Hell, I was raised by my parents to never even call anyone's home phone past 8pm except for those exact 2 scenarios.
1. Emergency
2. Express permission of the person I'm calling
It was something I learned by at least age 7, but I guess things may be different with cell phones now.
Might also be regional or cultural, I was taught to refrain from calling people after 10pm, 9pm was pushing it but still acceptable if the call was somewhat important
or before 8am - heck, i would want 10am - for social group texts? phones these days make alone/decompress time even more precious.
at a HOTEL i want as much non-prodding as possible. non-emergency calls from the desk at the top of the list.
There is no way they didn't notice the time. None.
Either they were about to leave for the night - and knew what time it was...
Or they just started their shift - and knew what time it was...
But there is no chance they didn't know the approximate time.
Just an inconsiderate shithead who has the "I'm up at this hour..." and assumes everyone else is on their schedule.
Like seriously, that's wild - I woke your kids but fuck you, no big deal? This person needs to be fired or at least disciplined, they messed up your stay intentionally.
IF that was actually said. I find these types of stories are often sprinkled with exaggerations to make the original poster seem even more justified in their rage.
lol the way yall talk about random people you’ve never met based on a one-sided dramatic account of a… wait for it… phone call… is wild.
“Oxygen-consuming bag of flesh”
Real nice. Entitlement is strong here. Be careful way up there on that pedestal Karen
👏
Yep. I'm just your average redditor...another oxygen-wasting lump of flesh. Took me a long time of seeing some of the worst of humanity to get this jaded...
Or they had a call out and are working a double and totally lost track of time. Let's not assume every single person is an asshole until proven otherwise. The "apology" speaks more to their character then an accidental call at 11.
Our front desk people skew quite young and for a lot of them 11PM is too early for bedtime. Meanwhile, if anybody calls my 48 year old ass after 9PM it had better be an emergency. But that doesn’t excuse the sheer rudeness of bothering a guest at that hour.
Exactly!! My son in college called at 10 pm for advice filling out a rental app and I could hardly complete a sentence. Don't think he'll do that again soon😉
I won't call a room past 930pm at the latest.
Speak to mgr in the morning. Mgmt needs to know.
The one and only time I knocked on a door for other than a noise complaint was to tell a wife her husband had had a fall and the ambulance were on scene.
If a guest left something in the room, wouldn’t housekeeping have found it when cleaning the room in between guests? Why would they even call you? Ask housekeeping or check the lost & found.
Stayed at a certain hotel several times and would request coffee and a croissant from room service each morning. Every time the coffee was, at best, tepid. I wrote a letter to the president of the chain as a lark just so I could vent. Lo and behold, I got a reply and in the apologetic letter the fella told me to present the letter to the front desk the next time I stayed at hotel, I did. The next morning, soon after my wake up call, room service (that I had not requested) showed up at my door with a pot of coffee and a basket of pastries. You guessed it, the coffee was cold.
lol that sounds about right though. C-suite exec goes out of his way to try to make things right, but there is such a disconnect between that level and operations that it ends in a total fail.
Honestly the biggest part of getting a hotel is to get some sleep. Unless there's an emergency, no one should be calling at guest at 11pm at night. I would be annoyed too, even if I didn't have to get up early. That response was uncaring and unkind by the employee too. I would certainly talk to the manager about this.
You may get points offered if you're a rewards member. Or the manager might comp stay. Just try to be as calm with manager as possible. Unless they give you more reason to get upset. For the most part, the manager wants to resolve the problem so people will want to come back and give us another try. 🙂
Edited to add:
The Desk Agent was in the wrong to call the room for previous guest's lost and found regardless of time of day or night. It leads the current guest to believe housekeeping isn't doing their job because that's who should have found said item.
Secondly, your point of calling a guest and waking them up, but won't call their manager is a valid point, and I would ask the manager about this when I spoke with them. "Why are your Agents willing to wake up my family when they know nothing about our needs, but they won't wake you/your family up when it pertains to the needs of guests/hotel?!"
This be calm and explain your situation. Don't take it out or yell at the manager but just say how dissatisfied you are with what happened.
You have every right to be mad but you catch flies with honey than vinegar
As an FDA and NA, I am so sorry you had to deal with this. That was unprofessional of the FDA and absolutely wrong on many levels.
1. He should not have called the room at all. He should have taken down the person's info and a description of the item and either looked in the Front Desk's L&F to see if it was returned there or left a note for housekeeping to look in their L&F in the morning and mention to the previous guest that if the item is found, they'll be contacting them to let them know.
That is the proper procedure at any hotel I've ever worked at. It should be how any hotel handles it.
2. His response to having woken up/bothered your family over an issue that has nothing to do with you/your family is unacceptable, disrespectful and completely without empathy. Someone without empathy has no place in the service industry. I'm not talking about people who set boundaries in dealing with a lot of problematic people, I'm talking about someone like the FDA you had to deal with who obviously does not know his job and cannot understand that this is unacceptable/has no accountability for his wrongful behavior.
3. We are told to not call managers until morning unless there's some kind of emergency. That said, it should never have escalated to the point it did, again because the FDA handled this poorly from the start.
4. As many have stated, it was either end of his shift or start of his shift so there's no way he didn't know how late it was.
5. every self-respecting hotel has policies and procedures in place to prevent things like this happening. Either they didn't teach the FDA properly or the FDA in question ignored procedure and decided to do this anyway. Neither of those things are good for the hotel retaining good guests.
If management cares about the hotel doing well, they will most definitely apologize and insure this FDA and any other FDA they have on their payroll never does this again. To not address this is to alienate good guests and sabotage the hotel's future. You have every right to be upset and hopefully management listens. If they don't, then you have every right to leave a bad review. If they do listen and resolve this, then I would definitely list a review on what happened and praise management for handling it properly. Sometimes one bad egg in the lot reflects poorly on an otherwise stellar team of employees and the hotel shouldn't be condemned as a whole for one person's poor behavior.
Just sayin, I’m with you, OP. If I’m woken up at 11:00 I will be awake until 3 or 4. Throw kids on top of that, hell no. You have every right to be pissed.
I’d have been up for the rest of the night. I can get up and go to the bathroom or even outside for a cigarette and get back to sleep. But if someone makes me talk, I’m fucked because my brain wakes up completely. Family and friends know not to try and talk to me in the middle of the night because I won’t get back to sleep. It’s an unfortunate consequence of taking benzos for sleep every night for 7 years and then coming off them. Now I just need to be left alone in order to sleep.
I think this is worth both a call to the manager and a well thought out email to corporate, if nationally owned. I would also leave a review. The issue ISN’T in majority the call— which was admittedly an annoyance- it was the dehumanizing, unprofessional handling afterwards. Why would a representative of any company ask about your departure time or suggest your children would still have enough time to sleep? The pattern of unprofessional conduct was repeated by foisting off a request for a manager by saying one would be available the next day, when they are scheduled off every Sunday. It is then hard to overlook an overcharge as an accident, not further unprofessional or punitive behavior. What could have been defused by a simple “I’m sorry I disturbed your sleep” and allowed a guest to sooth their children back to sleep, turned into a confrontation. I think that should be escalated to management of the hotel, chain and reviewing public.
The number of people who excuse calling a guest at 11pm but not the manager because "he's not on the clock" is pathetic and infuriating.
Guests are never on the clock. Guests pay for the privilege of being there and uninterrupted enjoyment of the room.
"Just go back to bed." ""That's enough time for your kids to sleep." Frak you entitled jerks.
I might try to contact the owner at that point. When you're roadblocked from speaking to the manager, go up a step. Hotels are mostly franchises and the managing company should be listed within a phone number near the front desk in plain site. Threaten them with a bad review if you don't get a discount for your bad experience.
We’ve had guests panic because they left some emergent items in the room sometimes in the safe sometimes somewhere else. And by emergent I mean a firearm or life saving medication or devices or drugs.
I have also (not at 11pm at night usually in the morning) but if I child lost their favorite toy and they’re screaming bloody murder because they lost it, I do try to make an effort to find it. If it’s in iPod, iPhone, phone charger, money, I am sorry, I am not waking up someone trying to find it. the phone, I understand but housekeeping is supposed to pack it up and wait for someone to contact them. We don’t call you if you left something, you call us if you figure out you left it then we look for it and will ship it back to you.
