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Episode: Armchair Anonymous: Hotel

Author: Armchair Umbrella
Duration: 00:47:32

Episode Shownotes

Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us a crazy hotel story.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts,

or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_12
Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and add free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous.

00:00:16 Speaker_12
I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

00:00:18 Speaker_03
Hi.

00:00:19 Speaker_12
Hi. This is Crazy Hotel Stories.

00:00:22 Speaker_03
We love a hotel.

00:00:24 Speaker_12
Boy, oh boy, did we get a fucking doozy by a proprietor of a motel, or not a motel, a hotel.

00:00:31 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:00:33 Speaker_12
But sometimes motel shit goes down at hotels. Just because you're in a hotel and you can't park your car in front of the door doesn't mean some motel shit's not gonna go down.

00:00:40 Speaker_03
That's right.

00:00:41 Speaker_12
Yeah.

00:00:41 Speaker_03
And we hear all about it.

00:00:43 Speaker_12
What a story.

00:00:44 Speaker_03
Yeah, you loved it.

00:00:45 Speaker_12
I loved it.

00:00:46 Speaker_03
There's one line that really got you.

00:00:49 Speaker_12
Yeah, there's some word choice that I applaud. Yeah. Please enjoy Crazy Hotel Stories.

00:00:55 Speaker_09
Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly?

00:01:04 Speaker_09
Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. Listen to The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:15 Speaker_07
♪ Hard times come and go ♪ ♪ Good times take them slow ♪

00:01:33 Speaker_12
Crazy hotels. Ooh, these should be good. A lot of stuff happens at hotels.

00:01:41 Speaker_03
Oh my god, too much stuff.

00:01:43 Speaker_12
Very sexy place.

00:01:44 Speaker_03
Also because hotels run the gambit so much. It could be a Motel 6.

00:01:48 Speaker_12
Colonial Motor Inn. Four CZs. They film porno sometimes in hotel rooms. There's murders. My grandma found so many dead bodies.

00:01:56 Speaker_03
Oh, yeah.

00:01:57 Speaker_12
People go to motels that kill themselves. Do you know that?

00:01:59 Speaker_03
Oh, yeah.

00:02:00 Speaker_12
Because they don't want to leave a mess in their own house.

00:02:03 Speaker_03
So interesting what happens psychologically.

00:02:05 Speaker_12
Let's picture my little grandma finding dead bodies all the time. Hello, can you hear us? Yeah, can you hear me? Oh, beautifully. Is this Mike? It is. Wonderful. Where are you, Mike? I'm in Covington, Georgia.

00:02:20 Speaker_03
Just right around the corner from my family.

00:02:23 Speaker_06
Oh, yeah. Another Georgia boy.

00:02:25 Speaker_03
Love it.

00:02:26 Speaker_12
Covington, that was the name of my favorite underpants, my boxer shorts I wore forever. I wonder if they were manufactured there. Is there any underwear manufacturing happening in Covington?

00:02:34 Speaker_06
Not that I know of. Okay. We've got General Mills. We make cereal here. Yeah. Oh, the Battle Creek of the South? Yeah.

00:02:42 Speaker_03
It's also, fun fact, the last name of the professor I was in love with. Yes, it was. So it means a lot to me, Covington.

00:02:48 Speaker_12
Okay, so Mike, you have a crazy hotel story?

00:02:51 Speaker_06
Yeah, it's pretty crazy. So, we like to go to concerts, me and my wife. We went to Macon, which is about an hour from here. We decided to get a hotel room, that way we didn't have to drive home after the show.

00:03:02 Speaker_06
And actually, my sister-in-law, she wanted to get the points, so she booked the hotel for us, under her name. So we stayed with the show, had a good night.

00:03:09 Speaker_06
We actually asked for a late checkout because we had a wedding to go to the next day and it was in the opposite direction from our house. So we didn't want to drive back home and drive all the way to the wedding.

00:03:18 Speaker_06
So we stayed, my wife was getting ready about 12 o'clock and I don't know about Kristen, but when you're getting ready, I'm basically watching TV, walking around. Yeah, myself occupied.

00:03:29 Speaker_06
I go into the bathroom to talk to my wife while she's taking a shower and behind the toilet, there's a picture and it's crooked. So all I did went and put a finger on one side, barely touched it.

00:03:39 Speaker_06
And the picture came down hard and it cut the water supply line going into the toilet.

00:03:45 Speaker_12
Oh my gosh.

00:03:46 Speaker_06
So I'm like, oh shit. And my wife was like, what did you do? I said, I just straightened the picture, but water was coming in. It was like our extinguisher. It wasn't like trickle of water. I'm like, what do I do? She goes, I don't know. Call the desk.

00:03:59 Speaker_06
All right. So I called the desk and lady answers. She goes, well, just turn it off. And I was like, I can't turn it off. Yes, sir. Just turn the knob. I'm like, you don't understand. I can't just turn it up. She's like, okay, well, we'll send somebody up.

00:04:10 Speaker_12
Well, can I ask really quick? Why couldn't you turn the knob? Was there not a knob, a shutoff knob?

00:04:14 Speaker_06
There was, but where it fell, it was like a PVC pipe coming in. It cut the PVC pipe.

00:04:19 Speaker_03
It's in the middle.

00:04:20 Speaker_12
Oh, before the valve.

00:04:22 Speaker_06
Before their turn off knob. Yeah. But they didn't understand. They thought I was just an idiot.

00:04:26 Speaker_04
Yeah. Yeah.

00:04:27 Speaker_06
So water's just coming out like a fire extinguisher. My wife had to jump out of the shower real quick, put clothes on while she's still wet because there's a maintenance man coming up. We get all our stuff, put it onto the bed.

00:04:37 Speaker_06
We're sitting on the bed because there's water going into the room. The maintenance man comes in and he looks over and he goes, why didn't you just turn it off? I'm like, I've told y'all I can't turn it off. And he leans down to turn it off.

00:04:49 Speaker_06
He goes, Oh, you can't turn it off. I was like, no. He's like, I know what to do. So he calls the manager. Now given it took about 10 minutes to get up there. So this water's going nonstop. So now he's on the phone trying to get the manager up there.

00:05:00 Speaker_06
Water's still going.

00:05:01 Speaker_12
Mike, are you on the first or second floor? I think we were on the third. Oh Jesus. Multiple floors are in danger now. Yeah.

00:05:09 Speaker_06
He's on the phone and he's walking back and forth past our room and he's glaring at us the whole time. And I'm like, all I did was straighten the picture. My wife is like, they're going to make us pay for this. And I'm like, I hope not.

00:05:18 Speaker_06
So then the manager finally comes up probably about 15, 20 minutes later. And she's like, well, we got to turn off the water to the building. The maintenance man goes, I don't know how to do that. He goes, do you?

00:05:29 Speaker_06
She was like, no, I guess we're going to have to call somebody. So that's another 20, 30 minutes of water just constantly running.

00:05:35 Speaker_03
Oh, my God.

00:05:52 Speaker_06
And they were like, this floor is being flooded. He goes, yeah, I noticed there was water coming through the door. I just put a towel down. And they were like, do you want us to relocate you? He goes, I got to leave here in just a minute anyway.

00:06:01 Speaker_06
I'll be good. He wasn't panicked about it. Me and my wife are freaking out because we're like, they're going to charge us for this. And this is going to cost a lot of money to fix. Thank God it was under my sister-in-law's name.

