What kind of ownership does a guest have over their hotel room?

We pay a lot to stay at hotels, and we want to get our money's worth. That usually means that we expect our room to be clean, for the facilities to work without an issue, and even for the breakfast buffet to be as diverse as possible. When we check out, and the front desk clerk asks us, "How did you enjoy your stay?", the answer should be that it was impeccable, absolutely perfect, no complaints. 

Does that really happen every time? Absolutely not, but a girl can dream.

With all due respect to the money we pay for a hotel room, we can't expect the hotel to treat the space as if we own it. The hotel owns it; there is no way around that. As long as you're there, they will give you as much privacy and autonomy over the room as possible, but at the end of the day, when you check out, the room goes back to the hotel's care.

This means that if someone decides to check out early, they relinquish their right to the autonomy over the room. Checking out at the front desk is basically saying, "I don't need this room anymore, it is your responsibility now," which allows the hotel to do whatever they want with it, including giving it to someone else.

So why was the guest in the story below, posted on Reddit's r/TalesFromTheFrontDesk, so upset when she found out someone else was staying in a room she checked out of? 

It was her decision to check out even though she had paid for another two nights in the hotel, and if she wanted to still have autonomy over it, she simply shouldn't have handed over the keys. The hotel doesn't care whether you sleep in a room or not, as long as you're paying for it, you can do whatever you want with it. But if you officially tell them your stay is finished, the room is back in their control. Do with that what you will.

If you want students to follow your instructions to the T, then make them clear enough for that…

I remember when I was in school, I was the kind of student who always complied with what the teachers asked. I used to be one of those students that only got A's and was always noted as "the good student" or "the model student". In the long run, it actually ended up doing a number on me as I started to get incredibly anxious about academics and obsessed with grades. But the good part was being noted and liked by teachers for my efforts and test scores. I remember that it got to a point where I was so advanced with class tasks that I went home and had no homework. I was always working towards doing my best and being the best at school. When, in reality, it wasn't really that important.

Because of how I behaved at school, I actually miss all the pranks and giggles that other students were doing. I was not included in them as I was too busy paying attention. I remember thinking I was better than other students because I actually focused in school, but later on I realized that I just missed all the fun. That's why in my last year I tried to chill a bit. I got more involved with other classmates and even pulled a prank with them. It was something really simple and not mean at all. It didn't even get us punished. But it was nice to get a peek of both worlds. Being the straight-A student and pulling a prank on the teachers.

Now that school has been over for a while for me, it's nice to have some fun memories to think about apart from just remembering myself studying all the time. With the story of u/DoublePreparation241, I got to remember the fun parts of school. Maybe this story is some kind of malicious compliance to the person that did it, but for me it seems just a funny, non-malicious prank to make the teacher more aware of himself. It didn't cause any real issues, and it made this user have a fun time doing it. So, staying in the funny pranks students pull in school, do you remember any that you did? 

You know those popular reality TV shows where the storage facility auctions off random abandoned storage units? Ever wonder what the other side of the story was?

This Texas man was renting a climate-controlled storage unit in Texas for 3 years, paying the storage rental fees with automatic credit card payments. During a software update, the facility dropped off his automatic payment or otherwise lost his credit card information. The next time he went to visit the unit, he found that $14,000 of his belongings had been auctioned off to the highest bidder for $420. 

The facility admitted that the system had also glitched to stop sending no-payment notices from being sent but stated that their liability clause limited their liability to $200. They insultingly offered him a $200 gift card, of all things, in compensation. This left the man wondering what his options were for holding the storage facility accountable, and he turned to.

The irony that they offered him less in compensation than they profited from the errant sale just piles on the irony of this man's misfortune. Talk about great customer service… 

Should an employer have the right to mess around with employee break times?

Punctuality is one of those basic life skills that almost all workplaces are going to expect from their employees, but it is important to have some leeway. While it may be clear that anybody who takes endless lunch breaks or regularly clocks in at any old time is not properly fulfilling their duties, even decent workers have mishaps and bad days that mean that they do not strictly adhere to the hours they are supposed to be doing their job.

While it can be frustrating to deal with lateness as a boss, it is important to judge it on a case-by-case basis and offer understanding and support where appropriate. A role where an employee constantly feels judged for seemingly small mistakes, like a few missed minutes here and there, is not likely to do their best work or stay very long with the company. Being on time is a basic expectation to fulfil, but it is something that most people don't manage 100% of the time. Showing a little grace where possible can go a long way, unless the tardiness starts to become a pattern that can't be ignored.