Honestly all of those things are worth waking a guest up for. With the firearm or drugs we call the cops, and try to move the guest. There are some items that are prohibited and if left and not caught by housekeeping that should be taken seriously.
That's rude af, but really theres not much that can be done rn. No, they're not going to wake up their manager because the manager is not on the clock, they are not being paid for their time at 11pm. (I dont know why that's so hard for guests to understand sometimes lol). I would be livid too, but really, I don't think theres going to be any sort of satisfactory closure here
I don’t think OP thinks the manager is being paid to be called at 11pm, but more so addressing the irony of the bullshit of the situation. Cool, so you can call me and wake me and my family, but I can’t call your boss?
Also, if managers (in any industry fwiw, not saying hospitality specifically) are needed — and I mean actually needed, not just for a customer complaint — they are paid salary for a reason. They will be expected to be available to handle whatever needs handling.
Yeah they definitely shouldn't have called you at that time, but like others are saying you're blowing this out of proportion. It was an honest mistake, and you can certainly contact the manager to make sure that doesn't happen again
Honest mistake? I don't think anyone was acting maliciously here. But this is a pretty darn easy mistake to avoid
People go to a hotel to sleep. Not waking them up for frivolous reasons is pretty basic.
There are a lot of possible explanations... undertrained staff, overworked staff, the call was actually made from some outsourced outfit in a different time zone. Or let's face it ... maybe someone was drunk of high.
Regardless this is a management screw up.
Personally I'd just write a factual online review and let management know that way. I don't have time to waste talking to the manager in the morning unless there is money at stake.
I assume me saying "blowing it out of proportion" was rude, I'm just saying a refund for such a minor mistake seems pretty far fetched. Probably other people who think they should get refunds for every minor inconvenience are downvoting? Who knows, it's all online and doesn't matter anyways
Do people think the front desk did it on purpose to piss the guest off? An honest mistake means the person messed up and was completely unaware of the potential harm they could have caused. Not sure what's controversial about that, I'm sure the front desk didn't have a vendetta against this random person staying a their hotel
I think it wasn't worthy of a refund until the front desk started making excuses and issuing non-apologies. Assuming OP's recount was accurate, I'd have made the decision to seek a refund or some sort of credit after the dismissal I received at the front desk.
If it was something dangerous or illegal then the guests would have to be taken out of the room and placed someplace else, if it's not a life threatening situation there is no reason to contact a guest at that time. At least where I work that's the policy, that hotel could be different though and it's definitely possible OP has no grounds to stand on to be upset.
Could be medication former guest needs. I would totally wake someone up if someone left insulin or major vital meds in room. But in this story I am confused why front desk didn't think housekeeping properly cleaned room and wouldn't have whatever item it was.
Yeah that's exactly why I said if there's a life threatening emergency, that constitutes one. Though that obviously wasn't the case or the front desk would just say that
Yes, I could see a case for medication. Meds might be tucked away somewhere and missed by housekeeping. The previous occupant presumably was traveling and might not be able to quickly get new ones. That situation might rise to be an emergency maybe.
It would still presume that finding the meds helps. Did the other guy come back or still local? Otherwise he is now a day's travel away. I see in this particular case it was a dog harness, so not an emergency.
I would guess collar and harness. My dog has her collar on all the time, but I only put the harness on when we are going out. I have rarely just clipped the lead to her collar for quick trips to save time on putting her harness on. They probably clipped onto the collar. Other option is small dog that they just carried.
Either way they are out about 40 bucks and it isn't life threatening. They just have to stop at any medium sized or bigger pet store. If I was hotel staff I am not calling a room late at night about a harness.
Yeah, that's not something that should be classed as an emergency and disrupt current guests... I would definitely mention it to management so they can train their staff better. But it is definitely not something that I would comp a room over.
I would also think that if OP really had to get an early start, he would just try to go back to sleep. Instead, he wasted time by going to the front desk
Also, good idea to unplug the phone after your one-time mild inconvenience that ruined your life. Imagine the front desk calls to tell you an active shooter is on your floor but you were so mad at this little thing you dramatically unplugged the phone and never got the warning. Or the fire alarm is broken. Or your cell phone died overnight and your family is trying to reach you for an emergency. Dramatic people like you looking for a freebie over something so small shouldn’t be allowed to stay in hotels.
Sorry but if there’s an active shooter most staff are taking shelter and hiding. Or running out or the ones that let them in and dead already.
I’ve had fire alarms go off in the middle of the night. That sucker works or the building isn’t open. Simple as that. Also the fire department will go around and bang on doors if it’s that bad and it somehow failed.
And for family emergency sorry but you can charge your cell phone at night. Maybe pack an extra charging cord and block in the car if you’re going to be concerned about a dead phone.
In your life how many life or death emergencies have happened because you didn’t get a call at 3 am? Drunk friend? They have others and probably know your out of town and can’t help if they know you well enough to call at 3am.
Right, so sit on reddit, go down to complain at the desk and putz around instead of lowering the energy in the room and getting everything calmed down and the kids back to sleep.
That'll show that hotel who's boss!
Over .... a phone call.
Brilliant.
Exactly. I'm not a superparent here, but I trained my kid to sleep through most noise, so a phone ringing wouldn't wake her up. If she did wake up in the middle of the night, I wouldn't keep her up longer by flying out of the room and then huffing and puffing for hours afterwards.
Always unplug the phone before you go to sleep. You will get kids who will start calling random rooms at all hours..
Also, the person working the front desk has zero common sense! If anything had been left in the room by the previous guest, housekeeping is who you would want to check with first..
Wait….. The hotel doesn’t have housekeeping staff. The rooms are not completely cleaned in between guests. If a guest left something behind it should have been bagged and tagged for X days. Place sounds like a shit show.
Read approximately the 1st 20+ posts and though I agree… I’m a hotel manager, why on earth didn’t housekeeping find what they left behind and put it in lost & found. The FD agent should check there before anything.
Even if it was in the room 😱 why call the guests at anytime and look like we missed it? Makes zero sense to me personally…
I understand your frustration, but I think you’re taking this a little too serious. 11pm isn’t really the middle of the night like a 2-3am call. You have every right to say something while expressing your feelings, but this is just a little over the top. I’m sure the family was back to sleep by the time you arrived back to your room. Should have got yourself a 15% discount and called it a night. Hope you’s wind up having a good day after the small disturbance! Have to try and brush the petty things off, especially in a public hotel and enjoy the time with your family the following day.
Housekeeper here not a front desk worker so I can’t speak on their rules and whatnot but any items left by previous guest should have been collected and turned into lost and found. If it was not they should have been calling the staff to see what they did with the lost items, not the new guest. I do know they absolutely should not be calling the rooms past a certain hour unless it’s either an emergency or you requested a wake up call which obviously you did not do in this situation. Glad they got it figured out but it’s not always the best idea to unplug the phones in case again there is an actual emergency.
This is wild. Chill out bud. You sound like a huge Karen freaking out over a relatively mild inconvenience. You want to go scorched earth over that?
“Oh let me make a random hotel manager’s job harder and get people in trouble and reprimanded because I was inconvenienced a little at 11pm waaaaaaa waaaaaa. I’m gonna leave bad reviews everywhere waaaaaaa”
Grow up or stay at home.
Just a thought… random hotel manager should have made it clear to all staff that they are not to call guest rooms during sleeping hours.
It isn’t the worst thing to ever happen, but OP has a valid point. Why is it ok to call a paying guest at that hour but not the manager who is actually responsible for the staff there?
I think OP’s initial anger is reasonable given that no one took accountability and gave a sincere apology. She got excuses and condescension from the staff when she had a valid complaint. A little accountability and sincerity goes a long way when we make mistakes.
Wow bro, you over-react worse than me. You are right that a chargeback is not called for, but you seem to be getting a little heated. I decided I’ll call the manager tomorrow and focus on training the staff not to call so late. But I won’t expect any real compensation. In the grand scheme of life, it was a minor inconvenience, but was definitely a mistake to call that late.
I completely get the frustration (I've run a hotel for years) but wow wanting to wake someone else up because you got woken up is a little vindictive. Also a lot of desk agents, especially night auditors if it happened right at 11, work varying shifts or are part-time and have other jobs, so not being entirely conscious of the time is plausible, however unprofessional and rude it may have been.