00:06:14 Speaker_06
And they asked, they said, do you want to relocate? And I'm like, well, you're shutting off the water, right? And they're like, yeah, well, we still got to get ready. So we abandoned the wedding. We went back home and we're just like, you know what?

00:06:23 Speaker_06
Let's get out of here. They don't have our name. They can't charge us. So we left, never heard anything back about it.

00:06:28 Speaker_06
My sister-in-law never heard anything back about it, but that was the time we flooded an entire floor of a hotel room just by fixing a picture.

00:06:36 Speaker_12
Oh, wow.

00:06:37 Speaker_03
That's rough.

00:06:38 Speaker_12
So the glass cut right through the PVC or maybe the impact just broke it?

00:06:44 Speaker_06
I think the impact broke it because glass didn't break. Thank God. That would have been even worse. You know, the picture was so heavy, it just broke that PVC pipe right in half. I don't know why they have PVC pipe coming in from the toilet.

00:06:55 Speaker_06
Usually it's a metal.

00:06:56 Speaker_12
Also, what a curious place to hang a very heavy picture.

00:07:00 Speaker_03
That's dangerous in general. It could fall on someone's head. Yeah. They're making a duty.

00:07:06 Speaker_06
Needless to say, I'm not allowed to straighten pictures anymore.

00:07:09 Speaker_12
Just leave them as is. I have a dumb question, but was the wedding in Lake Lanier, where you supposed to go a little further North?

00:07:15 Speaker_06
I would have to ask my wife. It was my wife's friend. It was on the other side of Griffin. I know that I was just going where she wanted me to go.

00:07:23 Speaker_12
Oh, well, Mike, I'm glad no one saw a bill for that. Of course they should just report that to their insurance. That shouldn't be anyone's issue.

00:07:29 Speaker_06
Right. And we weren't sure, but we just wanted to make sure that we didn't have to pay it because I'm sure it was several thousand dollars of damage.

00:07:35 Speaker_12
My brother did the same thing in England two months ago. I got him a room at a nice hotel in London and he started texting me, panicked. He had left the tub running.

00:07:46 Speaker_04
Oh shit.

00:07:47 Speaker_12
Yeah. And he flooded the hotel room. It was a super expensive place.

00:07:51 Speaker_03
Oh no.

00:07:51 Speaker_12
He panicked that we're going to get a bill for this whole thing.

00:07:54 Speaker_03
Well, and that does sound like his own negligence.

00:07:57 Speaker_12
Well, I, yeah, there's supposed to be an overflow, even if it's plugged, but I don't know. Something happened.

00:08:04 Speaker_06
I'll get a divorce if I don't let my wife come in.

00:08:06 Speaker_12
Of course. Send her in. What's her name?

00:08:08 Speaker_06
Liza. Here she is.

00:08:10 Speaker_12
Hi Liza.

00:08:11 Speaker_02
It's a pleasure to meet you both.

00:08:13 Speaker_12
Oh, you too. What's the deepest the water got? Was it ankle deep?

00:08:17 Speaker_02
Yeah. It was a rough one.

00:08:19 Speaker_12
And where was the wedding supposed to be that you were going to attend?

00:08:22 Speaker_02
I honestly don't remember. It was such a crazy day. It means a lot to Dax to figure this out. No, it was outside of Griffin. Yeah.

00:08:31 Speaker_12
I don't know why it's important to me. I'm just trying to think of what was on the other side of Macon from Covington.

00:08:37 Speaker_03
He really likes to have the lay of the land.

00:08:39 Speaker_12
I feel a lot safer if I know the geography of all this.

00:08:43 Speaker_02
Well, I apologize. This was probably six years ago, so I was just so glad we didn't have to pay for it. Oh, yeah.

00:08:49 Speaker_12
And when you guys pulled out of the parking lot, you must have felt like people that just set a building on fire, like, go, go, go, go.

00:08:55 Speaker_06
We didn't look at anybody as we walked out the building.

00:08:58 Speaker_03
You know what you could have done is if they tried to get you to pay, you could have sued them and said that you don't know how to swim and that you almost drowned.

00:09:06 Speaker_12
Oh, OK. Yeah, I could have, yeah.

00:09:08 Speaker_02
That's a great idea. We actually did end up going swimming that day.

00:09:12 Speaker_06
That's what we did. We came home and went swimming.

00:09:14 Speaker_12
And then the lawyers would have had footage of them swimming and said, this claim is bullshit. Well, it's lovely meeting both of you. Nice to meet y'all. Thank y'all so much. We like our Georgians.

00:09:24 Speaker_03
Yeah, we sure do. Neighbors. Oh, we love y'all.

00:09:28 Speaker_12
Oh, thank you.

00:09:29 Speaker_03
All right. Take care.

00:09:30 Speaker_06
All right.

00:09:30 Speaker_12
You too.

00:09:31 Speaker_03
Bye. I always have a fantasy that one of my friend's parents is going to call. I want them to do that.

00:09:37 Speaker_12
I don't have that fantasy. I wonder why you don't have any friends, parents. My mom has a lot of friends.

00:09:41 Speaker_03
Not my parents' friends.

00:09:43 Speaker_12
Ah, my friends' parents.

00:09:44 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:09:46 Speaker_12
I don't have that fantasy either. Okay, I just wanted, because this happened before we were recording, I wanted to tell a hotel story of my own. I have so many because we lived in hotels from 14 to 28, Erin and I, doing car shows.

00:10:01 Speaker_12
We have a lot of bad hotel stories. We have flooded a room or two. We've had some mix-ups.

00:10:08 Speaker_12
But what I wanted to tell people is that my sweet grandma, Grandma Midge, my grandparents owned a little roadside motel called the Colonial Motor Inn in Sturgis, Michigan. And it was off of a turnpike.

00:10:19 Speaker_12
So you get a lot of truckers and whatnot coming through. But my grandmother on numerous occasions found corpses. She'd get a call from the house cleaning staff. It happened again, Midge. And Midge would get in the case. My grandpa didn't handle it.

00:10:34 Speaker_12
My grandma Midge didn't.

00:10:35 Speaker_03
She was hands-on.

00:10:36 Speaker_12
For some reason, that didn't scare away.

00:10:38 Speaker_03
And as it was later- Do you think she ever was involved in any of the murders?

00:10:41 Speaker_12
Nope, none of them were murders. They're all victims of suicide. And then it was explained to me by my grandmother, people go to motels because they don't want to ruin their own house.

00:10:52 Speaker_03
It's really sad.

00:10:53 Speaker_12
It's really, really sad. But my poor little grandma, she was like five foot one Belgium, tough as nails.

00:10:59 Speaker_03
She's not poor because she's 5'1". She's feisty because she's 5'1". Oh my god, maybe that's why you like young... young. Grandma.

00:11:08 Speaker_12
Because of my grandma, I like young women.

00:11:10 Speaker_03
Yeah. No, you like small women.

00:11:13 Speaker_12
Well, my grandma, my mom, my mom's a mini.

00:11:16 Speaker_03
How tall is your mom?

00:11:17 Speaker_12
My mom's like five, three, five, four.

00:11:19 Speaker_03
And then Kristen. Yeah. You've been vocal about liking that. Now. I think it's all about your grandma.

00:11:25 Speaker_12
Anyways, I just thought that was interesting.

00:11:29 Speaker_03
I think it's, I mean, it's, it's macabre. Yeah.

