Armchair Anonymous: Hotel II

24:51And I'm like, I promise you didn't. And how did your parents come up with Savvy? Savannah. Oh, cute. And are you from Georgia? I am. Maybe you and Monica were on the same Savannah streets as kids. We probably crossed paths. Part of the story goes into that a little bit. Oh, my God. This is so exciting. Let's hear it. Let's go. Okay. It's going to start in 2022 off the tail end of COVID. And I had completely switched careers and gone into hotels. I've always been part of customer service. So I was like, I'm going to like this. And I got a job for a pretty well-known hotel chain in Athens, Georgia.

25:37And if you know where the Classic Center is, it was right across the street. Okay. Got it. I started in hotels. I loved it. I worked every position. And by the tail end, I was head of housekeeping, which I didn't want to do. But if you want to move up in hotels, you have to learn every position. Ended up loving it. It was one of my favorite positions. Tell me why, really quick. What was the bennies of housekeeping? It was the staff. I loved my staff and it was hard, dirty work. And at the end of each day, you high fived and felt good about the work you did. Great. So I'm in this hotel and I'm not loving it and I'm wanting a change.

26:12And my best friend who lived in Colorado, we've been friends for over 15 years now. She was like, you need a change in your life. Come out here. I have some ideas I want to run by you. I was like, okay. So me and my boyfriend went to visit. She's like, I want to buy a business with you. And I'm like, okay, I need to move to Colorado. So that was in January. And I decided to move to Colorado in May. So during this time, I was like, well, buying a business, I've never done that before. It's going to take some time. I think. I need a job in between that. I got a job offer from a, and I can't say it, but a pretty well-known haunted hotel in Colorado.

26:52Okay, great. A lot of clues there. Very famous, very haunted. I was very excited. Oh, fun. And getting this job wasn't easy. They paid me a lot of money. I think I may have sold my soul for it for this year that I worked here because we get out there and I kind of knew from my first day within 30 minutes, I may have made a mistake. Oh, wow. 30 that fast? Oh, boy. The first 30 minutes, I meet my boss. The position I had was a front desk manager. She said, well, we're really in our busy season right now and you're going to be working a lot of 12-hour days, probably six to seven days a week. We'll give you a day off here or there.

27:35And I kind of stated, well, that was not in my contract. I'm a 40-hour work week. Obviously, I know I'll work a little bit, but I'm salary. That doesn't come with overtime. We had 400 people coming in and out every day. Our check-in time, even thinking about it now, my stomach hurts a little bit. That's wild. Four o 'clock always was doomsday because that's check-in time. And if that room's not ready, you're going to be yelled out. It sounds like the type of hotel people are only staying for a night or two, not like a week. Only could afford to stay one night. Turnover's high. The complaints are high because it's definitely a destination.

28:11So this was a very hard job just setting the stage. Every day there was a fire to put out. There was a ghost to be seen, a customer complaint. I had been working there for about six months. I got my feet under me. And there used to be two office managers, so me and another person. And we would kind of divvy up stuff. I mainly worked mornings until around 536. They would come in around four. We'd overlap, go over the day. They'd finish out the day, starts over the next day. And you would just keep rotating like that. When I was gone, there was always someone supposed to be on shift covering. At this time, they had fired the other front desk manager.

28:51So I was kind of taking on everything. And with that paycheck, you're kind of expected to be on call 24-7. Things happen. And I was also required to live within 10 miles of that because things happen. And so it was a day off. I have my phone on, but I'm at home. I'm relaxing. And I may have been partaking in things, Coloradians partaking. Sure. Sure, some edibles. I'm feeling good. I'm cleaning my house and I get a phone call. And it's my supervisor. So not the manager, just my guy who's on. And it's around five o 'clock. So people are checking in and I'm like, hey, what's up? And he's like, housekeeping just came.

29:31They're about to leave for the day. There is a room we can't get into. And I was like, okay, let's go through the process. When were they due to check out? They were due to check out this morning. Okay. Did we knock on the door? Yes, we knocked on the door. Okay. Do we call the cell phone number of the room who the person who signed in? You have to have a cell phone number to check in. We called, no answer. Did we call the room? We called, no answer. So I'm going through those processes. And I said, well, you need to go to maintenance. In hotels, even though you lock your door, we can get into your hotel room if we need to.

29:59We were very limited of who had those master keys. And so I go, go to maintenance, have them make you a master key. And the way my supervisor's talking, he's like, can you come in? And I'm like, yes. So I asked my husband to drive me in or my boyfriend at the time. But I was like, can you drive me into work? It's five minutes down the road. And he's like, yeah, of course. And I was like, will you wait here while I go in? And so I get there and I'm on the phone with my supervisor. And he's like, well, we got the door open. They're dead. Okay. In all of your hoteling, was that the first corpse of your career?