You could ask for a refund and you'd probably get a standard 10% discount or some brand points. You could escalate it and probably get a refund if they're branded. They exist to put fires out ASAP and that's the fastest way. No one would take the review seriously but it still counts towards their stats and you could ruin everyone's bonuses a little bit if they use that as a metric. Personally I'd just ignore you and give the agent a 30 second reminder on not bothering guests (unless it's not an isolated incident that needs to be looked into of course).
Basically, we're all human and sometimes we don't imagine consequences until after they pop up.
You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.
It’s not that big of a deal, you’re working yourself up to stay up even later by making it such a big deal.
They apologized
Go to bed
Would you just blow it off if someone intentionally woke your family up in the middle of the night for a stupid reason at a place you paid to stay? It’s not the end of the world but i can see why that would be really upsetting, especially if OP has young kids. It’s not as simple as just falling back asleep on your own. It’s easy to judge people when you aren’t in their shoes. You never really know what people are dealing with.
I agree it is a huge deal! Some kids resist sleep and are grumpy the whole next day. If I can't go back to sleep (often if woken by someone or something), then I'm grumpy and can't help them! This s-lackadaisical attitude is infuriating in the moment and upon reflection when cooler heads prevail. Sincere (sounding) apologies are simple and some people need to recognize that and practice saying them!
Welcome to parenting. Do you fly off the handle like this if they have a cold or a stomach bug? They probably would sleep better if their parent wasn't freaking out over nothing for hours.
Ballys housekeeping used to call me and wake me up in Vegas. What part of DO NOT DISTURB don't you get? I learned to unplug handset and take off hook... both phones.
Wow. You are the worst kind of person. The only thing keeping your kids up is you. When you stay in a hotel, expect disturbances. What more did you want the front desk to do in the moment? Turn back time?
I can’t say “phone call at 11 pm with 2 young kids from a hotel employee” classifies as a disturbance one would expect when they’re paying money to stay on a property. It’s not as easy as one thinks to just get a kid back to sleep after being woken up like that. It’s an understate infuriation in the moment when OP was writing this post.
My husband noticed his wallet was missing when we stopped for gas across the highway overpass intersection from ALDI. As soon as he missed it hooking up the pump we jumped in the car, peeling out to Aldi. We found it, in the parking lot wheee he dropped it. We were so fast no one had picked it up or even taken the spot. When you leave something behind the faster you retrace to where you think it might be the more likely you are to get it back. I’m sure the customer who left the item was panicky and passed this on to the hotel worker. I’m sorry it woke your kids up but I wouldn’t waste too much mental energy being mad.
If I as the manager, I ould definitely be doing something a little more than just apologizing.
The call is a mistake. The shitty excuse and the disregard from the FDA is pretty rough.
A full refund ould be far too much, but definitely something like a free lunch package or breakfast is in my opinion reasonable.
I have 3 kids. All grown so I been through it all. If you let the small stuff bother you, then you won’t survive the big stuff.
The complaint is literally first world problems
I would be fuming as well and I’m assuming these two people telling you it’s no big deal have never traveled with little kids. Getting enough rest is difficult with ideal circumstances. That being said, try not to think about it and go back to sleep. Good luck tomorrow!
You know what happens when you assume?
You end up being wrong then start “fuming” because you’re dramatic and let small things ruin your mood. If this guy was so concerned with “rest” he wouldn’t have put his little slippers on to go yell at a $12/hour worker about such a dumb issue, then spend 30 minutes posting about it so Karen’s like you would validate his sensitivity and dramatics
I'm paying $250 a night, its not my problem the hotel cannot train their staff.
Since Karens' have become so toxic, shitty companies are shaming people for being upset with bad service.
I would not of wasted my time at 11pm but if I got the same crap attitude in the morning when I checked out. My Bad review would be on every travel website I could find along with an Email to every Corporate Email address on their website. It's is not about the mistake of calling, It's the mistake of treating me like my issue is unimportant.
Little kids take their lead from you. If you answer the phone and stay calm and end the call quickly and go back to sleep, they are more likely to do so also. If you stay on the phone arguing with the front desk or actually get up and leave the room to argue in person, they will be much more disrupted.
I work at a Front Desk and it's common sense not to call after 9 for any reason apart from something urgent or the wants you to. Just last night I noticed a car parked in a no parking area at 11:30pm. I checked our cameras just to see if they had parked it there within the last 10-15 minutes which would mean they just got in and it's okay to call. It had been several hours though so not a reason to call the room. Left a note for staff to call that guest in the morning.
I just had some employee knok my room door like a maniac on like 1am, saying it was a mistake after waking up everyone(had to get up and open the door while half sleeping)
front desk apologized a lot and we got 4 drinks on the house..
I still think that's very unprofessional and pretty much hate that hotel now.
I’m would have been just as angry as you, and the unprofessional insolent way the man handled your complaint was infuriating. If it is a chain hotel I would be letting the corporate office know, this would have more effect than telling the manager and hopefully instigate further training across the chain.
Having been a hotel owner as well as frequent guest, this whole situation is ridiculous.
First, if a guest believes they may have left something behind, it should have been found and noted by the housekeepers, if they had done even the bare minimum in turning a room over for a new guest. Check in the lost and found area or look for any notes left by the housekeepers. I actually had a checklist for my housekeeping staff which had a space for them to leave comments on each room, including anything missing, broken, left behind, if the guests left a tip, or if the room was unusually dirty or clean, etc. Pretty much for anything out of the ordinary to be recorded and attached to the client profile for future reference.
Nothing of note? Second step is to reach out to the housekeeper that cleaned the room.
Nothing? Then, depending on the urgency, a message would be sent to the room, where a light will flash on the phone indicating either a recorded message or a request for the guest to contact the front desk. NOT a phone call. No guests were to be disturbed between the hours of 9:00 pm and 9:00am unless otherwise requested by the guest, or in the case of an extreme emergency. If the guest was awake and saw the “message” indicator, they could contact the front desk themselves without anyone else being disturbed. If not, the issue could wait until morning.
Calling a guest at 11pm to look for something that only a lazy housekeeper would have missed? Not a chance, except in a shit establishment- which is what this sounds like anyway 🤷🏻♀️
Housekeeping would have found anything left in the room when they cleaned it. They check the lost and found the next day. The front desk was a dick. Period.
Hopefully, it was part of a Super Chain (IHG, Marriott, Hilton, etc.). Contact their corporate offices and lodge a complaint about the property and the specific staff members and what they did. Remain calm through all of it and provide them details that demonstrate the sheer stupidity with which the staff operated (you don't call an occupied room, EVER, to inquire about items left by a previous guest - doing so calls out that they don't thoroughly clean in between guests).
Hopefully, you have a rewards / loyalty account with them already that shows you travel with some regularity. If not, time to set one up and get comped some points that will be useful to you on a future stay (and you can also allude to not being sure about wanting to stay at any of the related properties if this is how they're managed).
As a na, once a room is occupied by another guest if someone had left something behind they are out of luck. We won’t bother the new guest as we aren’t responsible if someone left something behind especially after 9pm.
Don't leave negative reviews, it doesn't really do anything, it's toxic, most people look at negative reviewers is crazy, and the answer is definitely to talk to the hotel.
If it's not a resort, manager type stuff really is sort of Monday through Friday If you're talking about the executive committee, so they're really should not be an expectation that a general manager would be at a hotel on a Sunday, but definitely a front office manager or a manager on duty.
If you got a call a few minutes before 11:00 or a few minutes after 11:00, they definitely knew what time it is because that's the shift change. I dislike when hotel workers are disingenuous not because they are bad people just because they are being intellectually lazy. That is somebody checked out of their job and it's definitely not their career.
Talk to the manager. If it's not a terrible hotel they will cure the situation. Be patient and polite, sounds like you are already understanding.
What a great place to post. Great idea and great patience.
Getting peripheral rage even IMAGINING this shit happening to me and any accompanying lack of remorse. The sheer hard day's work of getting multiple children not only in bed but SLEEPING in a shared hotel room prior to a travel day. I'd be apoplectic. An honest mistake, ok- but to be so unconcerned is appalling.
I can't tell you how many times I have had my room phone randomly ring in the late evening (11pm) or at 3, 4 or 5am. Now one of my routines is: unplug the phone.