00:11:31 Speaker_12
It's pretty morbid, but it's interesting. I wouldn't have thought about that. if I didn't have a family member who found corpses in their motel.

00:11:39 Speaker_03
Sure. I spent a lot of time in hotels in high school.

00:11:43 Speaker_12
For cheer?

00:11:44 Speaker_03
No, because we would go there to drink.

00:11:49 Speaker_12
Oh, sure. I did a good deal of that, too.

00:11:51 Speaker_03
And we would just tell our parents. It was because we wanted to hang out, but we didn't want to, like, keep our parents up.

00:11:55 Speaker_12
They would allow you guys to go to a hotel?

00:11:57 Speaker_03
Yeah, they didn't think we were drinking. Well, I don't know what they were just turning a blind eye to and what they knew and didn't know.

00:12:03 Speaker_12
Were you allowed to spend the night there?

00:12:04 Speaker_03
Yeah, we spent the night there.

00:12:05 Speaker_12
You guys will go to a hotel for the night. This was generally kept as a secret in my town. People always lied. I'm at Jennifer's house.

00:12:12 Speaker_03
I know that's doing irresponsible things quite responsibly. It's like they do know where we are.

00:12:18 Speaker_12
What was your main hog?

00:12:19 Speaker_03
God, that's a good question. I don't know. I have to ask.

00:12:23 Speaker_12
Cheapest possible, I'd imagine, right?

00:12:24 Speaker_03
Cheapest possible, but not, we still had some standards, but it was like 10 of us in one room, all drinking and everyone was throwing, not me, people would throw up in the tub.

00:12:34 Speaker_12
Would the manager come to tell you to keep it down?

00:12:36 Speaker_03
Never happened.

00:12:37 Speaker_12
Wow. That's so fun. So you probably have a really good memory of these affordable hotels. Would there ever be a pool?

00:12:43 Speaker_03
I'm sure at one point there was probably a pool.

00:12:45 Speaker_12
But you don't remember everyone hopping in.

00:12:48 Speaker_03
I don't remember us, we were drunk.

00:12:49 Speaker_12
Yeah, okay, blacked out. All right, let's talk to Bailey in Birmingham, Alabama.

00:12:55 Speaker_03
Another Alabama?

00:12:56 Speaker_12
No, I just made up their location because her name or his name was Bailey.

00:13:01 Speaker_14
Hi. Hello. How are you guys?

00:13:04 Speaker_12
Hi, Bailey. How are you?

00:13:06 Speaker_14
I'm learning how to use a Mac computer for the first time. Oh, my God. That's a huge deal. Thank you. PC girly.

00:13:13 Speaker_12
You sound phenomenal. So it's working brilliantly.

00:13:16 Speaker_14
Good, good, good.

00:13:17 Speaker_12
You look familiar, Bailey. Do I? You do.

00:13:20 Speaker_03
Do you know us? Probably.

00:13:22 Speaker_12
Probably. Where are you, Bailey? I am in Minnesota. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

00:13:28 Speaker_14
And you have a crazy hotel story? I do. I'll first tell you a story about my submission. Okay, great. So I submitted and then I was having intrusive thoughts that I spelled my email wrong. My brain kept telling me, Bailey, you spelled your name wrong.

00:13:45 Speaker_14
You spelled your name wrong. You forgot to do at gmail.com. And so I resubmitted and I said, I am so sorry. I'm submitting twice, but I was having intrusive thoughts and I just needed to submit again and make sure I spelled my email correctly.

00:14:00 Speaker_12
Yeah. And did Emma say you got it right the first time or thank God you corrected this?

00:14:04 Speaker_14
Nobody said so. Maybe the intrusive thoughts were correct. She got her email right both times.

00:14:09 Speaker_12
Oh, Rob just looked it up. He did the research and you got it right both times.

00:14:13 Speaker_14
Hey, the intrusive thoughts didn't win.

00:14:16 Speaker_03
That's good. We don't like it when they win. It's like when you have to go check your stove or something.

00:14:21 Speaker_12
And if it's ever actually on, that'll fuel you for another 10 years. You guys get it. Even when it's not on, it doesn't help. You don't even take on that info. Like, you know what? It's never on. You don't do that. That's the nature of it.

00:14:32 Speaker_03
I kind of do. I'm like, that was so silly, but I still keep checking. That's right.

00:14:37 Speaker_12
My point. Yeah. Okay. So hit us with your hotel story.

00:14:40 Speaker_14
I will take you guys back to 2012. I was 21 or so and naturally was going to a family wedding and I'm a cheap college kid at the time. So I'm not going to spend that $62 on a hotel by myself.

00:14:57 Speaker_12
And mom and dad aren't going to spring for it or they will if you sleep in their room?

00:15:01 Speaker_14
If I sleep in the room with them, they're going to pay for it. So my sister and I decide, Hey, let's stay with mom and dad. Two queen beds. This will be perfect. So we get to the wedding. Mom and dad have two DDs for the night.

00:15:15 Speaker_12
That's you and your sister?

00:15:17 Speaker_14
Absolutely.

00:15:17 Speaker_12
Well, you're 21. You're not going to drink at this wedding?

00:15:20 Speaker_14
I don't know if I did.

00:15:21 Speaker_12
How old was your sister? Younger or older?

00:15:24 Speaker_14
She would have been 19. She honestly probably was drinking. I was probably the designated drinker.

00:15:29 Speaker_12
Interesting. This is the Minnesota way.

00:15:31 Speaker_14
Mom and dad, they let loose. Why not?

00:15:34 Speaker_12
Good for them.

00:15:34 Speaker_14
We go to the wedding. All is fine. Went back to the hotel that night. Go to bed. We're a farm family, so we all knew we were going to have to wake up probably like 6 a.m. to head home. We had an hour and a half drive back home to get chores done.

00:15:50 Speaker_12
Hold on a second. That's farm life. No matter what, if there was a wedding, we don't ever get to sleep in.

00:15:56 Speaker_14
No, cattle still have to be fed. Got to feed America. Yes, you do.

00:16:00 Speaker_12
That's really true. We thank you for your service.

00:16:03 Speaker_14
So the morning came and it was 6 a.m. bright and early. And I think my parents were probably milking a hangover a little bit. So they wake up a little disoriented, kind of like, hey, girls, can you guys go get us some coffee?

00:16:20 Speaker_14
We're like, yeah, we'll go get you guys some coffee. Let me set the scene a little bit about where our room is. So our hotel room is on the first floor.

00:16:27 Speaker_14
I wish I was in the room with you guys because I would physically walk how far the coffee machine was from our room. Just imagine about 12 feet. So the Continental Breakfast has the nice little spouts. I don't know, I'm not a coffee drinker.

00:16:43 Speaker_14
But we each grab two cups because they are dying of thirst. As we walk out, I flip that latch that keeps the hotel door open. So I didn't let the hotel door lock, and I didn't bring a key. We are holding the cups of coffee. My sister's behind me.

00:16:58 Speaker_14
I walk in first. As we walk in, we see my mother bent over the bed with her pajama shorts down around her ankles, and my dad just Doing it from behind.

00:17:13 Speaker_12
Just plowing her from behind.

00:17:15 Speaker_14
Absolutely.

00:17:16 Speaker_12
Yeah, they're like ornery and hungover and grumpy and horny. I know that feeling pretty well.

