u/exposed_silver

I work in a hotel in Spain, for me May is the easiest month, we get loads of guests from Ireland and the UK, so I can speak English all day and a lot of repeat guests. Here's a summary of the memorable guests.

We have one guest that asks us what chocolate we want and she brings over a few KG of chocolate in her suitcase, she took our 'order' last year and brought me a load of mint chocolate and a few boxes for the others in reception.

We have retired people who come over and chat every morning. One old lady got robbed a week ago by a fellow on the streets and my colleague put €40 on her account out of her own pocket, she fought for a while but my colleague won lol. She said it was going to be her last holiday but she liked the place so much that she wants to come back next year, she came over to take a group photo of us at reception.

Another old lady got hurt in a shop in town, since she didn't speak Spanish, the staff pretty much blew them off, she came back to the hotel nearly crying, I ran to the bar and got some ice and offered some chocolates and to call a doctor, she was ok the day after and wanted to send an email to the head office explaining how happy she was with the hotel staff, my colleague told her she can bring over some mint chocolate the next time she comes lol

We had a big blackout last year, it was a very difficult day, over 12 hours without electricity, one lady came over and said 'I'm sure today must have been a very difficult day, with people coming over and complaining all the time, but you did your best', it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

There are loads of other families that come back and we know on first name terms. In general we get nice guests who are chatty and grateful, we get the odd complaint some odd clients, that's for another day and some very problematic clients but the good totally outweighs the bad. A lot of stories here are negative, I just wanted to share a positive story

A few years back I checked in a French family and they paid for their reservation in cash, €3000 in smelly, damp €50 notes, the ones you would expect to find under the mattress of an incontinent person. I checked with the boss if we could accept it and we ran it through the money counter machine to see if it was real, it was ok, so we reluctantly accepted them.

Later that night, another French family check in, a woman and 2 kids, all ok. However the next day, when they go to have breakfast in the restaurant, she tries to sneak in 2 more kids. She was in a room for max 3 people and had 2 extra kids, we make her pay for the extra kids, she's not too happy about the situtation but she was the one who messed up the reservation. She refused to pay. Since we didn't want any drama, we refund her the rest of her stay. In cash. With the dirty notes. And she's off with herself.

She goes to another hotel and they don't take the notes, because they had some brown stains on them. She comes in the door, you could tell she wasn't happy but asks calmly in French to speak with the boss. My manager instead comes out, I explain what's happening, she explains the situation in French and he says, we are in Spain, speak in Spanish and basically says the money is real and she can get out and this sets her off, she starts shouting out in French "ils donnent des faux billets ici" - they give out fake notes here and makes a scene for a few mins, then calls the police. We wait for a while and they come, they all go in the back, run the money through the machine and send her off marching with her tail between her legs.

From that day on, no damaged, stained or smelly notes are accepted.

I work in a family hotel so we don't get young drunk British or Irish people jumping off balconies, (if we did they would miss anyway). But one day a few years back we had a British family check in, all good, no issues. I came in the next day and heard about an incident with gravity.

So apparently the guy had been drinking and fell from a 3rd floor, I went outside just to give myself an idea of how high it is and I was like, oh fkkk, that's high, over 20m. Anyway, he luckily survived, his head missed the concrete curb and he landed on a bush (the bush is still ok, if you're wondering, thanks for asking). He discharged himself the next day, some broken ribs but ok and continued on with his holiday since the wife probably wasn't too happy with him.

The thing is we only have like a handful of apartments with bushes underneath them (out of like 150) and he was damn lucky, I told my colleague, wow you saved his life with that room allocation. Has anyone one else had a similar incident happen at their workplace that ended well?