30:34No. No, right? Okay. I was going to say my grandparents owned, I don't know what it was, a 36-room motel on the border of Indiana. My grandma found dead bodies like once every six months, I think. Because people go to hotels to kill themselves. A hundred percent. Yeah, wow. Okay, so it wasn't your first rodeo. It wasn't my first rodeo, but first rodeo in a very stressful environment with people who weren't prepared for this. So I go up to the room in the old school chain. It's one of those. So we can get the door open and I'm trying to move my hand. I'm like, I can't get it. So we go get the tool, we get it open.

31:05And it is what we all think it is. This kid, I will say, checked in the night before. One of my very close friends had checked him in. So they had to do a police report. But here starts the process of hotel work. When you're in a hotel of this capacity and you have people who have reserved their rooms a year in advance, They've paid a lot of money. This is a one-time experience for them. You don't want them to know what's going on. This hotel is also very, very, very old, and we have one elevator. This happened to be on the fourth floor. The fourth floor is my most popular floor because it has all the haunted rooms.

31:45Okay. And now another. Yeah, now a new one. I've oversold this hotel by three rooms, so I need this room. Now I have probably four people who aren't going to stay in said hotel that they wanted to stay in. And so I'm thinking of how I'm going to do this. And I obviously have to call the police. I have to call HR. So my HR person is coming in as well. And they're talking to me. I just got on scene. This is what's happening. My housekeeping staff was not okay that day. I sent them all home and I tried to just get everyone as far away. I have to shut this floor down in a sense. And it's got over 40 rooms on it.

32:19And I'm trying to talk to the police about, you don't want people knowing what's going on behind the scenes. Just go get free drinks. Here's some coupons. go away, please. That's how all hotels are. You have fires in the background, but nothing. Everything's fine, guys. Just keep going. So I don't want them to put up the crime scene tape, but they will. The police of the city were so wonderful. They took care of everything. It was very stressful. I don't know how they did it. I think they went down the back stairs. I have to do a police report with the HR person who's also like, are you okay? Are you okay?

32:51Are you? And I'm, yes, I'm fine. I'm just really inebriated right now. I did not expect this on my day off. My staff at the front desk is not doing well either. So I have to kind of handle things with them. And I don't mean this in a joke. Do you need therapy? Do you need to talk to someone? I can have someone come out. They were awesome though. It was just very traumatic. I go through the records of the night before. These walls are thin. You can hear people throughout the walls. It's such an old hotel. No one heard anything. It was a gunshot. Oh, really? Did he have like a silencer on the gun or something?

33:24That's crazy. He didn't. The rooms next door were full of people. The other thing is now you have cleanup. So the next day I come in after everything with the police and I'm talking to HR and they're like, well, can we do it? And I was like, no, I'm not doing it. No. I was like, you can either pay for therapy for your whole housekeeping staff or you can pay a company. I promise you're going to want to pay a company. Yeah, exactly. Also, what about like biohazard stuff? I mean, there's like blood everywhere. This hotel may not have followed a lot of rules. Sure. We get a company out. They take care of everything, which is nice.

34:00So when you're in a hotel, you have to have a room inspection before the room goes out. Theoretically, you should never have a complaint about a room because it's been cleaned and it's been inspected. Things happen. but I was going to do my inspection. I was feeling weird about going in this room. I had seen everything that had happened. The kid was very young. It messed with me for a couple of weeks after this. I go in there and I'm like, all right, it's looking good. Oh my God. They did not get the ceiling. No. Oh boy. Can you imagine if I checked someone into that room? Into the horror hotel?

34:36Exactly. They would think you were doing it as a joke or something. Like as a shtick. It's a gimmick. Put ketchup on the ceiling. I promise you I would have went with it. Yeah, exactly. It was awful. So I called maintenance and I was like, I have a problem. And they're like, what? And I explained it. They're like, we'll be right there. They painted the ceiling for me right then and there. I sold that room. That room sold for the night. People had no idea that 24 hours earlier that they were laying in so much. Isn't that wild? I actually hate this. I wonder if I've ever been in a room like within 24 hours.

35:08Yeah, of course. We all wonder that now. Working in hotels ruined me because any hotel I stay in, I check for bedbugs. Oh, no. You should check your corners of your mattresses. And I always just kind of do a glance over what are we working with here? But it's very sad. This was a very awful story. I ended up finding the kid on Facebook because he was missing for a while. We kind of helped the police find who he was through some Facebook posts because a lot goes into this. It's not just, oh, it happened. And I think maybe people think this when they stay in a hotel. I'm never going to see these people again, so I don't care what I do this room.