00:17:31 Speaker_00
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00:17:46 Speaker_00
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00:18:29 Speaker_09
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00:18:42 Speaker_09
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00:18:54 Speaker_09
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00:20:03 Speaker_01
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00:20:16 Speaker_14
So I'm telling myself that they were definitely still drunk. So I'm holding the cups of coffee.

00:20:22 Speaker_12
Hold on. There's a lot here because, you know, you guys left and your dad's like, Oh, I got to get in there. Right. Or something. Or mom was like, Oh, you got to get it in there. One of them was like, you got to get in there.

00:20:32 Speaker_12
But both of them were so optimistic of how quick. Yeah. That they were going to be able to get this done with and be back in bed, acting asleep within a minute or two. Okay.

00:20:44 Speaker_14
Now, mind you, this could have all been prevented if I would have just let that hotel door lock. But here we are. I yell, what the fuck? I'm just thankful I did not drop the cups of coffee. I set them on the table.

00:21:01 Speaker_14
And at that point, my mom rips her pajama shorts up and she says, Bradley, I knew we wouldn't have enough time.

00:21:10 Speaker_12
Oh, I knew it. I knew it. Yeah. We tried to be fair, but we were also being unrealistic. I knew we didn't have time, and I told you so immediately.

00:21:27 Speaker_03
Exactly.

00:21:30 Speaker_12
Now, hold on a second. We gotta drill a little deeper again right here, which is, if I'm in that situation and my children walk in, I don't want Mom to separate and pull her dungarees up.

00:21:41 Speaker_12
It's probably best for everyone if we just freeze and everyone gets out of the room, because if Mom disengages, now Dad's erections on the scene.

00:21:48 Speaker_14
Oh.

00:21:49 Speaker_12
Right? Much better off keeping it, okay, this is coming.

00:21:53 Speaker_14
Yeah, so at that point, my mom yells, Bradley, we did not have enough time for that. At that same point, my dad grabs the sheet off of the bed, and he does like this, whips to the other side of the bed.

00:22:10 Speaker_14
And my dad's a short, stocky, dad bod guy, has this now toga sheet wrapped around him, looks like a little Greek god of some sort. As he stands up and I'm like, what is happening here? So I go sit on that corner of the bed.

00:22:28 Speaker_14
Oh God, you know, not their bed. Right. But you did decide to stay.

00:22:31 Speaker_12
Sounds like Susan. Were you a little shell shocked? Maybe.

00:22:34 Speaker_14
I was shell shocked. Exactly.

00:22:36 Speaker_12
I bet the thought crosses your mind like, oh, are we going to act like no one saw this? So I got to play my part.

00:22:42 Speaker_03
Except she already said what the fuck. And then there was already that we didn't have time.

00:22:45 Speaker_12
Mom already let the cat out of the bag, but I do understand that impulse to just act like everything's normal. In which case I would stay in the room and sit on the bed. Do you think that maybe is what happened? I don't know.

00:22:55 Speaker_14
I honestly don't. I remember it was six 15 and I have a pink flip phone at the time. And I'm like, I'm going to T nine word anybody I can right now to tell them what happened. I'm starting to send out the mass texts.

00:23:10 Speaker_14
You guys aren't going to believe how my morning is. This just happened. This is bizarre. I remember sitting there. It was probably only a few minutes as they're getting dressed at this point.

00:23:22 Speaker_12
I got to ask a very uncomfortable question, but I think people will be mad if I don't. Dad, he's in a very thin sheet. Do we notice that he popped a tent or whatever they say? Pop, pop, what is it?

00:23:33 Speaker_03
No, that's a tent, right?

00:23:34 Speaker_12
What do you call that, Rob? Pop a tent. Pitch a tent? Pitch a tent. Can we see that dad has an erection that's poking out?

00:23:42 Speaker_14
No, thank gosh.

00:23:43 Speaker_03
Oh, so you're not looking. Well, you just, you see, you're actively trying to not see stuff at that point.

00:23:49 Speaker_14
I think the visual of just the bending over action. Plenty. Yeah. That was enough.

00:23:55 Speaker_12
Okay. Really quick. I'm going to let you move on, but there's so many choices that were made. I need to do this really quick. Okay. He was too hopeful and optimistic.

00:24:03 Speaker_03
They probably thought the door was locked or closed. That would be my guess.

00:24:07 Speaker_12
But also best case scenario, stay under the sheets, climb on top of mom, poke, poke, poke. Clearly to the point where it's worth the risk, because if you just got on top of her and kept the sheets on, we're fine almost.

00:24:21 Speaker_12
But no, he's standing and she's bent over like a sawhorse.

00:24:25 Speaker_03
Okay. Okay.

00:24:28 Speaker_12
Okay.

00:24:29 Speaker_03
This is what happened in his head. He's probably like, okay, yeah, probably we'll take a little longer than the coffee, but maybe next year, like 20 seconds and that's fine.

00:24:36 Speaker_12
We'll just open the door and mom will say, dad had to take a dump.

00:24:40 Speaker_14
Exactly.

00:24:40 Speaker_12
Okay. We're back. We're back.

00:24:42 Speaker_14
Which is a life lesson for really anybody is just let that door lock. Yeah. So I was T9 wording all of my besties. I remember turning to my sister who has not said a word yet.

00:24:55 Speaker_14
And I turned to her and I'm like, let's go to the truck now and listen to my iPod. Mind you, we have an hour and a half drive still with them.

00:25:07 Speaker_12
God, and you're farmers. Like, I feel like some family of artists could have handled this a little better.

00:25:11 Speaker_14
My sister has been quiet the entire time and we get to the truck and we're like, okay, we're just going to listen to the iPod for the next hour and a half, no words whatsoever. And of course we don't have AirPods or anything back in the day.

00:25:23 Speaker_14
So we've got the one strand between us, one ear, one ear, just jam into the iPod the whole way home. We get home and we're carrying buckets of feed to the cattle.

00:25:34 Speaker_14
And my sister says, Bailey, I just don't know how they thought they were going to have enough time. I said, they didn't.

00:25:41 Speaker_12
Yeah, that's the big question that remains. They didn't apologize or anything?

00:25:47 Speaker_14
No.

00:25:47 Speaker_12
Just pretend it didn't happen. You guys don't skewer them, get Christmas 10 years later. You guys don't make jokes.

00:25:53 Speaker_14
We might now.

00:25:54 Speaker_12
I think it's time.

00:25:55 Speaker_14
It's time for it to resurface. 11 years.

00:25:58 Speaker_12
Statue of limitations is up. Yes. I got to applaud their youthfulness though.

00:26:04 Speaker_14
Yeah.

00:26:04 Speaker_12
There's something life affirming.

00:26:06 Speaker_14
Yes, I was going to add that I'm very thankful that they love each other. I mean, that's a relationship that everyone strives for. Let's get a quickie before the girls come back.

00:26:17 Speaker_03
Yeah, that is nice. How old were they at the time, do you think?

00:26:20 Speaker_12
Yeah, you were 21. Early 50s. God, your dad's a workhorse. What a stud. That is almost... I know, but you gotta understand, men didn't get erections in the 80s once they hit 50. I think impotency was real standard for anyone post-50. I think so.

00:26:38 Speaker_12
Well, we'll get some data on this, Bailey. And report back. Yeah, you'll hear about it on a future fact check, I bet.

00:26:45 Speaker_03
Well, thanks for sharing that horrible story that was amazing.

00:26:49 Speaker_12
I really enjoyed it.

