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September 16, 2023 4:44 AM

“We saw people were upset and we just wanted to try and fix it." A trio of tourists went to Nashville for a birthday celebration, only to find themselves temporarily running the La Quinta hotel they were supposed to be staying at, in a saga that has captivated TikTok.

Video showed the friends positioned behind the front desk, answering phones, and even serving breakfast to hotel guests. “When you arrive to the hotel and there is no staff so you now have a new job,” he wrote. “We’ve been working for 2 hours.”

posted by I_Love_Bananas (34 comments total)

What I find interesting about this is two things:

There was an employee in the hotel, a housekeeper. Why would the far away manager let random strangers run the hotel instead of trying to coach that employee who actually worked there to do it?

Where were all the random card charges coming from that everyone was mad about?
posted by jacquilynne at 5:22 AM on September 16, 2023

@jacquilynne, it did sound as if the employee was not able to speak English (in a later video one of the customer trio mentions using Google translate to communicate with her). Not that it matters in her ability to do the job in the least, but it might have made it difficult for the manager to give her instructions on the phone if the manager didn't speak the employee's language.

This whole story is wild, haha, and sounds like they had a blast too (in like a makes-for-great-memories kind of way). Is Holiday Inn part of the same conglomerate as La Quinta?? Is that why there was such an easy swap over of managers and rooms happening there?

I do wonder about the shenanigans behind the multiple missing $600s and the naked lady checked into a room without being entered into the system (did she pay in cash??) on the same night that the employee disappeared. Sounds like a well-executed scam/heist! Except... how could the employee have made away with al those $600 credit card charges if the charges were showing up as originated by La Quinta, and that only recently?? Damn, I am so intrigued!
posted by MiraK at 5:42 AM on September 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is Holiday Inn part of the same conglomerate as La Quinta?? Is that why there was such an easy swap over of managers and rooms happening there?

The vast majority of chain hotels are franchised and the franchisees usually run more than one property. I used to do occasional work for a "hospitality" company that had five (and later six) different properties off one highway exit, all of different brands. Those weren't their only properties, but nowhere else did they have that kind of density.

The point being that it's pretty common to be able to pull help from a property with a completely different brand. You don't really want to do it unless they're specifically cross trained because the policies and procedures vary pretty wildly between the franchises and doing something like telling someone they couldn't bring their dog to the La Quinta could cause some issues. In this situation where the night manager just bailed without telling anyone, leaving nobody to mind the shop, you're obviously better off having someone from another one of your properties muddle through.
posted by wierdo at 6:15 AM on September 16, 2023 [10 favorites]

It reminds me of a place I stayed at a long time ago in Belfast. The owner had left and her daughter, who was sort of running the place temporarily, had forgotten the keys inside. I had to get in through a transom window to open the door from the inside. Some other day, as we were having a conversation, the owner suddenly interrupted me saying "don't give me that shit !". Each time I watch the Fawlty Towers episode wherein the Major states that there's an hotel that's far worse than Fawlty Towers, I think about that place in Belfast.
posted by nicolin at 6:54 AM on September 16, 2023 [20 favorites]

[something smells a leeeetle bit fishy about this whole story. source: was a hotel manager for 7 years.]
posted by slater at 7:14 AM on September 16, 2023 [23 favorites]

Late late stage capitalism is where you pay the hotel to work there on vacation

The spreadsheets have total control
posted by eustatic at 7:20 AM on September 16, 2023 [18 favorites]

Late late stage capitalism is where you pay the hotel to work there on vacation

Except if you RTFA it says that they got comped for their stay because...yeah.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:26 AM on September 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

I did read the article, and I can easily imagine a situation whereby the corporation did not bestow its blessings upon us, for the benefit of a favorable media hit
posted by eustatic at 7:47 AM on September 16, 2023 [6 favorites]

This sounds like a more fun version of the story by the Brooklyn-based writer who went to Italy.
posted by slogger at 8:17 AM on September 16, 2023 [8 favorites]

Under communism, you’d be expected to pitch in and clean up the communal spaces. Can comments stop referring to “late stage capitalism” when they clearly have no idea what that means?
posted by Ideefixe at 8:19 AM on September 16, 2023 [9 favorites]

under communism everyone would be expected to pitch in and clean up the communal spaces
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:37 AM on September 16, 2023 [9 favorites]

In Soviet Russia, communal spaces clean you.
posted by slogger at 9:15 AM on September 16, 2023 [21 favorites]

This sounds like a more fun version of the story by the Brooklyn-based writer who went to Italy.

It's like that happy guy/sad guy on a bus meme, with the difference being "my vacation wasn't what I expected but I stuck it out (with friends) to win viral fame on TikTok" versus "my vacation wasn't what I expected but I stuck it out (alone) to write a sweaty indictment of Tourism for a webmagazine."

