The First Real Jerk of the Year: Tales From the Front Desk and the Art of Dealing With Difficult Guests
If you work in hospitality, you know that most guests are perfectly pleasant. But every year, there’s that one traveler who strolls in, suitcase in tow, and immediately tests your patience—and your will to remain professional. Reddit’s r/TalesFromTheFrontDesk recently served up a classic: a story of one hotel worker’s first “real asshole guest” of the year, a man whose sense of entitlement was matched only by his apparent confusion and love of late-night beer.
Let’s take a look at what happens when customer service meets the immovable force of entitled travel rage—and what the internet had to say about it.
The Call: “Send Your Shuttle!” (That Doesn’t Exist)
Our saga begins with a late-night phone call. A weary traveler, stranded at the airport by a delayed flight and a closed rental car counter, calls his hotel demanding a shuttle pickup. There’s just one problem: the hotel doesn’t have a shuttle. Polite but firm, the front desk agent (Reddit’s u/TheNiteOwl38) explains this, suggesting the airport shuttle or, failing that, an Uber.
Cue the silence. The guest, perhaps hoping sheer willpower will manifest a shuttle from thin air, suddenly claims, “I can’t understand you.” As u/TheNiteOwl38 tells it, “Now I’m thinking that he damn well can understand me, he just doesn’t like what he’s hearing.” After a repetition (louder and slower, naturally), the guest finally hangs up, presumably to stew in his own frustration.
Commenters in the thread had a field day with this classic display of willful ignorance. As u/ScenicDrive-at5 observed, “It’s clear that such a person lacks self-control and emotional stability… There’s never a good reason for a grown adult to carry on like this.” It’s a perfect encapsulation of how some guests treat hospitality staff: if you can’t bend the universe to their wishes, clearly you’re the problem.
Check-In Shenanigans: The Beer Run That Wasn’t
Forty-five minutes later, our guest arrives, co-worker in tow. But before even completing the check-in, he spies the guest store’s beer fridge and dashes off to grab two cold ones, despite not yet providing a credit card or being assigned a room. The front desk, ever the professional, warns him: “You might want to let me finish the check-in first.” The warning goes ignored.
Moments later, he returns, beers in hand, and demands they be charged to his room. Here comes Hospitality Law 101: no room, no beer charge. He grudgingly hands over his card, but by now—thanks to his own dawdling—it’s a minute past the policy cutoff for alcohol sales. The system won’t even let the agent scan the cans.
Cue meltdown. The guest blames the front desk for “wasting time,” yells, and stomps off, leaving his co-worker behind—who, as u/MrStormChaser joked, probably deserves hazard pay. “Does he always act like this on trips?” they mused, echoing what every front desk worker has wanted to ask a difficult traveler’s silent companion.
The irony wasn’t lost on OP, who later clarified in the comments: had the guest just let the check-in finish, he might have made the cutoff. Instead, he set himself up for disappointment—then blamed staff for his own impatience.
The Morning After: One Last Attempt at “Gotcha!”
The following morning, the guest returns, ready for another round. He asks the morning front desk worker to arrange a shuttle to the airport—again, at a hotel that’s never had one. He glances at the night worker, perhaps hoping to catch them in a lie or score a “gotcha” moment. When the a.m. agent repeats the same shuttle-free reality, the guest storms off, muttering threats to “call corporate.” (Spoiler: He never did.)
Here, Reddit’s collective wisdom shines. Many, like u/No-Surround-1225, pointed out that “calling corporate” is rarely the threat guests imagine. “All corporate does is ask for our side of the story. Never have I heard them try to do anything punitive to us.” Others, like u/Tasty-Jicama5743, had fun imagining the complaint call: “Customer to corporate: ‘I want to lodge a complaint that your location did not provide me a service they do not have!’”
The consensus? Some guests are so determined to be wronged that even basic facts—like hotel amenities—won’t slow them down.
The Community’s Prescription: DNR and a Dash of HR
Reddit’s hospitality veterans had plenty of suggestions for handling these recurring troublemakers. “Time to DNR that fool,” advised u/MrStormChaser (DNR = Do Not Rent). Many agreed that consistently rude, abusive guests should be flagged and, if the reservation is corporate, reported to their employer. As u/SkwrlTail put it, “Not just DNR, but a nice email to his company HR department.” The idea of sending a “Mr. Whineypants” memo to HR delighted the community—sometimes, poetic justice is best served with a side of professional consequences.
There was also a discussion about where the line lies if a guest is paying for themselves but being reimbursed, or if it’s a company-booked reservation. As u/Wohv6 explained, “Only time I’ve successfully been able to get a guest in trouble with an employer was because it was a CLC reservation paid for by the company that booked it.”
Why Do Some Guests Act This Way?
The big question: what makes certain travelers so entitled? u/petesmybrother theorized that some “high-rollers” act out because it’s worked for them before—others have folded to their bluffs. Sadly, as anyone in customer service knows, that just encourages more of the same.
And while commenters debated the guest’s particular fixation on beer (is it just decompressing after travel, or something more?), the real issue was his determination to make someone else responsible for every inconvenience.
Conclusion: Hospitality Workers Deserve Medals
This tale is just one of many that hospitality workers endure, often with a forced smile and nerves of steel. As u/RoyallyOakie quipped, “It took this long? I’m jealous!”—reminding us that for every difficult guest, there are hundreds more who (thankfully) aren’t headline material.
Have you ever witnessed or survived a guest meltdown? What’s your best (or worst) customer service war story? Share your tales below—and next time you check in, spare a thought for the heroes behind the desk, keeping their cool no matter how wild the requests get.
Original Reddit Post: The First Real Asshole Guest of the Year