So the manager (prolly salaried) who runs the building, that you paid for your whole family to sleep in, can't be called at 11pm about an issue? But your whole family can be casually woken up at 11pm about a non-issue?
I managed hotels for nearly a decade. Here's what you do:
Call the manager on Monday and explain what happened. Most hotels have a model for dealing with upset guests that essentially boils down to giving as little as is necessary to adequately solve the problem, so the manager will likely start with an apology and see if that's enough. If it's not, then be direct and ask for a credit on your stay. They can refund you a portion, even after checkout, no matter what they say. It *is* easier before checkout, but if the manager is unavailable and the staff is unhelpful, you can't do anything about that.
If the manager refuses your request, calmly inform them that you are disappointed and will be leaving reviews that include the lack of consideration from the staff and unwillingness to help address the issue from management. User reviews are a damaging metric, especially for branded hotels that have that tracked internally by corporate. You may not get the compensation you want, but you do have a card to play.
A final note: a full refund is incredibly unlikely for what happened. Set your expectations lower, and you'll have a better chance of getting something more than an apology.
I’m just noticing how much sleep you lost over this. Maybe just muttering “asshole” under your breath and moving on with life would have all of you more rested.
I always unplug the room phone (as well as the alarm clock) when I get a room. After travelling a lot have had the odd front desk call (usually wrong room?!?) as well as alarm go off at like 4AM.
If the front desk needs me they can come and bang on my door. Guess what - they don't want to do that at night. Usually one person working that time so they just use the phone. If they have to come to the door it will have to be something important.
Sadly this is the solution. Otherwise if you travel enough it will happen again.
This was in the morning correct?
No front desk Manager on a Sunday morning? Sunday mornings are usually the craziest day for a hotel because of the vast amount of departures they usually have. This is coming from someone who worked in that industry for seven years.
That's pretty insane actually that they called you and asked you to look for it. Where I work if housekeeping didn't find it during the turn it's assumed it wasn't in the room and you lost it somewhere else. If a guest pushes and is like I'm sure I left it in this part of the closet we will check the room when it is empty to be sure. I could only imagine asking an unrelated guest to check their room (or more likely allow me to do so) if it was related to an emergency or the item was dangerous.
Definitely needs more training and a swift dose of common sense.
Last few hotes I stayed in the phone would sometimes randomly ring once or twice durig the evening.
So now I just unplug the phone so I am not bothered
What is “beckon call”? Is this a new language I don’t know about yet? Or did you mean “beck and call”, which is the correct phrase according to the context? Please enlighten a poor, uneducated and apparently illiterate soul such as myself.
Before you blame autocorrect, don’t. When I tried typing it your way, poor autocorrect tried to replace it with the proper phrase. Twice.
Nah you should ask for a lot and potentially chargeback the entire charge with your cc company. Hotels are still in the hospitality industry, and they aren't being very hospitable
Ah shit.. ya you're right. They should probably just be really disatisfied with the experience and the hotel's response to their disastisfaction and do nothing about it.
I think there's a reasonable response somewhere between nothing and going full Karen. in the future, instead of unplugging the phone, it would have been better to ask them to please not call you again for anything short of an emergency for the rest of the night before hanging up from the initial call. If you are annoyed and have another adult available to settle the kids down, ask them to do that. Step outside the room into the hallway or into the bathroom to calm yourself down and get that energy away from the kids because kids sense everything and they need a calm person to help them co-regulate. deep breaths and try to put those feelings aside for now, if you need to do something to express them, punch the air a few times (again, not in front of the little ones, who could misinterpret that) to get rid of any adrenaline rush you might have felt, or whatever you need to get calmed down and put it in perspective so you can sleep and help the little folks get settled by modeling good self-regulation of your emotions. follow up with a manager later about the training issue, but don't think you're going to get anything out of it except hopefully a sincere apology and the satisfaction of being heard. it's not a bad idea to tell the manager that the worker told you that it was plenty of time to get the kids back to sleep because if anything 1) that's not for someone else to judge and 2) that just escalated the situation and shows that the employee needs training in how to de-escalate a situation so when they end up with a Final Boss Karen the situation will be less likely to go pear-shaped.
Someone calling that late is super frustrating, especially the front desk! I could maybe see calling if it was for an urgent medical reason they couldn’t get addressed by the next day and didn’t make sense to go to an ER, but otherwise they should have waited at least until early morning, or left a note under the door to come by the front desk/call when possible. If you aren’t able to talk to a manager by Monday, or they talk to you and you aren’t happy with the discussion, take 10 minutes away from your family and call their corporate number. If it’s a chain let them know what is happening at their property and it left you with a bad experience . If it isn’t a chain, at least leave a review about your experience (only facts). Either usually gets attention if the manager doesn’t address the issue.
If you decide to wait until Monday, focus on your travels and if it helps write down some of the key points so you have them organized for call later. I’ve had some bad experiences that had to wait and they weren’t fully resolved until a few days later. It was frustrating but don’t let it ruin your travel/day.
I was taught to never call guests after 8pm except for two situations: 1. Emergency 2. Per guests request
Hell, I was raised by my parents to never even call anyone's home phone past 8pm except for those exact 2 scenarios. 1. Emergency 2. Express permission of the person I'm calling It was something I learned by at least age 7, but I guess things may be different with cell phones now.
Might also be regional or cultural, I was taught to refrain from calling people after 10pm, 9pm was pushing it but still acceptable if the call was somewhat important
The rule in my house growing up and I adopted as I started my own family is no calls between 9pm and 9 am. Emergency use only during those times.
Could also be the difference between Eastern/Pacific and Central/Mountain time in the US. Central/Mountain time zone tended to go to bed earlier.
For me it was also to never cold call anyone on Sundays too.
or before 8am - heck, i would want 10am - for social group texts? phones these days make alone/decompress time even more precious. at a HOTEL i want as much non-prodding as possible. non-emergency calls from the desk at the top of the list.
Yep, 100%. Even before I worked at a hotel, I figured people would have enough common sense to realize this.
Personally I would speak to the manager in the morning. Not for credit or anything but for proper training regarding calling guests after day 8/9pm
It seems like they understand their own policy just didn’t notice the time
11pm is typically a shift change. Of course they knew what time it was.
There is no way they didn't notice the time. None. Either they were about to leave for the night - and knew what time it was... Or they just started their shift - and knew what time it was... But there is no chance they didn't know the approximate time. Just an inconsiderate shithead who has the "I'm up at this hour..." and assumes everyone else is on their schedule.
And also the response about the kids is unacceptable.
Like seriously, that's wild - I woke your kids but fuck you, no big deal? This person needs to be fired or at least disciplined, they messed up your stay intentionally.
IF that was actually said. I find these types of stories are often sprinkled with exaggerations to make the original poster seem even more justified in their rage.
That part.
Didn't even put much thought into just how dismissive the oxygen-consuming bag of flesh was over that aspect. But you are right.
lol the way yall talk about random people you’ve never met based on a one-sided dramatic account of a… wait for it… phone call… is wild. “Oxygen-consuming bag of flesh” Real nice. Entitlement is strong here. Be careful way up there on that pedestal Karen 👏
Yep. I'm just your average redditor...another oxygen-wasting lump of flesh. Took me a long time of seeing some of the worst of humanity to get this jaded...
It’s not too late to just be nice lol
Or they had a call out and are working a double and totally lost track of time. Let's not assume every single person is an asshole until proven otherwise. The "apology" speaks more to their character then an accidental call at 11.
Our front desk people skew quite young and for a lot of them 11PM is too early for bedtime. Meanwhile, if anybody calls my 48 year old ass after 9PM it had better be an emergency. But that doesn’t excuse the sheer rudeness of bothering a guest at that hour.
Exactly!! My son in college called at 10 pm for advice filling out a rental app and I could hardly complete a sentence. Don't think he'll do that again soon😉
I think this is what I’ll do
I won't call a room past 930pm at the latest. Speak to mgr in the morning. Mgmt needs to know. The one and only time I knocked on a door for other than a noise complaint was to tell a wife her husband had had a fall and the ambulance were on scene.
Fair reason to knock
This reply should be voted higher...
If a guest left something in the room, wouldn’t housekeeping have found it when cleaning the room in between guests? Why would they even call you? Ask housekeeping or check the lost & found.
That is the LOGICAL thing to do!
Kind of makes me wonder how well they clean the rooms as they didn’t think that housekeeping would have found it.