00:26:50 Speaker_14
Thank you. And I just want to do a quick shout out to my friend, Paula, who's been a listener of yours since the beginning. And she's been listening for a prompt to submit this story. And she's actually here.

00:27:03 Speaker_12
Oh, great. Let's say hi to Paula.

00:27:04 Speaker_14
Do you care if she jumps on the mic?

00:27:07 Speaker_12
Let's say hi to Paula. Could be, is she in Minnesota?

00:27:11 Speaker_14
Hello.

00:27:12 Speaker_12
Hi, Paula.

00:27:13 Speaker_13
Oh my God, the attic. I love it.

00:27:15 Speaker_12
Nice to meet you.

00:27:16 Speaker_13
Nice to meet you, too. I just have to say, Dax, you're my Matt Damon.

00:27:21 Speaker_12
Oh, Paula.

00:27:22 Speaker_13
We have been waiting for this prompt forever, and I'm so glad Bailey got to tell it. It's so hilarious. And I wish she could have told it in person, because she does actions, and it's just so funny. But poor Bailey.

00:27:31 Speaker_13
In all seriousness, this podcast has done so much for me, and you guys are the reason I'm in therapy. So props to you guys, and you're helping so many people.

00:27:39 Speaker_12
Thank you, Paula. We appreciate that. Well, it's nice meeting both of you. Please tell Bailey We love that story us too.

00:27:46 Speaker_13
So thank you so much. Good to meet you guys.

00:27:49 Speaker_12
All right, take care guys That got crazy she was like Bailey was suspended in air Trying to get the focus on Paula it almost wonder if they orchestrated that whole thing Oh

00:28:06 Speaker_12
Man, she's got a perfect person to have seen that can't believe he was on his feet pounding Having anal sex. Well, Jesus Bob.

00:28:17 Speaker_12
Let's don't talk about Bailey's mom Also when you touched this I thought what if it crashed and in broke a pipe yeah, that would be fitting You can't have morning anal sex

00:28:31 Speaker_03
Yes, you can.

00:28:32 Speaker_12
No, because you got a dump in the morning.

00:28:34 Speaker_03
Maybe they had already pooped. Hi there.

00:28:38 Speaker_12
Hi. Sorry. We were saying naughty stuff right as you signed on.

00:28:43 Speaker_05
Makes me happy. I love it.

00:28:45 Speaker_12
Are you in a bunk bed with a sheet?

00:28:47 Speaker_05
I am in a blanket for a bunk bed. Absolutely. It's my best option.

00:28:50 Speaker_12
This is a first.

00:28:51 Speaker_05
This is good. This sounds great.

00:28:53 Speaker_12
A lot of ingenuity happening. What do you do for a living?

00:28:55 Speaker_05
So I own a beach resort on the Jersey Shore with my family.

00:28:59 Speaker_12
Oh, wow. Have you ever seen like this situation in the gang?

00:29:03 Speaker_05
No, we're not that type of Jersey Shore. We're like the quaint, family friendly, low-key Jersey Shore.

00:29:07 Speaker_12
Were you ever curious when they were shooting that show to wander up there and see if you could see them? I was obsessed with them.

00:29:13 Speaker_05
Not really our vibe. You know, we like to stay a couple islands down. But they're fun to watch, I guess.

00:29:18 Speaker_12
That's fair. Am I right to think that the season is coming to an end? Is it a good time for you or a sad time?

00:29:23 Speaker_03
No, it's great. Couple more weeks to go and then we're done. Oh, I have a feeling this story is about their own. Your own.

00:29:30 Speaker_12
Oh, that would be a first. A proprietor.

00:29:33 Speaker_05
It is. It's about our hotel and as low key as it normally is, we see our fair share of crazy stuff. So I've got a doozy for you guys today.

00:29:40 Speaker_12
How many rooms are there? I want to get like kind of an idea of what we're looking at.

00:29:44 Speaker_05
So we're pretty tiny. We're like a restaurant, nightclub, wedding venue.

00:29:48 Speaker_12
Oh, wow.

00:29:49 Speaker_05
This is a lot of fun.

00:29:50 Speaker_12
Very nice. Really quickly. My grandparents owned a motel and I was just telling Monica that my grandma many times found dead bodies. Does that happen to you?

00:29:58 Speaker_05
No dead bodies for us, knock on wood. Okay, great.

00:30:01 Speaker_12
Great, great, great. Oh, sorry. Knock, knock, knock. There we go. Okay.

00:30:04 Speaker_05
All right, well, I'm just going to dive on into it. So it's a Friday morning. I'm coming into work. And we work some late night hours, usually. So sometimes in the morning, I come in around checkout time for the hotel. I walk in.

00:30:15 Speaker_05
I open the front door right to our lobby. And normally, it would be a pretty low-key scene. It would be a couple people checking out, people gathering their stuff, getting ready to go. And immediately, I can tell that is not the case for this morning.

00:30:28 Speaker_05
It is a zoo in the lobby. There is pretty much the entire hotel's worth of people standing around our tiny little lobby.

00:30:34 Speaker_04
Oh wow.

00:30:34 Speaker_05
And they are losing their minds.

00:30:37 Speaker_04
Oh.

00:30:37 Speaker_05
I can immediately sense the tension in the room and I'm overhearing people going like, what did you lose? I lost my beach towels, they were Pottery Barn, they're monogrammed, we lost all our life jackets. So I am on high alert.

00:30:49 Speaker_05
I lock eyes with our front desk receptionist and she just gives me that nod, like go to the office, I'm gonna meet you in there. She presents me with a full yellow legal pad of missing items from hotel rooms.

00:31:02 Speaker_05
Side note, we are that idyllic little town where people leave all their stuff outside of the room at night. You leave your car doors unlocked. Everybody puts their beach towels, their beach gear outside of their room. Never been an issue.

00:31:13 Speaker_05
Apparently today was not that day because almost every single hotel room had come down and reported something from outside of their room missing. Nothing like this has ever happened before, so I am in semi-panic mode.

00:31:24 Speaker_05
You know, we want to keep our guests happy and don't know what to do, so I'm reeling, trying to think, what's our next step here?

00:31:29 Speaker_05
And in walks two of our managers, and I have a manager, Heather, who does our front desk, and a manager, Tina, who does our housekeeping. And they come in, and they were in earlier than me, and we've got a story for you.

00:31:39 Speaker_05
One of our housekeepers had walked by one of the other rooms and noticed, as she looked through an open door, a boatload of beach stuff, like mountains of beach gear in a certain hotel room. So she's like, all right, we've got an issue.

00:31:52 Speaker_05
So it was like 10.45 when I got in there. Checkout's 11. So I'm like, all right, let's go upstairs. I gather my girls. We head up the stairs. Some of our rooms are oceanfront, and they've got private balconies.

00:32:02 Speaker_05
So we go to the one next to this room, who's already been checked out of. And I walk out on the balcony and I'm peeking over to the next room and I'm trying to figure out, oh my God, is this it? And I just see mountains of things.

00:32:14 Speaker_05
All the beach towels stacked up, puddle jumpers, beach gear, I mean, everything. So it's now 1101 and this is no longer this lady's room. So I'm like, all right, let's go. So I leave my girls down the hallway. I go up, I knock on the door.

00:32:28 Speaker_05
Little side note about this lady, she's already been an issue in the hotel. You know, we've got bars, we've got a nightclub. We've had a lot of complaints about her so far already.

00:32:36 Speaker_12
Ranging from just she's nosy or she's aggressive, loud.

