive rooms, yes, but just plain rooms.
Last Sunday, a local made a prepaid reservation via one of the online travel sites. There are many such sites; they breed in the damp, like mildew. This guest brought her boyfriend along with her to check in. We shall call them Lady and Methmouth. The manager explained to Lady that due to the nature of her reservation, the room had been paid for through the online site, but that we needed to collect a credit card for incidental expenses. Somehow, sitting halfway across the lobby, Methmouth got it into his drug-addled head that we were refusing them service, which is actually what we should have done. He started yelling across the lobby to Lady and the front desk staff. We suspect it was at this point that Methmouth began his plan to get money back from the hotel, as we do offer the "Please Steal From Us" Guarantee, which states that if you are not completely satisfied with your stay, you get it for free.
Twice before I even came on shift, he had called down to complain, saying first that the tub would not hold water and second that the room was just not what he had expected. Considering that what he likely expected was a 1970's vintage trailer bedroom with blistering particle-board paneling that reeked of meth fumes, this is not such a stretch. Anyway, though, he settled down and we hoped that would be the last we would hear of him for the night.
It was not to be. On one of his first rounds after the other staff departed, leaving only the security guard and myself, the security guard noticed so much water pooled in the hallway that it was reflecting the hallway lights back at him. This was a problem for many reasons, but perhaps the most alarming reason is that the room was on the fifth floor. Water on the fifth floor is not a good thing because in due course it becomes water on the fourth floor, water on the third floor, and so on.
He knocked on the door and found what he thought was Lady and Methmouth coked out of their heads. He would know. He comes from a background in law enforcement. Calls were made and managers were awakened. Two managers conferred and agreed to let Lady and Methmouth stay even after this, but we would need to get the water up. And so the security guard had to go up to the fifth floor at one in the morning and suck up about ten gallons of water from the carpet with a very noisy Shop-Vac. I was down at the desk dealing with extremely irate guests wondering why the hell someone was vacuuming at one in the morning, including one guest who uttered the immortal lines, "Jesus Christ! I've never seen anything like you guys!" before slamming down his phone. As you can imagine, this resulted in several Please Steal From Us Guarantees being issued in the morning.
Meanwhile, over the next two hours, Methmouth wandered the building and made sure to talk up both the security guard and myself.
Picture it: A man with a mismatched skeleton, one half of which was about four inches higher than the other, with rotted black stumps for teeth, staggering around the building. Also, we noticed, he was on a cell phone in between conversations with us. Then we noticed that every time he came up to us to talk after another bout on the phone, his story changed and was growing more elaborate. It went from his girlfriend falling in the tub, to her having a possible concussion, to her slipping on soap residue in the bottom of the tub, to a possible skull fracture. Also, he made sure to tell us, her pupils were dilated.
I did not and do not believe he even had any idea what those words even mean. Having meth mouth is a pretty good indicator of low intelligence. We suspected that someone on the phone was coaching him in an effort to lay in a scam. We didn't take the bait because to offer to call 911 implies culpability. We didn't offer, on the basis that if she really did fall, and really did hurt her head, Methmouth would have enough sense to call for an ambulance on his own. He never did. Instead, he called other hotels across town looking for another room and telling them that they had checked in here and -- poor, innocent lambs -- their room had flooded through no fault of their own and we weren't helping them at all! If you can even imagine our nerve. I learned about this when another hotel called me to ask what the hell was going on.
It should also be noted that during his conversations with us, Methmouth noted that their car and luggage and ID had all been stolen -- which was part of the reason all of the other hotels were telling him to go to hell when he called them. No ID, no room. Period. Finally, Methmouth called a cab and while the cab driver waited in the lobby, we warned him of what he was getting into. And at last Methmouth and Lady and their luggage all rode off into the night.
But not to the hospital. I checked.
I suspect that having been frustrated in trying to get us to admit to wrongdoing, and not having any way to soak us for money, they gave up. Later, we discovered that in addition to flooding their bathroom, they had tried to soak it up with the comforters off the beds, they had torn the smoke detector off the ceiling, and had also broken the closet door. All of this is in addition to flooding the hallway, and the water that seeped down the wall into the fourth floor hallway. All of it was documented and if they do try to resurrect their scam later, we're going to fire back with drywall damage, and repairs to the room.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we don't rent to locals. Locals are the reason we can't have nice things.
Bonus Scam!
As I started to write this, the phone rang. It was a woman, who sounded drunk, who claimed her grandparents had staid here earlier in the month and were extremely displeased with their room. The manager had agreed to a monetary refund, which was waiting for her to pick it up at the front desk. Several things are wrong with this, but to sum it up, it's complete horseshit. She was able to give me a -- very common -- last name, but had some trouble getting the first name, or the state where her supposed grandparents were from. In the end, I told her she would have to try again tomorrow when actual management is here.
I rather hope she does. It ought to be great fun.
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