35:45And so I'm happy his family didn't have to find them. It's selfish, but I understand it's like they don't want to ruin their house. They don't want to burden the people in their lives with cleaning up the way you guys had to. I mean, I think they think they're doing everyone a favor. But I think it's also, you know, like when dogs go to die and they go away. They go into the forest and they just want to be not in their environment in a way. It's kind of like that. Yeah, that too, I'm sure. The peace I got from this, because I still had to work there for quite some time after this, but where they had positioned themselves, they were looking right out the window.

36:26And it was such a beautiful view. And I only hope that in that moment that maybe they had a sense of peace that they had been just looking for. and we kind of, I don't say joke because it's nothing to joke about, but we said maybe they get to be part of the other ghost at this hotel. Well, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you see any ghosts? Yeah, I was going to ask that. Oh, all the time. Oh, all the time. Multiple times where I would work a night shift there because someone called out and you have to do hotel walks. So you're walking through the hotel, you're just checking, making sure no one's being too rowdy, making sure nothing's out of the ordinary.

37:04and there are these long hallways. So I'd be walking and then all of a sudden I'd hear a whisper, just a whisper behind me. And you turn around, there's no one there. Multiple times if I was cleaning a room because I would jump in and help housekeeping, doors would slam. The doors would get stuck and you're like, please don't do this to me, please, please. And it would open. But there were constantly people coming and showing us photos. We took this photo in our room last night. Do you see the shadow? Yes, we see it. you can submit that and we'll put that on our website. Oh, wow. This is like a whole subculture.

37:39It is. I bet my cousin stayed there. My cousin, you know, is obsessed with ghosts and he's like a ghost tourist. Oh, wow. Yeah, he takes vacations to all these haunted places. A lot of famous people, too. I'm going to guess Nick Cage has stayed at that hotel. Seems like a ghost hunter. I can see that. I can totally see that. Well, Savvy, currently you're in hospitality, but not a hotel. I ended up buying my business. Oh, good job. And it's going well. It's stressful. But I work with my best friend, my then boyfriend, now husband. We got married in February. He gave up real estate to come work for me because I needed help.

38:16And so it's kind of like my whole family now. And it's a wild dream. And I tell myself every day, you can't fail if you don't give up. Do you want to shout it out? What's the business? Yeah, what's the business? I'll say it's a sign company. So we're a women-owned sign company. Okay. We do everything from vehicle wraps to billboards to huge monument signs. It's a very male-dominated industry, so there's only a few of these women-owned ones. Love it. Yeah, and printing in general is very male. We actually just had a job come in that my employee was like, come look at this. And I was like, is that a, oh, this is very erotic.

38:52Oh, yeah, I'm sure you get a lot of fun requests. Will you print this? Absolutely. Love to. well savvy it's a delight meeting you nice meeting you it was so nice meeting you guys all right well take care have a great summer thank you Bye.

39:23Hi, Lauren. Where are you? Hi, I'm at work in Southern Orange County. This is an inviting space. What do you think I am? I think you're a therapist. That's a great pick, but I'm thinking medical. Monica nailed it. Yes, I'm a therapist. Yes. Oh, wonderful. Oh, wow. But I'm sitting on the couch, not in my chair, because I'm at work and I had clients before and I have clients after. We don't have closets. It looks like a very inviting therapeutic space. I've sat on many couches like that. Do people ever fall asleep on the couch? Yes. So I'm an anxiety and OCD specialist. My boss actually worked with Allegra and Kimberly for many years.

40:01Oh, wow. Cool. What they do is what I do all day. And so I do a lot of meditation and mindfulness stuff. And yeah, they fall asleep sometimes. I got to imagine you're in a tricky situation. Like once they start snoring, great. We know for sure what's happening. But I bet there's a confusing zone where it's like, oh, shit, are they out? A thousand percent. And I do a lot of virtual therapy, too. And then it's really awkward. And usually you're doing, OK, and wiggle your toes and fingers and start to blink your eyes open. And then I'll wait a minute and I'll repeat it again. And sometimes I just call it out.

40:36I'm like, you totally fell asleep, didn't you? You're out cold. I also just want to thank you guys as a therapist, your guys' vulnerability and humility and ability to really like correct things and update yourself and keep learning. It's so cool. And I talk about your guys' content with clients all the time. In fact, was it Cohen? This gets so effective. I just shared that podcast like two hours ago with a client. That makes us really happy Because we play it a little fast and loose. We get into some depths that maybe sometimes I worry like, God, I wonder how the psychology community feels about us wandering into this stuff.