00:32:41 Speaker_05
Loud, aggressive, too drunk, causing scenes, chirping up people at the bar, being rude to the security guards, like you name it, she was doing it. She's been a handful. Okay.

00:32:52 Speaker_05
So I knock on the door, tell her who I am, kind of give her the old, Hey, had a couple of complaints about some hotel rooms. Are you missing anything? She's like, oh, no, what are you talking about?

00:33:02 Speaker_05
And as she steps sort of to the side, I look over her shoulder, and I'm like, how many towels did you bring with you on this vacation? At this point, I'm like, I'm coming in the room. So I sort of just walk past her.

00:33:10 Speaker_05
And our rooms have a little bit of an entry hallway, and then they open up into the larger space. So I'm coming in, and I'm clocking all the stuff.

00:33:18 Speaker_05
I'm seeing the towel with Olivia's name on it, the huddle jumper with the mermaids on it that's been reported missing. I have the list with me, and I'm like, this is it. We've got a kleptomaniac on her hand. As I walk through the threshold to the room,

00:33:29 Speaker_05
I look to my right and I catch eyes with somebody I know in her bed. So we have a lot of different bands that play at our resort, and some play weekly.

00:33:56 Speaker_05
And I look over, and one of the trombone players from a band who plays at the resort a lot is tucked up to his chin in her bed.

00:34:03 Speaker_12
And just surrounded with merch.

00:34:06 Speaker_05
Endless gear. I mean, a hotel's full. You could have a whole camp with the amount of gear for children that is in this room. So I look at him, and we're just eyes on each other. We know each other, and he's a deer in headlights.

00:34:16 Speaker_05
So I look over at her, and I'm like, hey, do you guys have any kids registered with your reservation? because I know it's just her in this room. And she goes, oh, he has kids.

00:34:24 Speaker_12
So she's thinking on her feet.

00:34:25 Speaker_05
She's moving quick. She's trying. But I know this guy and he does not have children of this age. And I've never seen him with any family of anybody at the resort. So I look right at her and I go, that's not true. Come on. And he is still just stone cold.

00:34:39 Speaker_05
So I'm like, listen, guys, I'm under the assumption that you've stolen all this stuff from all of our hotel guests. I go, I'm going to take it back. I go out to the hallway.

00:34:45 Speaker_05
I hooty hoot my staff and I asked them to come down and they bring a whole crew of housekeepers. I mean, this is five, six ladies, arms full of stuff, just taking it all out.

00:34:54 Speaker_12
At this moment in your mind, have you tried to figure out? Cause I'm immediately thinking this is the act of a super hammered person that didn't really know what they were doing. Not so much that they actually are a thief that wants this stuff.

00:35:08 Speaker_12
My guess right now is she woke up and was just as surprised as you are that all that stuff was in her room.

00:35:12 Speaker_05
She was absolutely drinking the night before, but the reason that's not the case is because everything was nicely folded. She had mounds of towels rolled up perfectly and was loading them into her suitcase.

00:35:23 Speaker_03
How's she getting this out of here without people noticing?

00:35:26 Speaker_12
Also, what the hell are you going to do with all this stuff? It's not like it's highly resellable.

00:35:29 Speaker_03
I don't think it's about that. It's just about the stealing.

00:35:32 Speaker_12
Yeah, okay.

00:35:33 Speaker_05
Also, she is so far on left field. I've just accused her of robbing the entire hotel. She could care less. She's smiling. She's joking with me. She is not defensive at all. I'm just like, okay.

00:35:44 Speaker_05
So we get all this stuff out of the room and I look at the guy and I go, listen, I'm going to step out of the hallway. I'm going to give you two minutes to get decent. And after that, I'm coming in. You guys are getting out of the room. I walk out.

00:35:53 Speaker_05
I'm not out there 30 seconds. He comes barreling out the door, down the hallway, won't even look at me. He's gone. So I'm like, all right, I'll deal with this guy another day. I know who this guy is.

00:36:02 Speaker_05
So I go back in and I'm trying to just get the ball rolling for this lady. I'm like, you got to go.

00:36:05 Speaker_12
We're not going to call the cops. You're like, I'm not interested in that.

00:36:09 Speaker_05
I'm not even there. I'm just like, you got to get out of this place. We have reclaimed everything. We're not going to make a big deal out of this, but you got to get out of here. So I'm grabbing her stuff for her.

00:36:17 Speaker_05
I'm literally, she brought a Keurig machine. I'm holding a Keurig that she stole from the last hotel. Probably. She's joking with me about the weather. She's saying how much she loves our resort. And I'm just like, we got to go, lady.

00:36:29 Speaker_05
I get her down the hallway, out to her car. As we're walking, she's detailing her plans to go to the next hotel down the street and check in. And I'm like, oh, God. So I get her in her car.

00:36:39 Speaker_05
I'm immediately calling the other hotel owner because, you know, we're a small town and being like, hey, this is coming your way. Absolutely do not let this lady check in. Before I can even get off the phone,

00:36:49 Speaker_05
I'm beeping through with another call from our housekeeping manager and she's like, you need to get back up here right away.

00:36:53 Speaker_04
What the fuck?

00:36:54 Speaker_05
I'm like, did this lady sneak back in the other side? Like, what am I getting back into? So I hustle back up there and I get in there and there's a team of housekeepers in there. They'd come in. It's already past checkout.

00:37:05 Speaker_05
They're trying to get in there and clean the room. We've got a full hotel to flip over and they are just shocked. I'm like, what's going on? They pull back the sheets and poop stains all over the sheets.

00:37:19 Speaker_05
The same bed Mr. Trombone Player was just laying in. We don't have cameras in the room so we'll never know what really happened.

00:37:26 Speaker_03
So he was covered in the poop when he was in the sheets? There was just poop stains like poop juice all over the sheets.

00:37:34 Speaker_05
Oh, baby. And I don't know if I was so freaked out by the situation of the theft originally that I didn't smell it, didn't notice it, like the balcony door was open.

00:37:43 Speaker_05
But I looked down and there's one of the little maps we give out of our island that gives like tourist spots and restaurant recommendations. Somebody moves that with a gloved hand, pile of poop juice. Oh, my God. You look in the bathroom.

00:37:56 Speaker_05
Poop, washcloths, everything. Wait, what?

00:37:58 Speaker_05
But we deducted that they must have gotten absolutely hammered the night before, gone on a drunken rage of ransacking the hotel, and then probably celebrated with a big round of butt sex right before they left.

00:38:08 Speaker_03
Yes! Oh, my God!

00:38:11 Speaker_05
Who else lays in those sheets? I mean, you're not gonna lay in poop sheets if you're not a part of it.

00:38:16 Speaker_03
By the way, when we got on with you and we said we were just talking about naughty stuff, it was anal.

00:38:21 Speaker_12
It was that. It was someone walked in on their dad pounding mom bent over the bed. It was like 6.15 in the morning. And I said, well, no one have anal sex in the morning. But now we're hearing this story. Yeah.

00:38:31 Speaker_03
Well, we don't know if it was morning or night or yeah.

00:38:35 Speaker_12
Poop everywhere. Wow.

00:38:37 Speaker_05
That's the whole story. I mean, it ended in a good note. We have a great team, they clean the room, we have professional carpet cleaner machines, like, we took care of it.

00:38:45 Speaker_05
All the guests were happy just to get their stuff back, so it was a happy ending.