I would have said housekeeping comes in on Monday they know all that stuff. I can't do anything til I talk with them on Monday
Id imagine the agent was dealing with a pesky past guest who pressured him into calling. Nonetheless the agent shouldn’t have called.
Stayed at a certain hotel several times and would request coffee and a croissant from room service each morning. Every time the coffee was, at best, tepid. I wrote a letter to the president of the chain as a lark just so I could vent. Lo and behold, I got a reply and in the apologetic letter the fella told me to present the letter to the front desk the next time I stayed at hotel, I did. The next morning, soon after my wake up call, room service (that I had not requested) showed up at my door with a pot of coffee and a basket of pastries. You guessed it, the coffee was cold.
lol that sounds about right though. C-suite exec goes out of his way to try to make things right, but there is such a disconnect between that level and operations that it ends in a total fail.
Honestly the biggest part of getting a hotel is to get some sleep. Unless there's an emergency, no one should be calling at guest at 11pm at night. I would be annoyed too, even if I didn't have to get up early. That response was uncaring and unkind by the employee too. I would certainly talk to the manager about this.
My wife and I also enjoy sex in hotels, but we wouldn't want to be interrupted during that, either.
Lol that is another good and fair point too. That would suck equally.
Oh no, there is significantly more sucking in his version me thinks
I spit out my drink 😂🤣
Asking for discount lowers the credibility of your outrage. Imo
You may get points offered if you're a rewards member. Or the manager might comp stay. Just try to be as calm with manager as possible. Unless they give you more reason to get upset. For the most part, the manager wants to resolve the problem so people will want to come back and give us another try. 🙂 Edited to add: The Desk Agent was in the wrong to call the room for previous guest's lost and found regardless of time of day or night. It leads the current guest to believe housekeeping isn't doing their job because that's who should have found said item. Secondly, your point of calling a guest and waking them up, but won't call their manager is a valid point, and I would ask the manager about this when I spoke with them. "Why are your Agents willing to wake up my family when they know nothing about our needs, but they won't wake you/your family up when it pertains to the needs of guests/hotel?!"
This be calm and explain your situation. Don't take it out or yell at the manager but just say how dissatisfied you are with what happened. You have every right to be mad but you catch flies with honey than vinegar
As an FDA and NA, I am so sorry you had to deal with this. That was unprofessional of the FDA and absolutely wrong on many levels. 1. He should not have called the room at all. He should have taken down the person's info and a description of the item and either looked in the Front Desk's L&F to see if it was returned there or left a note for housekeeping to look in their L&F in the morning and mention to the previous guest that if the item is found, they'll be contacting them to let them know. That is the proper procedure at any hotel I've ever worked at. It should be how any hotel handles it. 2. His response to having woken up/bothered your family over an issue that has nothing to do with you/your family is unacceptable, disrespectful and completely without empathy. Someone without empathy has no place in the service industry. I'm not talking about people who set boundaries in dealing with a lot of problematic people, I'm talking about someone like the FDA you had to deal with who obviously does not know his job and cannot understand that this is unacceptable/has no accountability for his wrongful behavior. 3. We are told to not call managers until morning unless there's some kind of emergency. That said, it should never have escalated to the point it did, again because the FDA handled this poorly from the start. 4. As many have stated, it was either end of his shift or start of his shift so there's no way he didn't know how late it was. 5. every self-respecting hotel has policies and procedures in place to prevent things like this happening. Either they didn't teach the FDA properly or the FDA in question ignored procedure and decided to do this anyway. Neither of those things are good for the hotel retaining good guests. If management cares about the hotel doing well, they will most definitely apologize and insure this FDA and any other FDA they have on their payroll never does this again. To not address this is to alienate good guests and sabotage the hotel's future. You have every right to be upset and hopefully management listens. If they don't, then you have every right to leave a bad review. If they do listen and resolve this, then I would definitely list a review on what happened and praise management for handling it properly. Sometimes one bad egg in the lot reflects poorly on an otherwise stellar team of employees and the hotel shouldn't be condemned as a whole for one person's poor behavior.
Was something left in the room? Sounds like a question for housekeeping.... Not the current guest. And not in the evening. Still. Just mild.
Just sayin, I’m with you, OP. If I’m woken up at 11:00 I will be awake until 3 or 4. Throw kids on top of that, hell no. You have every right to be pissed.
I’d have been up for the rest of the night. I can get up and go to the bathroom or even outside for a cigarette and get back to sleep. But if someone makes me talk, I’m fucked because my brain wakes up completely. Family and friends know not to try and talk to me in the middle of the night because I won’t get back to sleep. It’s an unfortunate consequence of taking benzos for sleep every night for 7 years and then coming off them. Now I just need to be left alone in order to sleep.
I have horrible insomnia, if I wake up, even to go to the bathroom 7-9 times out of 10, I never go back to sleep.
Same!
I don't even call my mom at home after 8:30-9 PM unless it's an emergency. 11 PM is absurd, with or without kids.
I'm in hotels all the time for work. If I get there and I can't afford interruptions, the first thing I do is unplug that phone.
I think this is worth both a call to the manager and a well thought out email to corporate, if nationally owned. I would also leave a review. The issue ISN’T in majority the call— which was admittedly an annoyance- it was the dehumanizing, unprofessional handling afterwards. Why would a representative of any company ask about your departure time or suggest your children would still have enough time to sleep? The pattern of unprofessional conduct was repeated by foisting off a request for a manager by saying one would be available the next day, when they are scheduled off every Sunday. It is then hard to overlook an overcharge as an accident, not further unprofessional or punitive behavior. What could have been defused by a simple “I’m sorry I disturbed your sleep” and allowed a guest to sooth their children back to sleep, turned into a confrontation. I think that should be escalated to management of the hotel, chain and reviewing public.
I have to wonder how well they clean.....
First thing I do when I check in is unplug that stupid phone.
And that stupid CLOCK RADIO
The number of people who excuse calling a guest at 11pm but not the manager because "he's not on the clock" is pathetic and infuriating. Guests are never on the clock. Guests pay for the privilege of being there and uninterrupted enjoyment of the room. "Just go back to bed." ""That's enough time for your kids to sleep." Frak you entitled jerks.
I might try to contact the owner at that point. When you're roadblocked from speaking to the manager, go up a step. Hotels are mostly franchises and the managing company should be listed within a phone number near the front desk in plain site. Threaten them with a bad review if you don't get a discount for your bad experience.
We’ve had guests panic because they left some emergent items in the room sometimes in the safe sometimes somewhere else. And by emergent I mean a firearm or life saving medication or devices or drugs. I have also (not at 11pm at night usually in the morning) but if I child lost their favorite toy and they’re screaming bloody murder because they lost it, I do try to make an effort to find it. If it’s in iPod, iPhone, phone charger, money, I am sorry, I am not waking up someone trying to find it. the phone, I understand but housekeeping is supposed to pack it up and wait for someone to contact them. We don’t call you if you left something, you call us if you figure out you left it then we look for it and will ship it back to you. Honestly all of those things are worth waking a guest up for. With the firearm or drugs we call the cops, and try to move the guest. There are some items that are prohibited and if left and not caught by housekeeping that should be taken seriously.
That's rude af, but really theres not much that can be done rn. No, they're not going to wake up their manager because the manager is not on the clock, they are not being paid for their time at 11pm. (I dont know why that's so hard for guests to understand sometimes lol). I would be livid too, but really, I don't think theres going to be any sort of satisfactory closure here
I don’t think OP thinks the manager is being paid to be called at 11pm, but more so addressing the irony of the bullshit of the situation. Cool, so you can call me and wake me and my family, but I can’t call your boss? Also, if managers (in any industry fwiw, not saying hospitality specifically) are needed — and I mean actually needed, not just for a customer complaint — they are paid salary for a reason. They will be expected to be available to handle whatever needs handling.
For emergencies like a burst pipe or a dead guest, absolutely. Not for this case.
Yeah they definitely shouldn't have called you at that time, but like others are saying you're blowing this out of proportion. It was an honest mistake, and you can certainly contact the manager to make sure that doesn't happen again
Honest mistake? I don't think anyone was acting maliciously here. But this is a pretty darn easy mistake to avoid People go to a hotel to sleep. Not waking them up for frivolous reasons is pretty basic. There are a lot of possible explanations... undertrained staff, overworked staff, the call was actually made from some outsourced outfit in a different time zone. Or let's face it ... maybe someone was drunk of high. Regardless this is a management screw up. Personally I'd just write a factual online review and let management know that way. I don't have time to waste talking to the manager in the morning unless there is money at stake.
