It Could Happen To You: You’re at some nice hotel you wouldn’t ordinarily drop the cash for, and in order to fully milk the experience, you know you’ve gotta be fully nude, in bed, with a tray of chicken tenders. You don’t want to stank up the swanky vibes of the room with the evidence of your sin (i.e., the dirty plates) so you decide to put the tray back out in the hallway when you’re finished. You peep your head out the door, see that no one is coming, and attempt to drop the tray in the hallway while still in your raw state.
But oh no! You forgot about the fact that hotel room doors weigh something like 300 pounds. The door shoves your naked ass out into the hall, and slams behind you.
Now you’re stuck, naked in a hotel hallway, without your room key. What do you do? I asked an employee of a Ritz-Carlton in L.A. for answers.
“Any nice hotel, and even many not-nice hotels, will have a phone right by the elevator on every floor,” says Richard, a pseudonymous front-desk agent. “If I were a guest locked out of my room naked, I’d try to call the front desk from there before going to the lobby. Near the guest elevators, there are usually also service elevators with a room where an ice machine or towels are kept. I’d try to find this area to hide, or at least find something to cover up with.”
“If someone called down saying they were naked and locked out of their room, I’d send someone from Loss Prevention [security] up,” he continues. “Smaller hotels don’t necessarily have that — in the middle of the night at a small hotel, the front desk agent would have to go up. But at my hotel, Loss Prevention would run up to that floor with a robe. They’d let you get covered up and ask you your name and room number, then check with the front desk to confirm those details are accurate. Then, they’d have to ask the person the details of the room –– what kind of luggage they have, or something, to make sure that this person actually belongs in that room. We’d need to take extreme care to make sure we’re not just giving a naked person access to a room.”
According to Richard, this is a process Loss Prevention and the front desk frequently have to undergo when someone gets locked out of their room without identification. However, he’s never had a guest get locked out while naked. He cautions the whole being-nude thing in general, in fact, pointing out that while you’re obviously free to be naked in your room, make sure you put some clothes on before getting room service. “If you order in-room dining and you answer naked, we could kick you out if we wanted to,” he warns. “Someone from Loss Prevention would have to go up and have that conversation with them.”
Odds are, if you’re careful, you’re not going to end up in a Mr. Bean situation. But maybe, next time you’re at a hotel, take a quick look around for that service elevator area. You never know when you’ll need it.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