00:38:49 Speaker_03
Oh my god, I wonder if there was any poop on any of the stuff.

00:38:53 Speaker_12
People are animals.

00:38:55 Speaker_05
It was nuts. It's been six, seven years since the story, and we still call the trombone guy Roto-Rooter.

00:39:03 Speaker_12
So he stayed under your employee. Did you guys ever have any followup conversation about that whole sitch?

00:39:09 Speaker_05
He left the band for a few years and then he's been back recently. I don't give him shit. I just kind of give him a little side eye when I see him. Like I know he has the audacity to show his face again.

00:39:20 Speaker_12
Well, I would say to him, listen, Carl, I'm going to let you work here, but you shouldn't have sex with the guests that's off the table. But if it does happen, be mildly respectful.

00:39:29 Speaker_05
Clean up a little bit.

00:39:32 Speaker_12
Oh, wow.

00:39:33 Speaker_05
We had to throw away all the sheets, all the towels, you know, everything. I mean, the room got stripped down to bare bones and started over, but it was nasty.

00:39:41 Speaker_12
Oh, talk about insult to injury.

00:39:43 Speaker_05
Also, the juice description is really something.

00:39:46 Speaker_12
This might not shock you, but in my 20 plus years in AA, this is the kind of story I hear. You know, this is generally someone's bottom. Yeah. Pun intended.

00:39:57 Speaker_05
I just want to thank you guys for this. This was so much fun. I'm obsessed with your podcast. I listen every week, all the shows.

00:40:02 Speaker_12
Thank you. That was incredible. What a morning you had.

00:40:05 Speaker_05
I love that. Great start to my weekend.

00:40:07 Speaker_12
And all the guests, they were delighted when they got their stuff back. Everything was fine.

00:40:11 Speaker_05
Everybody was happy. Nobody caused a ruckus or anything. They were just happy to get their stuff and go to the beach that day.

00:40:16 Speaker_12
Oh God, that poor woman. She's really hanging on by a thread.

00:40:20 Speaker_05
Let's hope she turned it around. Yeah, hopefully she's doing better things with her life these days.

00:40:24 Speaker_12
Well, Brittany, thank you. That was a blast.

00:40:27 Speaker_05
Before I leave, my friend Heather, who was a part of the story, who turned me on to your podcast, is here. Do you care if she says hi real quick? Of course.

00:40:33 Speaker_12
Let's say hi to Heather.

00:40:34 Speaker_05
She's our front desk manager. She was one of the ones that was a part of the beginning. Hi.

00:40:38 Speaker_12
Hi, Heather.

00:40:39 Speaker_05
Oh my God, this is so exciting.

00:40:40 Speaker_12
Now, did you also go take a look at the wreckage in the bed, or did you take everyone's word for it?

00:40:46 Speaker_03
You got eyes on that. I got eyes on all of it.

00:40:49 Speaker_12
It was pretty nasty.

00:40:50 Speaker_03
And would you also describe it as juice? Yeah, I would say juice and then some. Okay, sure.

00:40:57 Speaker_12
Well, so nice meeting both of you. This was incredible.

00:41:00 Speaker_03
You too. Thanks so much.

00:41:01 Speaker_12
Take care, ladies. I kind of want to go stay there now.

00:41:04 Speaker_03
It sounds really nice. I don't want to stay in that room.

00:41:07 Speaker_12
Yeah, I'll ask them what room that was in. I can't believe she said celebrate it with a round of butt sex. What a way to phrase that. A round.

00:41:15 Speaker_03
Sounds like it might have been multiple rounds based on the amount of juice. Of sewage that was. Fucking guy was laying in it. Why was he laying in it?

00:41:24 Speaker_12
He didn't know what to do.

00:41:25 Speaker_03
Do you think the percentage of anal is higher at a hotel than it is in your home?

00:41:30 Speaker_12
I do.

00:41:30 Speaker_03
People don't want to desecrate their home with the butt, but they're fine with it.

00:41:34 Speaker_12
Well, look at my only story of pooping a bed was at a hotel.

00:41:38 Speaker_03
You've pooped a bed before in your house.

00:41:41 Speaker_12
No, I don't think so.

00:41:42 Speaker_03
Really?

00:41:43 Speaker_12
No, Aaron's kind of known for that. My only pooting in bed was that experience.

00:41:47 Speaker_08
Oh.

00:41:48 Speaker_12
Hello.

00:41:49 Speaker_08
Hi. Is this Matt? Hey, Dex. Hey, Monica. How are you guys? Great.

00:41:52 Speaker_12
Good. Where are you calling us from?

00:41:54 Speaker_08
I'm calling from New York, Manhattan.

00:41:56 Speaker_03
Oh, the big city. We love it there.

00:41:58 Speaker_08
Yes, the Big Apple.

00:42:00 Speaker_12
If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, Monica.

00:42:02 Speaker_03
That's what they say.

00:42:03 Speaker_12
Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?

00:42:04 Speaker_03
What?

00:42:05 Speaker_12
Lots of practice is the answer.

00:42:08 Speaker_03
I'm glad there was a joke there. I really didn't understand.

00:42:12 Speaker_12
Adam Kirsch told me that joke. I love it. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Lots of practice. Okay. Hit us with your hotel story.

00:42:19 Speaker_08
Yeah. So this starts in the height of COVID going into 2021. So the end of 2020, my friend Slater and I are located in New York city. It's freezing cold. All the bars are closed. So there's not much for us to do.

00:42:33 Speaker_08
And with winter coming, being in a two by four apartment didn't really sound exciting. Especially if your name is Slater.

00:42:38 Speaker_03
Slater's meant to be out on the town.

00:42:40 Speaker_12
Yeah, Slater needs some action.

00:42:42 Speaker_08
Exactly. He actually has really good dance moves, so that's a good story.

00:42:46 Speaker_08
Our friend, Nick, who is located down in Florida, was FaceTiming us every other day, trying to get us to come down and say, it's bright and shiny down here, it's warm, it's beautiful. So Slater and I decided, let's do it.

00:42:58 Speaker_08
So once New Year's happened, we took a train down to Orlando, Florida. That's kind of where we bounced around during COVID from Orlando to Miami and then ultimately Sarasota for about six to seven months.

00:43:11 Speaker_12
Really quick, I'm just learning you can take a train from Manhattan to Orlando?

00:43:15 Speaker_08
You have to go to Virginia and then they have the Amtrak auto and you load your car up and then you take a train down to Orlando. Oh, you put your car on the train. It's super cool. Oh, wow. The tickets weren't that bad.

00:43:28 Speaker_08
We needed a car down in there, so we decided to do that. We ended up starting in Orlando. We were renting Airbnbs month to month, and then ultimately we wanted to go to Sarasota.

00:43:36 Speaker_08
So our Airbnb finished, and then the start of the new one, we had a week gap. We decided to go to Miami. We were supposed to stay with one of my friends.

00:43:45 Speaker_08
She happened to get COVID, so we decided to last minute book a hotel in an area of Miami I had been around constantly pre-COVID. As we were kind of getting to the hotel, we realized that it's spring break in Miami.

00:43:57 Speaker_08
So all the cooped up COVID people were letting loose. That's when you were seeing on the news about the whole curfew issue and mayhem going on in Miami.

00:44:06 Speaker_12
I do remember that, yeah.