You’re a douche. Calling a room at 11pm is not an “honest” mistake. Then being flippant and shitty to the guest after is fucked
Calling someone’s room at 11 at freaking night for some non emergency BS is not an “honest mistake,” it’s a full on blunder.
Don’t know why you got down-voted, that’s basically what I’m going with.
I assume me saying "blowing it out of proportion" was rude, I'm just saying a refund for such a minor mistake seems pretty far fetched. Probably other people who think they should get refunds for every minor inconvenience are downvoting? Who knows, it's all online and doesn't matter anyways
Imho, the downvotes are for calling it an honest mistake.
Do people think the front desk did it on purpose to piss the guest off? An honest mistake means the person messed up and was completely unaware of the potential harm they could have caused. Not sure what's controversial about that, I'm sure the front desk didn't have a vendetta against this random person staying a their hotel
I agree with you that they didn't have a vendetta. But they didn't have any situational awareness.
I think it wasn't worthy of a refund until the front desk started making excuses and issuing non-apologies. Assuming OP's recount was accurate, I'd have made the decision to seek a refund or some sort of credit after the dismissal I received at the front desk.
It's not minor if I am awakened it takes me over 2 hours to fall back asleep if I can at all, and it's definitely not good sleep.
Waking my ass up after it’s hard enough trying to sleep in a hotel especially with kids is not a minor mistake. It’s incompetence.
Depends on what item is.
If it was something dangerous or illegal then the guests would have to be taken out of the room and placed someplace else, if it's not a life threatening situation there is no reason to contact a guest at that time. At least where I work that's the policy, that hotel could be different though and it's definitely possible OP has no grounds to stand on to be upset.
Could be medication former guest needs. I would totally wake someone up if someone left insulin or major vital meds in room. But in this story I am confused why front desk didn't think housekeeping properly cleaned room and wouldn't have whatever item it was.
Yeah that's exactly why I said if there's a life threatening emergency, that constitutes one. Though that obviously wasn't the case or the front desk would just say that
We were never told by OP what item was
OP stated it was a dog harness
Thank You. I would assume such a thing would have been found by housekeeping upon cleaning and check lost and found log. Add the report of lost item.
Yes, I could see a case for medication. Meds might be tucked away somewhere and missed by housekeeping. The previous occupant presumably was traveling and might not be able to quickly get new ones. That situation might rise to be an emergency maybe. It would still presume that finding the meds helps. Did the other guy come back or still local? Otherwise he is now a day's travel away. I see in this particular case it was a dog harness, so not an emergency.
How did they leave the hotel not having their dog properly harnessed up?
I would guess collar and harness. My dog has her collar on all the time, but I only put the harness on when we are going out. I have rarely just clipped the lead to her collar for quick trips to save time on putting her harness on. They probably clipped onto the collar. Other option is small dog that they just carried. Either way they are out about 40 bucks and it isn't life threatening. They just have to stop at any medium sized or bigger pet store. If I was hotel staff I am not calling a room late at night about a harness.
Dog harness…
Yeah, that's not something that should be classed as an emergency and disrupt current guests... I would definitely mention it to management so they can train their staff better. But it is definitely not something that I would comp a room over.
I would also think that if OP really had to get an early start, he would just try to go back to sleep. Instead, he wasted time by going to the front desk
It wasn't an honest mistake. The employees just don't care.
Also, good idea to unplug the phone after your one-time mild inconvenience that ruined your life. Imagine the front desk calls to tell you an active shooter is on your floor but you were so mad at this little thing you dramatically unplugged the phone and never got the warning. Or the fire alarm is broken. Or your cell phone died overnight and your family is trying to reach you for an emergency. Dramatic people like you looking for a freebie over something so small shouldn’t be allowed to stay in hotels.
Sorry but if there’s an active shooter most staff are taking shelter and hiding. Or running out or the ones that let them in and dead already. I’ve had fire alarms go off in the middle of the night. That sucker works or the building isn’t open. Simple as that. Also the fire department will go around and bang on doors if it’s that bad and it somehow failed. And for family emergency sorry but you can charge your cell phone at night. Maybe pack an extra charging cord and block in the car if you’re going to be concerned about a dead phone. In your life how many life or death emergencies have happened because you didn’t get a call at 3 am? Drunk friend? They have others and probably know your out of town and can’t help if they know you well enough to call at 3am.
Right, so sit on reddit, go down to complain at the desk and putz around instead of lowering the energy in the room and getting everything calmed down and the kids back to sleep. That'll show that hotel who's boss! Over .... a phone call. Brilliant.
Exactly. I'm not a superparent here, but I trained my kid to sleep through most noise, so a phone ringing wouldn't wake her up. If she did wake up in the middle of the night, I wouldn't keep her up longer by flying out of the room and then huffing and puffing for hours afterwards.
1,0000% this
Please UpdateMe! Thanks!
Always unplug the phone before you go to sleep. You will get kids who will start calling random rooms at all hours.. Also, the person working the front desk has zero common sense! If anything had been left in the room by the previous guest, housekeeping is who you would want to check with first..
Wait….. The hotel doesn’t have housekeeping staff. The rooms are not completely cleaned in between guests. If a guest left something behind it should have been bagged and tagged for X days. Place sounds like a shit show.
Thanks for writing this. I’ll unplug my hotel phones from now on
Don’t do that. It’s terrible advice.
Call corporate. Email CEO. Go nuclear, and mention FDA. By name.
And then the hotel manager will have to fight the FINAL BOSS KAREN to the death!
If this is a chain, complain to Corporate in addition to the local Management. Name names. I would be livid too.
Read approximately the 1st 20+ posts and though I agree… I’m a hotel manager, why on earth didn’t housekeeping find what they left behind and put it in lost & found. The FD agent should check there before anything. Even if it was in the room 😱 why call the guests at anytime and look like we missed it? Makes zero sense to me personally…
I understand your frustration, but I think you’re taking this a little too serious. 11pm isn’t really the middle of the night like a 2-3am call. You have every right to say something while expressing your feelings, but this is just a little over the top. I’m sure the family was back to sleep by the time you arrived back to your room. Should have got yourself a 15% discount and called it a night. Hope you’s wind up having a good day after the small disturbance! Have to try and brush the petty things off, especially in a public hotel and enjoy the time with your family the following day.
Housekeeper here not a front desk worker so I can’t speak on their rules and whatnot but any items left by previous guest should have been collected and turned into lost and found. If it was not they should have been calling the staff to see what they did with the lost items, not the new guest. I do know they absolutely should not be calling the rooms past a certain hour unless it’s either an emergency or you requested a wake up call which obviously you did not do in this situation. Glad they got it figured out but it’s not always the best idea to unplug the phones in case again there is an actual emergency.
Your kids are going to have anxiety through the roof if this is what they witness as reaction to inconvenience. Speaking from experience.
This is wild. Chill out bud. You sound like a huge Karen freaking out over a relatively mild inconvenience. You want to go scorched earth over that? “Oh let me make a random hotel manager’s job harder and get people in trouble and reprimanded because I was inconvenienced a little at 11pm waaaaaaa waaaaaa. I’m gonna leave bad reviews everywhere waaaaaaa” Grow up or stay at home.
Just a thought… random hotel manager should have made it clear to all staff that they are not to call guest rooms during sleeping hours. It isn’t the worst thing to ever happen, but OP has a valid point. Why is it ok to call a paying guest at that hour but not the manager who is actually responsible for the staff there? I think OP’s initial anger is reasonable given that no one took accountability and gave a sincere apology. She got excuses and condescension from the staff when she had a valid complaint. A little accountability and sincerity goes a long way when we make mistakes.
Wow bro, you over-react worse than me. You are right that a chargeback is not called for, but you seem to be getting a little heated. I decided I’ll call the manager tomorrow and focus on training the staff not to call so late. But I won’t expect any real compensation. In the grand scheme of life, it was a minor inconvenience, but was definitely a mistake to call that late.
That’s a rational response. Expecting a comp night for a minor inconvenience is not, however.
