thank you for smoking pot, here's $200

You remember how occasionally I have a story or two about our wonderfully wacky guests. Well a couple of weeks ago, we had a wedding on property. One of the bridesmaids calls the front desk, asking if it's normal for there to be a beehive in her bathroom. "Why yes it is Ma'am, you are the lucky recipient of the 'find a beehive in the room, win a year supply of honey' award!! ok, so finding a beehive in the room, is actually quite a big deal, and we wanted to of course get it rectified as soon as possible. We told the guest we would send the bellmen up right away to move her to another room. She replied "no I don't want to move, I'm going down to the wedding rehearsal right now, so just send someone in to remove the beehive and I'll be fine." Huh?? You have a swarm of stinging insects in your room, but you don't want to move?? This is a very curious case (quick side note, which is irrelevant to the beehive incident, but something you should know about the guest: the previous night this guest had left her purse in the lounge and it came up missing. The hotel doesn't assume responsibility for purses left alone, but nonetheless this isn't a great way for them to start their vacation). So we called Ecolab and sent them up to the room with one of our Engineers. The engineer called me from the room saying that while they found a few bees in the ceiling light of the bathroom, they did not find a hive of any sort. The Engineer did mention, however, that the room had a very strong smell of marijuana. He said Ecolab was going to spray the room just to be sure, and that the guest will probably want to move because, though the spray is safe to be around, it doesn't have the most pleasant odor (unlike this ant killer we use sometimes which smells like Vanilla...we call it Vanilla Killa...sometimes I want to use it as cologne...then I remember it's used to kill ants...and I change my mind, but I digress...) I left a message for the guest to call me when they got back, so we could arrange a room move for them. Sometime later, she called from the room and spoke to one of our At Your Service Agents. She again said she didn't want to move, but she was still upset about her purse, and also finding a beehive in her room (the AYS agent said the guest definitely sounded inhibited in someway, and was having a hard time putting together full sentences). We can't force anyone to move, so we said fine, and hung up the phone. because bees in the room is a big deal, I had prepared a suite for her to move into, but then reconsidered once I found out she was smoking pot in her room. I can't have her fouling the furniture in a suite with the "sweet weed"...So I was actually relieved she didn't want to move. And while I still feel really bad she found bees in her room, I have to wonder about her perception of the whole thing. This is how I imagine her timeline that day.

2pm: check in.
2:15pm: talk for a few minutes with her bridesmaid roommate about the wedding and compare/rehearse their various toasts for that night..."I remember a time when (insert name of bride here) spilled bong resin all over our Econ book!! Now she's getting MARRIED!!!! HA HA!! (cricket sounds heard throughout audience as bride looks on in horror while her clearly inebriated bridesmaid stumbles over the microphone chord)
2:40pm: As laughter over their seemingly funny toasts turns into awkward half-sobs of self pity over their own pathetic lives, the roommates decide to drown their sorrows in a bag of ganja.
3:00pm: The girls look at the ihome clock and think they are late for their rehearsal...They rush into the bathroom and turn on the light to get ready. The delayed flicker of the halogen lights cause them to start seeing spots. The flicker of the light also stirs the few bees that are trapped inside. The mixture of the few bees, and the spots, combined with the effects the pot is having on their system cause an interesting reaction
"Jan (I'm honestly just making up names at this point to help convey the story), do you know where the hair dryer is (our hairdryers are hung in the closet, so we often hear this question)??"
"I don't know, maybe we don't have...wait a minute! What is THAT??? Is that a beehive??? HOLY CRAP, WE'RE SURROUNDED BY BEES!!!! LETS GET OUT OF HERE MARSHA (I just pictured Marsha Brady having this conversation with Jan, so I'm going with that here on out)!!
"Jan, this is incredible!!" Marsha replies in a much more subdued voice (In my limited experience talking to people under the influence of marijuana, it's amazing how certain people react differently).
"Jan, I'm surrounded by bees right now, but they're not stinging me...this...is so...Awesome! I feel like Pinnie the Moo...no wait...Minnie the Woo...no that's not it either. Hold on, hold on, it'll come to me... You know, that crazy bear that hangs out with the donkey and tiny pig??
"MARSHA! you've got bees all around you, circling above your head...we need to let someone know about this"
"Winnie the Pooh!! that's it Jan, I'm Winnie the Freaking Pooh!!! This is awesome, quick take my picture on my iPhone!"
"Marsha, for serious, call the front desk, and get an incurminator...externimator...get a whatever they're name is up here to get rid of this beehive"
3:30pm Call Made to AYS
3:31pm: Marsha and Jan head to the wedding rehearsal (that experience probably is worthy of a whole other story).

