Hotel workers have been sharing some of the worst things they’ve discovered after guests check out — and it’s enough to make anyone think twice about working in hospitality.
Most of the time, forgotten items are pretty harmless: a stray sock, an old T-shirt, maybe some flip-flops left behind in the rush to pack up and go.
But a Reddit thread has shown that what gets abandoned in hotel rooms can be far more extreme — and in some cases, genuinely revolting.
Staff described walking into rooms that looked normal from the hallway, only to find scenes that were confusing, time-consuming to clean, and sometimes outright vile.
One story started with something that might sound minor at first: marshmallows on a bed.
According to one worker, the reality was much worse because the guests had brought “marshmallow guns,” turning the room into a sticky disaster zone.
“One day I get called up to a room because the housekeepers and houseman had no idea what to do with a room. I walk in and see splotches of white schmutz all over the walls, the flat screen TV, the upholstery, the carpet, the glass in the picture frames, the ceiling, the headboards… I’m just as flummoxed as my coworkers, staring with my mouth open as my brain tried to calculate what the heck I was looking at and how the heck we were going to clean it.”
“Some rich parents had let their teenage daughter and her bffs stay the night in the room for her birthday. The girl and her friends had brought marshmallow guns with them and shot sugary gelatin all over the room.”
The guests were reportedly billed, and the parents were said to be shocked when they learned what had happened. The cleanup, meanwhile, took multiple staff members the full day.
Another worker described a situation that pushed far beyond an ordinary mess — a room where every soft item had been ruined.
“Every piece of bedding and every towel soaked in urine in a hotel room. Everything had to be thrown away. The room had to be taken off availability for days to get it clean again.”
And as unpleasant as that sounds, others shared discoveries that were even harder to process — including one staff member who said they found human waste left behind in a cup.
“I found a CUP full of s***. like real poop, back when I was housekeeping. I feel like until you’ve had to dispose of someone’s boyfriend like that, you haven’t seen one of the worst parts of the job,” the hotel worker stated.
Not every horror story involved something left behind on purpose, though. In one account, a cleaner found brownies in a room and assumed they were just a treat someone had forgotten.
“One of my wife’s co-workers found a plate of home-made brownies and ate a couple of them,” the social media user penned.
“They turned out to be edibles! She had never had marijuana in any capacity and ended up on the bed, slowly talking about how she thought she was dead and they had to call 911!”
As a rule, sampling food left behind by strangers is a gamble — and, as these workers made clear, hotel rooms can hold far worse surprises than anyone expects.