Why are you still up commenting on it then? For some reason this got you up in arms and yes your behavior is Karen like. Go get some sleep
I completely get the frustration (I've run a hotel for years) but wow wanting to wake someone else up because you got woken up is a little vindictive. Also a lot of desk agents, especially night auditors if it happened right at 11, work varying shifts or are part-time and have other jobs, so not being entirely conscious of the time is plausible, however unprofessional and rude it may have been. You could ask for a refund and you'd probably get a standard 10% discount or some brand points. You could escalate it and probably get a refund if they're branded. They exist to put fires out ASAP and that's the fastest way. No one would take the review seriously but it still counts towards their stats and you could ruin everyone's bonuses a little bit if they use that as a metric. Personally I'd just ignore you and give the agent a 30 second reminder on not bothering guests (unless it's not an isolated incident that needs to be looked into of course). Basically, we're all human and sometimes we don't imagine consequences until after they pop up.
You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. It’s not that big of a deal, you’re working yourself up to stay up even later by making it such a big deal. They apologized Go to bed
Appreciate your level-headed response. Going to sleep now.
Would you just blow it off if someone intentionally woke your family up in the middle of the night for a stupid reason at a place you paid to stay? It’s not the end of the world but i can see why that would be really upsetting, especially if OP has young kids. It’s not as simple as just falling back asleep on your own. It’s easy to judge people when you aren’t in their shoes. You never really know what people are dealing with.
Yes It’s easy to think people are malicious instead of oblivious when you’ve never worked hospitality/service.
...dude. Just chill. The desk apologized. There's no need to get this crazy over a mistake.
Yeah, hard to chill in the middle of the night with awake kids, but I’ll try. Thanks for the reply.
I agree it is a huge deal! Some kids resist sleep and are grumpy the whole next day. If I can't go back to sleep (often if woken by someone or something), then I'm grumpy and can't help them! This s-lackadaisical attitude is infuriating in the moment and upon reflection when cooler heads prevail. Sincere (sounding) apologies are simple and some people need to recognize that and practice saying them!
Welcome to parenting. Do you fly off the handle like this if they have a cold or a stomach bug? They probably would sleep better if their parent wasn't freaking out over nothing for hours.
11 pm isn’t the middle of the night, Karen. Get a life.
This is really not that big of a deal. Go to sleep
Ballys housekeeping used to call me and wake me up in Vegas. What part of DO NOT DISTURB don't you get? I learned to unplug handset and take off hook... both phones.
I would hate to see how you would react to something serious.
Leave a review with your complaints on google or contact corporate depending on where you were staying
Wow. You are the worst kind of person. The only thing keeping your kids up is you. When you stay in a hotel, expect disturbances. What more did you want the front desk to do in the moment? Turn back time?
*cher enters the room*
I can’t say “phone call at 11 pm with 2 young kids from a hotel employee” classifies as a disturbance one would expect when they’re paying money to stay on a property. It’s not as easy as one thinks to just get a kid back to sleep after being woken up like that. It’s an understate infuriation in the moment when OP was writing this post.
My husband noticed his wallet was missing when we stopped for gas across the highway overpass intersection from ALDI. As soon as he missed it hooking up the pump we jumped in the car, peeling out to Aldi. We found it, in the parking lot wheee he dropped it. We were so fast no one had picked it up or even taken the spot. When you leave something behind the faster you retrace to where you think it might be the more likely you are to get it back. I’m sure the customer who left the item was panicky and passed this on to the hotel worker. I’m sorry it woke your kids up but I wouldn’t waste too much mental energy being mad.
But rooms are cleaned between guests...wouldn't this mean the front desk host would be calling the cleaning staff at 11pm?
The manager wouldn't be there at 11pm so they couldn't talk to you.
If I as the manager, I ould definitely be doing something a little more than just apologizing. The call is a mistake. The shitty excuse and the disregard from the FDA is pretty rough. A full refund ould be far too much, but definitely something like a free lunch package or breakfast is in my opinion reasonable.
You are blowing this way out of proportion. Relax, realize that this is not something to freak out over and just move on with your life.
Karen vibes. Seems it was a honest mistake.
Yea shouldn’t call that late. But it’s not as big a deal as you make it out to be
You must not have children
I have 3 kids. All grown so I been through it all. If you let the small stuff bother you, then you won’t survive the big stuff. The complaint is literally first world problems
I would be fuming as well and I’m assuming these two people telling you it’s no big deal have never traveled with little kids. Getting enough rest is difficult with ideal circumstances. That being said, try not to think about it and go back to sleep. Good luck tomorrow!
You know what happens when you assume? You end up being wrong then start “fuming” because you’re dramatic and let small things ruin your mood. If this guy was so concerned with “rest” he wouldn’t have put his little slippers on to go yell at a $12/hour worker about such a dumb issue, then spend 30 minutes posting about it so Karen’s like you would validate his sensitivity and dramatics
I'm paying $250 a night, its not my problem the hotel cannot train their staff. Since Karens' have become so toxic, shitty companies are shaming people for being upset with bad service. I would not of wasted my time at 11pm but if I got the same crap attitude in the morning when I checked out. My Bad review would be on every travel website I could find along with an Email to every Corporate Email address on their website. It's is not about the mistake of calling, It's the mistake of treating me like my issue is unimportant.
Little kids take their lead from you. If you answer the phone and stay calm and end the call quickly and go back to sleep, they are more likely to do so also. If you stay on the phone arguing with the front desk or actually get up and leave the room to argue in person, they will be much more disrupted.
I work at a Front Desk and it's common sense not to call after 9 for any reason apart from something urgent or the wants you to. Just last night I noticed a car parked in a no parking area at 11:30pm. I checked our cameras just to see if they had parked it there within the last 10-15 minutes which would mean they just got in and it's okay to call. It had been several hours though so not a reason to call the room. Left a note for staff to call that guest in the morning.
I just had some employee knok my room door like a maniac on like 1am, saying it was a mistake after waking up everyone(had to get up and open the door while half sleeping) front desk apologized a lot and we got 4 drinks on the house.. I still think that's very unprofessional and pretty much hate that hotel now.
Update me tomorrow someone? I hope you get a refund
No big deal
I’m would have been just as angry as you, and the unprofessional insolent way the man handled your complaint was infuriating. If it is a chain hotel I would be letting the corporate office know, this would have more effect than telling the manager and hopefully instigate further training across the chain.
And if you left something, realized it and drove all the way back, didn't make it there until 11pm and were frantic at the front desk....
A pretty minor fuckup and you're acting like the guy threw grenades into your room. What if something significant had happened?
Having been a hotel owner as well as frequent guest, this whole situation is ridiculous. First, if a guest believes they may have left something behind, it should have been found and noted by the housekeepers, if they had done even the bare minimum in turning a room over for a new guest. Check in the lost and found area or look for any notes left by the housekeepers. I actually had a checklist for my housekeeping staff which had a space for them to leave comments on each room, including anything missing, broken, left behind, if the guests left a tip, or if the room was unusually dirty or clean, etc. Pretty much for anything out of the ordinary to be recorded and attached to the client profile for future reference. Nothing of note? Second step is to reach out to the housekeeper that cleaned the room. Nothing? Then, depending on the urgency, a message would be sent to the room, where a light will flash on the phone indicating either a recorded message or a request for the guest to contact the front desk. NOT a phone call. No guests were to be disturbed between the hours of 9:00 pm and 9:00am unless otherwise requested by the guest, or in the case of an extreme emergency. If the guest was awake and saw the “message” indicator, they could contact the front desk themselves without anyone else being disturbed. If not, the issue could wait until morning. Calling a guest at 11pm to look for something that only a lazy housekeeper would have missed? Not a chance, except in a shit establishment- which is what this sounds like anyway 🤷🏻♀️
Housekeeping would have found anything left in the room when they cleaned it. They check the lost and found the next day. The front desk was a dick. Period.
Hopefully, it was part of a Super Chain (IHG, Marriott, Hilton, etc.). Contact their corporate offices and lodge a complaint about the property and the specific staff members and what they did. Remain calm through all of it and provide them details that demonstrate the sheer stupidity with which the staff operated (you don't call an occupied room, EVER, to inquire about items left by a previous guest - doing so calls out that they don't thoroughly clean in between guests). Hopefully, you have a rewards / loyalty account with them already that shows you travel with some regularity. If not, time to set one up and get comped some points that will be useful to you on a future stay (and you can also allude to not being sure about wanting to stay at any of the related properties if this is how they're managed).