41:09So I'm relieved to hear that feedback. What were you going to say? The only problem is when I'm diagnosing people. Well, no, I mean, the expert is the expert. I don't ever feel guilty about that. Yeah, like whatever you say or I say should be taken with a massive grain of salt. But the expert, sure. If you're a listener, you know you guys aren't claiming to be experts about it. One time I did say, what did I say? we had a funny moment where I said in something we say it wasn't in anthropology because that would have been somewhat legit but I just said like you know in psychology we say I said something like that to be funny one time Monica's like hold on a second there's no we okay so you have a crazy hotel story I do yeah and I originally submitted this for a different prompt but I won't tell you what that prompt is until the end so this takes place in 2010 in San Diego in the gas lamp district to be exact.

41:58For people who haven't been, beautiful, historic, looks like Charleston, South Carolina. Super cute, very busy. Me and my five girlfriends were down in San Diego for the weekend for my girlfriend Bree's parents fostered a young gentleman and he was graduating from the Pendleton Marine Corps bootcamp. So we were there for that weekend and celebrating him and it was really cool. It was the five of us and Bree's parents. So we were spending the night in the Gaslamp District in a hotel that is very reputable I won't share their name, but everyone knows it. It's a 10-story building right in the heart.

42:31It was about five o 'clock. We finished up everything at the Marine Corps base. And Bree's parents were like, okay, go upstairs, change, do whatever you need to do. We're going to go to dinner in 20, 30 minutes. So we all go upstairs to the eighth floor. The five of us girls go in our bedroom. Bree's parents go down the hall to their bedroom. And as 22-year-olds do, we turn on music and we're chatting and dancing and shooting the shit. For context, the hotel room is a U shape. And so like if you start at the top of the side of the U, it's the door and a kitchenette with a little table and then windows, two queen beds, and then the bathroom on the other side of the U.

43:11So if you're in the bathroom or on the beds, you can't see the front door area. I'm sitting in the bathroom peeing. My other girlfriend is in there doing her makeup as us girls do. another girl is right outside the bathroom one's on the bed and then my girlfriend Allie is in the kitchen area Allie hears a pounding on the door and it had been about maybe 15 minutes since Bree's parents left us and so thinking confidently it must be Bree's parents coming to say hey time's up let's go she just confidently stands up opens the door nice and wide and who's standing there, but a 40-something year old man with really sketchy tattoos on his face and neck.

43:54He's very clearly drugged out on something. He's got an L.A. Dodgers tattoo on his neck that was probably done behind bars. And he's wearing a floor-length black trench coat. I'm peeing, so this is all what I'm hearing from Allie afterwards. But he says to her, I'm an undercover cop, and I've been shot, and I really need your help. So... Allie realizes immediately, I'm going to back up and get out of here. And so she placates him, right? And she says, no big deal. I'll totally help you. Let me get my phone. And she kind of goes to back up and close the door. And when she does that, he pushes it in, grabs her, comes in the room, closes the top lock, and they start wrestling.

44:36Oh, my God. He starts sexually assaulting her, like putting down her pants and ripping out her jeans. So I hear, pound at the door, loud scuffle, screams, arguing. And the next thing I know, my girlfriend Mara runs in the bathroom and is screaming like I've never seen her scream before. Allie's being attacked. There's a man in our room. Oh, wow. I'm the Monica of the group. We've had more than one instance where I've had to call 911 and I had my phone with me. And so I immediately call 911. I jumped in the shower, which was right next to the bathroom and start pounding on the wall. because I knew it shared a wall with another hotel room.

45:15So I was like, I'm going to beat the shit out of this wall, hoping that someone can hear us screaming bloody murder while I'm calling 911. And this all feels like it was 15 minutes, but it was seconds, probably. He probably was in our room for two minutes max. But Mara then realizes, I'm going to get my phone and call Bree's parents who are down the hall. She opens the bathroom door, goes to grab her phone from the nightstand. And now we can see them. They're wrestling on the bed. He's trying to pin Allie down on the bed. Oh, my God. And he knows there's other people in there. Well, did he know there were other people?

45:47We don't know. So we don't think so. But there was three of us in the bathroom. He didn't see us until that moment. And so Mara goes to reach for her phone. And I'll never forget it. He stops dead in his tracks, stares Mara right in the eyes. And he doesn't let go of Allie, but he stops. And he says, if you grab your fucking phone, I'm going to kill your fucking friend. And I can hear the dispatch saying, listen to him. Don't move. because he's got a trench coat on. We have no idea. He's not in his right mind. So we don't know what to do. So she just says, listen to him. So we do. We stand there, we freeze.