If you HAVE to be there, then you NEED to get paid

I hate when managers threaten employees with getting fired after every little issue. I don't think that should be allowed at all. It's disrespectful, and it creates a toxic workspace environment where the employee complies with ANYTHING because they are afraid of being unemployed. If the only way you can say an order as a manager and make sure it's complied with by an employee is by threatening to fire them, maybe you aren't a good enough leader to be a boss.

I always have a lot of bad things to say about bosses. I hate when they micromanage, when they mistreat the employees, and especially when they threaten to fire them all the time. Here we have those three in just the story below. The boss was micromanaging to see if this employee was working till the last second of her shift. It was a couple of minutes before closing. She was allowed to have been finished for the day. Then it was the mistreatment and the threat of firing. These two appeared together when the manager decided that a great response to the employee saying that if she has to stay for a little more, she will just clock out as soon as she needs to go was to say: "No, I'll fire you".

I think a good leader wouldn't do things like this. And I also think the employee should do something about it. Whether it is talking to human resources or to a higher authority of the company. But this kind of behavior shouldn't be tolerable for anybody, and acting like this makes you an incapable boss. What would you do if you were in this situation? I would definitely reach out to somebody, and if nothing changed, I would consider resigning. There's probably a better job where employees don't have to put up with incapable managers like this. 

Staying a whole extra hour on your first day might show commitment, but expecting an employee to come back after they've already gone home takes dedication to a whole different level.

There's nothing worse than a first day at a new job. Well… I'm sure it depends on the company you started working with, but overall, it's not a very pleasant day. Maybe you're a bit nervous; you're not really sure what exactly you're going to be doing… but it gets better with time. In this story, however, the opposite occurred with an intern who started his first day of work at a coaching office.

According to the job description, the work hours ended at 5:30 PM, but since it was his first day, he decided to stay until almost 7 PM, just to make sure that everything was okay. He got home close to 8 and got a call from his manager telling him to return to the office as soon as possible… he declined, of course. He stayed longer than he should, and there was not really a reason as to why he had to go back.

The manager, instead of being more understanding, decided to fire him on the spot. Not only that: she even mentioned that they value revenue and the company's success rather than the employees' personal lives… And I have a lot to say about this. 

First, no company can pretend that its employees only live to work, because it's the whole opposite: people live a life, and to be able to afford it, they have to work. So, to expect people to have all of their lives revolving around work is not possible or healthy. I'm glad that this intern lost the job; I'm sure there will be other opportunities for them in the short term.

Business partnerships among friends work a lot like school group projects. Everyone starts with good intentions, equal shares and responsibilities, then someone tries to piggyback their way to success. Only with a bunch of money on the line instead of a letter with a math symbol next to it

"This meeting could have been an email" has reached its final boss.

It's well known that most companies don't really care about wasting their employees' time for the false sense of productivity. What does that mean? Well, it means that even if companies know that they can save valuable time by turning some meetings into simple emails or allowing employees to work from home to avoid commute time, they still prefer to waste everyone's time for the sake of false productivity.

"Let's sit in this meeting room to discuss something that could have been a Slack message." "You need to drive to work every day for over an hour just so you could sit on an office chair for 9 hours and do the same thing you could have done from the comfort of your own bed", all so that your boss could see your pretty face and pretend like they actually know what you're doing all day.

If companies truly cared about productivity and getting work done, we know for a fact that employees would be much happier in the workplace, mostly because their workplaces would be their homes. Unless there is an actual, valid reason for someone to leave their house to work, say, they work as a pizza delivery person, working from home is just as good, if not better, for the company and the worker alike.

The employee who shared the story below on r/jobs is dealing with a company that has taken the demand to return to the office to the next level. Not only are they forced to work from an office after cancelling remote work, but what they end up doing in the office makes no sense whatsoever. Why make your employee arrive at the office, only for them to hop on a Zoom call with the people who are already physically there, and stare at each other's faces through a screen while sitting five feet apart from each other?

We hit a new low, folks.

He should've made the effort himself.

As The Office memorably taught us, it is quite amazing the lengths that some coworkers can go to when it comes to being annoying and generally disrupting the workday with their unnecessary antics. Some people just can't go a day without starting drama, and many of us have had the misfortune of being in the same workplace as them. Keeping your cool can become something that needs to be added to your job description.