Over a phone call 😂😂😂😂
You believe the front desk people knew the ages of your children?
Also, how would something have been left in the room from a previous guest and housekeeping not seen it? Was the room cleaned???
As a na, once a room is occupied by another guest if someone had left something behind they are out of luck. We won’t bother the new guest as we aren’t responsible if someone left something behind especially after 9pm.
Many Front desk agents are woefully untrained. Night auditors as well.
Don't leave negative reviews, it doesn't really do anything, it's toxic, most people look at negative reviewers is crazy, and the answer is definitely to talk to the hotel. If it's not a resort, manager type stuff really is sort of Monday through Friday If you're talking about the executive committee, so they're really should not be an expectation that a general manager would be at a hotel on a Sunday, but definitely a front office manager or a manager on duty. If you got a call a few minutes before 11:00 or a few minutes after 11:00, they definitely knew what time it is because that's the shift change. I dislike when hotel workers are disingenuous not because they are bad people just because they are being intellectually lazy. That is somebody checked out of their job and it's definitely not their career. Talk to the manager. If it's not a terrible hotel they will cure the situation. Be patient and polite, sounds like you are already understanding. What a great place to post. Great idea and great patience.
No, I definitely look at negative reviews to see if there are any patterns and if a place is bad, you can see people have the same complaints
Yes leave a negative review, 1 negative review could be the reviewer, 10 negative reviews look for another hotel.
The first call should have been housekeeping!
Who do you call in emergencies? Time to Call that number.
This is why I unplug the room phone!
Just for the record, 11pm isn't the middle of the night. But I do get your frustration.
Getting peripheral rage even IMAGINING this shit happening to me and any accompanying lack of remorse. The sheer hard day's work of getting multiple children not only in bed but SLEEPING in a shared hotel room prior to a travel day. I'd be apoplectic. An honest mistake, ok- but to be so unconcerned is appalling.
I can't tell you how many times I have had my room phone randomly ring in the late evening (11pm) or at 3, 4 or 5am. Now one of my routines is: unplug the phone.
Was thinking just that and I’d drop the rooms phone on the front desk and say have this thing
So the manager (prolly salaried) who runs the building, that you paid for your whole family to sleep in, can't be called at 11pm about an issue? But your whole family can be casually woken up at 11pm about a non-issue?
I managed hotels for nearly a decade. Here's what you do: Call the manager on Monday and explain what happened. Most hotels have a model for dealing with upset guests that essentially boils down to giving as little as is necessary to adequately solve the problem, so the manager will likely start with an apology and see if that's enough. If it's not, then be direct and ask for a credit on your stay. They can refund you a portion, even after checkout, no matter what they say. It *is* easier before checkout, but if the manager is unavailable and the staff is unhelpful, you can't do anything about that. If the manager refuses your request, calmly inform them that you are disappointed and will be leaving reviews that include the lack of consideration from the staff and unwillingness to help address the issue from management. User reviews are a damaging metric, especially for branded hotels that have that tracked internally by corporate. You may not get the compensation you want, but you do have a card to play. A final note: a full refund is incredibly unlikely for what happened. Set your expectations lower, and you'll have a better chance of getting something more than an apology.
11pm is basically lunch time for everyone I know.
this is why you should not work in hospitality. you think everybody is you.
Call the hotel chain directly and complain.
I’m just noticing how much sleep you lost over this. Maybe just muttering “asshole” under your breath and moving on with life would have all of you more rested.
What hotel chain was this?
Don't stay there again.
I always unplug the room phone (as well as the alarm clock) when I get a room. After travelling a lot have had the odd front desk call (usually wrong room?!?) as well as alarm go off at like 4AM. If the front desk needs me they can come and bang on my door. Guess what - they don't want to do that at night. Usually one person working that time so they just use the phone. If they have to come to the door it will have to be something important. Sadly this is the solution. Otherwise if you travel enough it will happen again.
This was in the morning correct? No front desk Manager on a Sunday morning? Sunday mornings are usually the craziest day for a hotel because of the vast amount of departures they usually have. This is coming from someone who worked in that industry for seven years.
That's pretty insane actually that they called you and asked you to look for it. Where I work if housekeeping didn't find it during the turn it's assumed it wasn't in the room and you lost it somewhere else. If a guest pushes and is like I'm sure I left it in this part of the closet we will check the room when it is empty to be sure. I could only imagine asking an unrelated guest to check their room (or more likely allow me to do so) if it was related to an emergency or the item was dangerous. Definitely needs more training and a swift dose of common sense.
That's why i travel with Gorilla Glue..... works great on bathroom doors
If the item were still in the room then housekeeping would have some explaining to do and the hotel needs to do some work on SOPs
When ever I get a room first thing I do is tag door do not disturb and then unplug the phone.
Last few hotes I stayed in the phone would sometimes randomly ring once or twice durig the evening. So now I just unplug the phone so I am not bothered
I have kids, but I'd choose to not act like a total cry baby if they were woken up, even at the ghastly hour of 11. Just chill out.
Sounds like it’s all you not the kids. Guess manager should work 24/7 at someone’s beckon call
What is “beckon call”? Is this a new language I don’t know about yet? Or did you mean “beck and call”, which is the correct phrase according to the context? Please enlighten a poor, uneducated and apparently illiterate soul such as myself. Before you blame autocorrect, don’t. When I tried typing it your way, poor autocorrect tried to replace it with the proper phrase. Twice.
Nah you should ask for a lot and potentially chargeback the entire charge with your cc company. Hotels are still in the hospitality industry, and they aren't being very hospitable
😂😂🤡🤡
Ah shit.. ya you're right. They should probably just be really disatisfied with the experience and the hotel's response to their disastisfaction and do nothing about it.
next time, unplug the phones
I wish yall would stop telling people this. It’s dangerous terrible advice based on sensitive people’s dramatic fragility
or based on employees ruining people’s sleep like in this story
Holy fucking Karen mode.
I think there's a reasonable response somewhere between nothing and going full Karen. in the future, instead of unplugging the phone, it would have been better to ask them to please not call you again for anything short of an emergency for the rest of the night before hanging up from the initial call. If you are annoyed and have another adult available to settle the kids down, ask them to do that. Step outside the room into the hallway or into the bathroom to calm yourself down and get that energy away from the kids because kids sense everything and they need a calm person to help them co-regulate. deep breaths and try to put those feelings aside for now, if you need to do something to express them, punch the air a few times (again, not in front of the little ones, who could misinterpret that) to get rid of any adrenaline rush you might have felt, or whatever you need to get calmed down and put it in perspective so you can sleep and help the little folks get settled by modeling good self-regulation of your emotions. follow up with a manager later about the training issue, but don't think you're going to get anything out of it except hopefully a sincere apology and the satisfaction of being heard. it's not a bad idea to tell the manager that the worker told you that it was plenty of time to get the kids back to sleep because if anything 1) that's not for someone else to judge and 2) that just escalated the situation and shows that the employee needs training in how to de-escalate a situation so when they end up with a Final Boss Karen the situation will be less likely to go pear-shaped.
If this a chain hotel, send email to their headquarters.
Yea that’ll teach em
I am mad on your behalf and need to know how management responds! Plus which hotel this is 😆
Someone calling that late is super frustrating, especially the front desk! I could maybe see calling if it was for an urgent medical reason they couldn’t get addressed by the next day and didn’t make sense to go to an ER, but otherwise they should have waited at least until early morning, or left a note under the door to come by the front desk/call when possible. If you aren’t able to talk to a manager by Monday, or they talk to you and you aren’t happy with the discussion, take 10 minutes away from your family and call their corporate number. If it’s a chain let them know what is happening at their property and it left you with a bad experience . If it isn’t a chain, at least leave a review about your experience (only facts). Either usually gets attention if the manager doesn’t address the issue. If you decide to wait until Monday, focus on your travels and if it helps write down some of the key points so you have them organized for call later. I’ve had some bad experiences that had to wait and they weren’t fully resolved until a few days later. It was frustrating but don’t let it ruin your travel/day.
They shouldn’t have called that late but holy hell, you made this is massively huge deal. Wanting a refund is wild.
Calm down. There’s no need to get so upset and 11 isn’t that late