00:44:07 Speaker_08
We pulled up, the receptionist at the hotel looked at us and they see us in polos and khaki shorts and nice shoes while everyone else is kind of in their swimsuit, drinking in the lobby. Music's blasting and we had our golf bags, our

00:44:21 Speaker_08
work stuff, and we're ready to work in this hotel. So when we get to our room, you have the TV and the bureau, and then the hotel gives you a desk on the right side. Slater happened to set up his desk on the right, so we're about four feet apart.

00:44:34 Speaker_08
Then next morning, we hit the gym, we come back, and we just start our workday. He's on client calls, I'm on client calls.

00:44:42 Speaker_08
This is kind of where we developed this concept, which is called the midday shower, which is basically a way to essentially break up your workday into two halves.

00:44:50 Speaker_12
Okay, this is proprietary.

00:44:52 Speaker_08
Shower, go for a walk, basically get away from your laptop and when you come back you feel refreshed. Behind him was the bathroom wall so all you had to do was basically get up, turn and go around.

00:45:01 Speaker_08
He turned the water on and then this is where I heard a muffled poof.

00:45:05 Speaker_04
Oh.

00:45:05 Speaker_08
The best way I could describe this noise is the shower head fell off and hit the empty tub and that's kind of what it sounded to me.

00:45:14 Speaker_04
Okay.

00:45:15 Speaker_08
I didn't know what was going on, so I looked left, and this is kind of where I saw debris in the air. I looked at his monitor. I saw the plastic was pointing out at him as he'd been sitting in the chair, and there was a hole through it.

00:45:29 Speaker_03
Whoa. Wait, what?

00:45:30 Speaker_08
I realized that a bullet went through it. I just jumped on the floor. Oh my goodness. Slater came out of the bathroom and he looked at me and he goes, what was that? And I said, bullet.

00:45:41 Speaker_08
So he dropped to the floor and I crawled towards him and then we're sitting on the bathroom floor trying to figure out what just happened. We called 911. We said, Hey, we're in room XYZ at this location. Then we realized we have to call

00:45:54 Speaker_08
the hotel downstairs. I don't know why I didn't really Google, try to call the front desk. Maybe it was going to 1-800. I can't really remember.

00:46:01 Speaker_08
So this is where I crawled from the shower to the center of the room for the phone, called the hotel downstairs. I said, hey, there was a shot fired. And they were basically like, OK. Please be safe. And then we hung up.

00:46:12 Speaker_08
Thankfully, there wasn't any further shooting, nothing. So we were all safe, thankfully. And I don't know what time from that period from when we made the calls to when they showed up. Might have been maybe around like a half an hour.

00:46:23 Speaker_08
And then ultimately, we heard a knock on the door. Hey, it's the cops. We opened the door. He decided to escort us out safely to the elevator. And the individual next door to us comes out as if nothing happened and is just walking by us.

00:46:37 Speaker_08
And the cop said, are you in this room? He said, yeah. So the cop started to interrogate him and Slater and I went down to the hotel lobby into the conference room with a cop and the manager of the hotel for about an hour or so.

00:46:50 Speaker_08
Slater and I realized that we're in the middle of a work day. We asked the cop, can we go back upstairs? We don't want to say we're in Miami, where if you look out the window, there's partying and every kind of going crazy. Yeah, yeah.

00:47:00 Speaker_08
So we realized basically what happened. The bullet hole was through the wall, through Slater's monitor. And had he been sitting there, it would have shot him right in the chest.

00:47:10 Speaker_12
Oh my God. Thank God for your proprietary shower break.

00:47:15 Speaker_08
Exactly. And then we realized since he wasn't sitting there, it went through the wall where the shower was located and it actually chipped the tile.

00:47:23 Speaker_08
So had it been maybe even a stronger bullet and Slater was in the shower, it would have hit him in the backside too anyway. So we were really thankful. So then we get our work material, we head downstairs.

00:47:35 Speaker_12
You guys are really good employees, I want to add.

00:47:37 Speaker_08
I know.

00:47:38 Speaker_12
No one's thinking about calling the boss and going like, hey, we almost got shot a second ago. We're going to have to call some of these clients back later.

00:47:45 Speaker_08
We didn't want to do that. We didn't want to let them know that we were really milking out the remote work. So we kind of left it at that.

00:47:51 Speaker_08
We're in the conference room downstairs in the hotel lobby and we asked the cop what happened to this guy where the shot came from. And the cop said that when he went into the room, the entire seat was cleaned up.

00:48:02 Speaker_08
So the debris wasn't on the floor from his side. And the hole was almost as if it was plastered up, and the bureau for where the TV is, he just moved it over. So essentially, nothing on his side.

00:48:14 Speaker_08
He had said, oh, it was a champagne bottle that exploded and went through the wall. The cop patiently said, well, if you look on this side of the hotel room, it's a completely different story.

00:48:24 Speaker_08
So it was labeled as an accidental discharge because I guess the rules down in Florida are a little bit more liberal. So he essentially was free. No repercussions, nothing for him.

00:48:32 Speaker_12
Oh my God. No problem discharging a firearm in your hotel room and almost killing your neighbor. Who was the dude? Was he a kid on spring break or was he another work remote adult?

00:48:42 Speaker_08
No, he was definitely an adult, definitely older. How old? We were 24 at the time. So he, to me, looked around 29, maybe 31. Okay. He's not like my age.

00:48:54 Speaker_12
He's not old time. Cause I was starting to think of some old timers. I mean, he's going to bring his gun in case he gets attacked and then he's moving his underpants and the guns in the drawer. But no, this is a 31 year old.

00:49:05 Speaker_12
I mean, he must've been handling the gun. He was taking the gun, I guess, out of a suitcase and it just popped.

00:49:10 Speaker_11
Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ. What a fucking bozo.

00:49:16 Speaker_12
Oh, wow, Matt. What a bizarre story. One of a kind. We didn't have any other hotel stories like this.

00:49:23 Speaker_03
No, we did not. You literally dodged a bullet.

00:49:26 Speaker_12
Nice. You rarely get to say that and it's literal.

00:49:28 Speaker_04
Yeah, it was fun.

00:49:29 Speaker_12
Well, Matt, lovely meeting you. Thanks for telling us that story. Thank you so much, guys. Take care.

00:49:34 Speaker_03
Bye.

00:49:35 Speaker_12
Oh, wow. That's scary. Where did you think that story was going? Because I, of course, thought there was going to be a spring breaker who did something wild, maybe crash into the room or something in the elevator.

00:49:46 Speaker_03
I thought he fell in the shower.

00:49:50 Speaker_12
Oh, cause he started talking about the shower.

00:49:51 Speaker_03
Well, he heard a big noise and I thought it was, he fell and then he had to go in there in his naked body and he had to deal with the naked body.

00:49:59 Speaker_12
That's fair. Did not see that one coming.

00:50:01 Speaker_03
Geez. Scary. Yeah.

00:50:02 Speaker_12
I wonder if they celebrated with a round of butt fucking.

00:50:05 Speaker_03
Hopefully.

00:50:06 Speaker_12
Oh, wow. That was good. Hotels were good.

00:50:08 Speaker_03
Yeah. Fun. I want to go to a hotel.

00:50:11 Speaker_12
Me too.

00:50:11 Speaker_03
Okay. I'm going. Bye. Bye. Love you.

00:50:16 Speaker_00
Do you wanna sing a tune or something? Or a theme song? Oh. Okay, great.

00:50:21 Speaker_10
We don't have a theme 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 fly, right?

00:50:44 Speaker_12
Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

00:50:58 Speaker_12
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