...on reflection, that might just be TikTok vs written media.
posted by grandiloquiet at 9:15 AM on September 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

My impression is that a feasible unaccustomed job can be fun-- even though it's something that would be utterly dreary for months or years. I don't know how much of the economy could be built around this.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 9:48 AM on September 16, 2023 [6 favorites]

Maybe I'm just completely hateful of capitalism but I read this and think "Huh, sounds like a pissed off employee with overwork and no assistance got fed up and left and the management sucks and doesn't know wtf they're doing putting so much work on people" but maybe I'm affected by my current job and seeing people like Elon Musk rule the world, IDK.
posted by symbioid at 9:52 AM on September 16, 2023 [26 favorites]

Nancy Lebovitz, I was only ever partly convinced by Bob Black’s anarchism but that is totally his line.

I agree that there’s not much more fun than building or running something with friends — until failures and unfairnesses pile up. And in this case, there’s a definite Playskool/Scooby-Doo vibe — finding the keys!

Do appreciate their specifying that it was certified food handlers who handled the food.
posted by clew at 9:59 AM on September 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

My questions;

How on earth do you check people in and out without computer access?

Or open staff doors? (maybe there were badges lying around or the manager helped)?

Me being certified in nothing, I'd have just recommended people tell their credit card company to refuse to pay and go elsewhere. As I would.
posted by emjaybee at 11:01 AM on September 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Huh, sounds like a pissed off employee with overwork and no assistance got fed up and left...

Sure, but with the mysterious $600 charges allegedly floating around it also sounds possible that the weekend night manager was just a scumbag who decided it would be funny to sabotage the hotel rather than quitting properly, or even a dim bulb embezzler who thought that this could be their big score.

I don't think it is abnormal to leave a single person on duty overnight - if everyone is behaving themselves it should be a pretty dull shift.
posted by anhedonic at 11:04 AM on September 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

Under communism, you’d be expected to pitch in and clean up the communal spaces. Can comments stop referring to “late stage capitalism” when they clearly have no idea what that means?

A lot of internet critiques of capitalism these days amount to "Capitalism is everything I dislike."

I'm like, tell me you were born after the end of the USSR without telling me you were born after the end of the USSR.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:22 AM on September 16, 2023 [12 favorites]

Seems like if you were responsible for the safety and comfort of potentially a few hundred people (not to mention wanting to make sure your business was functioning and making you money), even if the normal operation only required one employee on duty you'd want to have a system in place and a plan for that employee to check in with someone else, confirm they are on duty, get help in timely manner if they became sick or incapacitated or had just had enough and up and left. That goes double if you actually had two employees on duty, and triple if you had multiple similar related businesses in the area.

I'm sympathetic with the idea that capitalism isn't the cause of all of humanity's ills, but this does seem like a situation where the owners of this business cut costs to the bone and then left their customers and other employees holding the bag.
posted by Reverend John at 11:33 AM on September 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

I can't say how it works today, but back in the mists of time if there wasn't a key card laying around that would get you into any door in the place, it wasn't exactly difficult to make one. The programmers are right there at the desk, likely with a cheat sheet telling you what buttons you need to press to program a card posted right next to it.

As far as checking people in goes, if the employee just bailed sometime overnight, there's a good chance there was an automated print out of all the occupied rooms just sitting there on a printer, so all one would need to do is pick an unused room, write down details on paper to be entered into the computer later, program a key, and hey presto, person has a room. (I also wouldn't be surprised if credentials for the computer system was written on a post it note in a not-inconspicuous place)

Very few things in business are particularly complicated or difficult to figure out if the goal is merely to keep things moving for a couple of hours. It's doing it well in a way that allows the wheel to keep turning day after day and week after week and having to handle exceptions that's hard. I've always felt like most businesses involve a depressing amount of just muddling through and making shit up on the fly.
posted by wierdo at 11:42 AM on September 16, 2023 [7 favorites]

It's like that happy guy/sad guy on a bus meme, with the difference being "my vacation wasn't what I expected but I stuck it out (with friends) to win viral fame on TikTok" versus "my vacation wasn't what I expected but I stuck it out (alone) to write a sweaty indictment of Tourism for a webmagazine."

This gave me the idea to take various and random tiktoks and write short stories about them. Just "The man approached the banana peel on the ground with a confident gait..." describe what's going on for 500 words, until I get busted for it.

I like weirdo's assessment. At some point it's just a cash box and key board, right? One thing I'd hope to do in this situation is not charge people who arrived for reservations, just give them a key. They wouldn't be there long enough for it to get out that there's "free rooms at the La Quinta!" and you could be mostly sure that anybody who arrived saying they had a reservation, did have one. It's a justice tax levied on the owner/franchisee.

Capitalism includes the enforcement of profit, so I figure understaffing -- not to mention absentee owner -- is covered. I think it's important to remember that capitalism was invented to deal with businesses that used enslaved people, whose labor cost was 0. "Does it help the economy inch back toward slavery? You can blame capitalism." /derail
posted by rhizome at 12:55 PM on September 16, 2023

Small derail: can someone tell me what accent these three have? I am wavering between Australian and American but I can't nail it down.
posted by zardoz at 2:29 PM on September 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have stayed in some Extended Stay America's in the last few years that were somewhat grim and quite understaffed.