46:19But Allie has been wrestling with him for a minute now. So she's like, fuck this, you guys. Like, let's get out of here. And she screams to Bree, run, run, Bree. So Bree literally jumps over them, runs, gets out. And she turns right and sprints down towards her parents' room. He follows Bree, goes right, falls as luck would have it. And then he goes left and goes to the stairwell. So about five minutes later, police showed up. And of course, they take all of our statements and swabs off of Ali. They take all of Ali's clothes and stuff. And maybe 20 minutes into them getting our statements and stuff, the police get a call saying, we have him.

46:59We think we have him downstairs. We need Ali to come down and ID him. And it was him. He left our hotel room, again, eighth floor. There was a Fleming steakhouse that was basically attached to the hotel. And he went into the steakhouse, went into the women's restroom, hid in a stall. And then another young woman came in to use the bathroom. And he's actually assaulted her as well. Oh, my God. He's like on a rampage. And luckily, the bathroom must have been next to the kitchen staff or something because they were able to help her out and tackle him until the police came. So that is where he got arrested.

47:39But a couple more little fun details to add. We found out later that night that he actually was on the ninth floor before coming down to our floor. And he tried to get into another room that had two or three women in it as well. I don't know how or what they did, but they were able to keep him out of the room. And so he then came down to us. Oh, my God. He was in no hurry or fear. I know. Yeah, you would think if you were thwarted once you would get scared and run out of the hotel, not go down to the eighth floor. Wow. We don't know if he saw us at any point or just got lucky or heard us because our hotel room wasn't right next to the elevator or anything.

48:20Even more interesting, little cherry on top is he had been paroled five days before his incidents with us. So come to find out he had a litany of charges of burglary, robbery, drug charges, assault charges stemming in Santa Barbara from the 90s. Maybe you guys crossed paths. Yeah, truly. I'm afraid I might know this person. And so because of that, he ended up pleading guilty. He had a bunch of charges and he is serving 55 years to life for everything. Whoa. Oh, my. What photo do I have here that we haven't looked at yet? Yeah, you have a photo of him. Oh, I can't wait to see. Maybe I'll know him.

49:03Like, oh, it's Steve. Oh, he looks like I was expecting him to look. Yeah, that's terrifying. Thank God your friend fought so hard and valiantly. She's a gangster. No one was seriously hurt. But obviously there was some emotional trauma and some trauma responses that come for a while. But we're all still best friends. And oh, I wrote in for cautionary tale. always look through the peephole. Definitely. Big time. If we had looked through the peephole, this would have never happened. So I'm constantly telling, especially young women, but telling anyone, like, look through the fucking peephole no matter what.

49:41Scary. Oh, I'm so happy everyone was. Did she shake it off or is she had like kind of residual? She's probably had less residual stuff than the rest of us. I think we had a lot of guilt. We have all had to stay in the gas lamp since then. And I've definitely had my fair share of panic attacks related to it. It is wild, the maze of the traumatized mind, because it's like so often the painful thing or hard thing to get over isn't the wrestling on the bed. It's like the guilt of I didn't look through a people, the guilt of I didn't run and jump on his back. It's like all this guilt we put on ourselves after the fact, which is so sad because we didn't do it.

50:19I know we just made like less great decisions in a very heightened situation. And then we judge ourself as if that was our game plan. We thought of all of us learned what we do when fight or flight happens and got to prepare. Like, I know I will call 911. I know I'm probably not going to fight usually. Like that isn't my instinct. My instinct is to fix somehow. But it's helpful because people are always like, I know I'm going to fight. I thought I would have, too. Yeah. Mike Tyson's famous quote, everyone's got a game plan until they get punched in the nose. Exactly. Yeah. Well, Lauren, it's lovely meeting you.

50:54Wow, so nice to meet you. Thanks for that story. I think you have lucky clients. Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you guys so much. Guys, look at that peephole. I think you just helped a lot of listeners. That's my hope. Check your water bottle for rats and check the peepholes. A lot of checking. There's a lot. Yeah, life is about checking, you guys. This is so harsh. This is not going to help Monica's anxiety. Very cool to meet you guys. You too. Be well. Lauren, have a great summer. Thank you. You too. I'm about to be in three hotels Are you scared now? I'm excited and I hope something interesting happens I'm going to be in hotels Not for you, to me Sorry, to me I'm going to be in hotels and I hope something interesting happens You'll be with people, I'll be by myself I shouldn't tell people that Look in your people Guys, I'm going to be home Happy hoteling Love you

51:51Oh, okay, great. We don't have a thing song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the flyer, I'm fish. On the flyer, I'm fish. Enjoy.