I mean, how crazy is that?? I feel like the next time a guest calls and claims there is a swarm of anything in the room I need to start my response with a disclaimer question of my own "now sir and/or ma'am, we want to remedy this situation right away, but first I must ask, have you been using any recreational drugs since you arrived on property?"

Now I'm no Bert Einstein, but I have a feeling that question may not go over so well with our valued guests.

second side note, in my three years at this property, I have had only one other call regarding bees. and this one really was a beehive. What had happened, is a beehive was established (what? established? that doesn't sound like the right word at all, in fact established sounds like the bees have one of those signs on their front door citing the month and year their Queen decided to make union with each of them and start a colony) inside the rafters in this room. Then the bees had found their way through a small hole between one of the wood beams and the ceiling....probably 50-80 bees were in this room. I checked a guy into it (not knowing about the bee issue obviously), and five minutes later, I got a call from his room. this is how the conversation went
"Hi this is Mr. Freeman, you just checked me into 310"
"Yes, Mr. Freeman, how is the room?" I reply with genuine interest in my tone, and charisma dripping from my voice
"Well...it's very nice, except....well, there's a swarm of bees in here... and I was wondering if it would be too much trouble to have a room....well....that was bee free?"
I was astonished, seriously, he was taking it all very well.
"I'm SOO Sorry Mr. Freeman, I'm sending the Bellman over right now, he's going to take you to a room close by, it's a suite I think you'll like very much"
The bellman returned from moving the guy and told me what happened. He went over to the room and the guest wasn't waiting outside. So he knocked on the door, heard a faint "come in" and entered the room. The guest was cowering in the opposite corner as bees circled his head like vultures around the last dodo bird. "Run Mr. Freeman!!! screamed the bellman. Mr. Freeman swung his briefcase above his head, and bolted for the door.
What was he still doing in the room?!?!!? I assumed he would hang up and sit on his porch until the bellman arrived. Instead I can envision him hanging up with me, silently lamenting "please hurry" under his breath, while he curled up into the fetal position as the bees prepared to attack. I still can't believe that story.

ANYHOO, back to Marsha and Jan....

So they return to the room after the rehearsal but before the actual wedding, get my message, call down to AYS, still under the influence and again refuse to move. I'm not sure if they could smell the Ecolab Spray given their condition, but that must have been a weird combination for their senses....

So based on the fact that they A-were smoking pot in the room, B-willingly chose to stay in the room, even after we encouraged/plead with them to move and C-were SMOKING POT IN THE ROOM, I decided that these guests did not deserve the red carpet treatment like Mr. Freeman did. But I'm not heartless, so I send up a nice little amenity from room service (honeygrams and milk...just kidding:)
Case closed right? They go to the wedding, chase their sweet high with a lot of alcohol, pass out back at the room sometime after 12am, get up the next morning, pack and leave with a host of new memories, or at least the lingering notion that you wish you remembered more of the previous night than you actually do.

That's what I thought happened. Turns out Jan (or Marsha, I can't remember which was which) called Marriott's Customer Care the other day, complaining about her purse being stolen and a beehive in her room. Once it reaches customer care, we can't exactly say, well we didn't do anything because, well she left her purse unattended and she didn't really have a beehive in her room, there were 3 bees and an apparent prescription for glaucoma. That doesn't really fly. And to be honest we're pretty busy with other issues right now, so we throw $200 at her, and close the issue.

Only in America can someone cause odor damage to a hotel room by use of recreational drugs, be given a nice room service amenity, refuse to let us move their room, but still demand further compensation for the inconvenience of having an alleged beehive in their room. And all this two weeks after the fact. I mean, is she just now coming down??? was that enough pot to cause a Two Week High???

Marriott: where Amazing Happens...