There's an extreme lack of accountability and agency starting with the franchise model: where corporate owners take none of the financial risk, to petit bourgeois, upwardly mobile immigrant franchise owners who may 'own' a small but too-big to manage effectively group of hotels where they I imagine can only make a profit if they hire an insufficient-in-number crew of exploited working class people of color to do dirty work and take the brunt of complaints from angry customers who reserved their rooms through a rentier online platform created by founders who have never traveled to the state where the hotel is located, and who indirectly collude with the hotel companies to mis-represent the quality of the hotel. Finding a staff person to even check me in was often a challenge, and when I would draw attention to for example, the filth of the room, they would simply shrug - they don't get paid enough, nor have any power, to resolve the issue.

If that's not late stage capitalism I'm not sure what late stage capitalism is.
posted by latkes at 2:37 PM on September 16, 2023 [13 favorites]

They definitely don't sound American to me
posted by supermedusa at 3:13 PM on September 16, 2023

Two of them sound American and one sounds British, to my ear. Each of the three has a different accent.
posted by eviemath at 3:37 PM on September 16, 2023

I don't think it is abnormal to leave a single person on duty overnight - if everyone is behaving themselves it should be a pretty dull shift.

it was standard for me as a night auditor in the 2000s to be the only employee on premises, you got the occasional loud party or drunk guy passed out on the stairs claiming to own the hotel or angry Russian woman accusing you of hiding her lover who had gone home to his wife in France or ADHD child who tricked her parents into giving her cappuccinos "to calm her down" chatting at you for three straight hours or other drunk guy showing you his weiner while you were trying to put muffins on a tray, but mostly I played a lot of Neopets, watched a lot of televised poker, & listened to a lot of Air America while folding laundry

good times
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:37 PM on September 16, 2023 [21 favorites]

There's an extreme lack of accountability and agency starting with the franchise model

Agency, yes, accountability, no, at least with the higher tier franchisors. Hilton and Marriott crawl all the way up their franchisee's asses, which is why there isn't an enormous difference in experience between different properties. Some might be older or have fewer amenities than others (to a point, anyway), but the standards for cleanliness and such are pretty strict and they check often. If a given property is found not to be meeting the requirements they won't keep the franchise for long.

As you go down the tier list, standards get more lax, inspections less frequent, and enforcement less strict. Eventually you get to Best Western and the like where the quality of a given property is a complete gamble. Some are fine, even good, but they also have total ratholes that will keep their franchise for years and years so you can never really know what's in store for you.
posted by wierdo at 8:13 PM on September 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

The accents keep changing, especially if you watch more updates. I don't get it.
posted by cooker girl at 7:52 AM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Some people do accents for fun.
posted by eviemath at 8:27 AM on September 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Either whiteguy is English but been in the states forever and the other two like his accent and sometimes try it on or all three of them are American and just occasionally like to play British Accents. All I know for sure is that her real true accent is the one she uses when they're racing down the hall and she mentions the "whole ass naked lady" they discovered when they opened the door to the room they were assigned at the La Quinta.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:00 PM on September 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

On the subject of key cards, I once checked into the Sheraton at Tyson's Corners VA around 8 PM after a grueling trip down to Washington DC. Got up at 5 AM to catch an 8 AM flight that was cancelled, and I got to my destination via a comedy of other aborted flights and a last-minute connection in I think Wilmington Delaware. Who knows.

But what I do remember is that opening the door of my hotel room hoping for a nap, and seeing a woman's open suitcase on the bed. I got out of there as soon as I can, went downstairs, and the desk clerk was suitably apologetic.

That was 25 years ago and I still don't trust key-card locks to safeguard my valuables.
posted by morspin at 2:05 PM on September 17, 2023

I have stayed in some Extended Stay America's in the last few years that were somewhat grim and quite understaffed.

Eh, I stayed in one last summer for 3 weeks. It wasn't terrible. Well except for that one morning they forgot to notify anyone they were going to have a hot water outage. More like a bad apartment complex than a hotel. The office had a person who was either there or not, and certainly not at night. They "cleaned" my room once a week, which pretty much consisted of changing the linens, vacuuming, and taking out the trash (which I take myself more or less daily anyway). I wouldn't choose it again, but it was marginally acceptable for San Diego in comic-con season.
(Also I don't think any of the other nearby hotels could do anything either about the constant "sound of freedom" from neighboring Miramar air station)

But my travel people were horrified when I booked it, so there must be some other people who didn't have good experiences.
posted by ctmf at 3:40 PM on September 17, 2023

There was an employee in the hotel, a housekeeper.

Aren't cleaning services at hotels often contracted out these days?
posted by solotoro at 7:45 AM on September 18, 2023 [1 favorite]