When job candidates talk about being able to work under pressure and adapt to their environment in their applications, they usually aren't referring to dealing with the idiosyncrasies of their colleagues. Nonetheless, the beauty of transferable skills is that they can be put to the test in situations where we may not expect to use them. The best way to deal with a coworker who is acting up is to find a professionally appropriate way of getting back at them. It might not be the kind of workplace experience that can be proudly displayed on a resume, but it is still a valuable achievement if you can get it right. This is the dumber cousin of those dreaded office politics.

She's going to keep asking unless you tell her "no."

You cannot fix your problems by throwing money at them. If you're a miserable sourpuss who is convinced that you're a blight on the universe, your self-esteem isn't suddenly going to improve because you have a lot of dough in the bank. If you are a homebody who always complains that you don't have any friends, a generous stock profile isn't going to make you a fun hang. There's a huge group of men online who think that money would solve all of their dating problems, but that's just not true. If she doesn't like you when you make six figures, she's not going to change her tune if you get a sizable raise in two months. Money can be used as a tool to improve your life, but a lot of your problems don't have anything to do with money at all. 

Having money can't solve the root cause of your money problems. If someone is terrible with their money, they're going to be terrible with it whether they're making $50K a year or $200K a year. Giving a financially irresponsible person a sizable sum of money to pay off their debts might propel them into a debt-free lifestyle, but that's contingent on their stopping the things that got them into debt in the first place. If someone keeps getting bailed out, you can't be surprised when they start to expect it.

The user in this story, Natural-Spot2597, took to Reddit to share the problems she's having with her coworker who keeps asking to borrow money. She bought her a $20 Uber, and now she thinks that she can ask her for a similar amount of money constantly. It's clear she needs to nip this situation in the bud, but how? 

Compromise is a two-way route.

The roommate lifestyle that most students engage with in college has always sounded so good to me. It feels like living with friends and getting to hang out with them all the time. Or at least that's how movies usually portray it. Maybe the media has lied to me a little because all the stories in u/roomateprobles seem to differ from the concept that I had in mind. It seems like even if you start being friends with your roommate, you might as well end up hating them after a few months of living together.

It's true that for two or more people to live together, they have to compromise, but both of them have to. It feels like some roommates are either too entitled or too dumb to notice that one of them is constantly compromising and complying with demands to about arguing while the other is just enjoying all the perks without making any sacrifices. To live together in peace, every roommate has to be mediating, not just one, while everybody else takes advantage of this person. The idea of having a roommate is sharing a living space, not hating each other till one moves out when fed up with all the toxicity. If you are a functional adult, you should be able to live peacefully with somebody else.

In this case, I think that this poor roommate needs to find new roommates to live with her. These people, except the so-called Sophie who just seems to be who everyone discards like a toy, are taking advantage of her kindness to get whatever they want without compromising one bit. It's not only extremely unfair but also evil. There is no reason for someone to be getting whatever they want while some other person has to constantly put themselves second to avoid creating new issues. And what is worse, this roommate seems to never get what she wants, and the one time she asked for it, it created a whole new drama. It's unfair, and I hope they start the others to compromise or she gets better roommates next year. 

Should you have to sell your engagement ring if you're in financial trouble? 

When u/DifficultOffice6268 shared their story to the AITAH subreddit, they didn't know quite what they were in for. Sometimes family drama comes along and throws a wrench in your best-laid plans. You do your best to make sure everyone is happy and that there is no conflict, but this is utterly impossible. When people in a family are coming together, and life happens, conflict is bound to arise. It's all about how you react to it when it does. That's what happened in this family, when one branch of it was experiencing some financial hardship. If you have a supportive family, you might look to them in times of need. You might even ask them for money. They don't have to give it to you, but it's not out of bounds to ask for a loan from your well-off family. That is, if you have no other options. People don't generally like giving money to people who are acting hypocritically. If you're spending a lot of money, or if you're sitting on unnecessary assets, then you might expect that people are going to have a shorter bandwidth for borrowing. That's what was happening in this family, at least.

I'm starting to notice that being friendly isn't a positive thing anymore

I was on /askreddit today, and I stumbled upon this post. Obviously, I was intrigued and wanted to read it to see if I could find tips on improving my selection process and start distinguishing who is trustworthy from who isn't.

I was surprised to see that most of the attributes people listed were things I would normally consider positive, friendly, and open. Frankly, I'm not sure if I have been wrong all this time or if people on the internet tend to be very wary of normal, outgoing folks. Of course, I believe it's the latter, so I can confidently say the advice didn't work for me.

Still, I'm looking for advice on this topic, but one that is more coherent with what I see in the world- for example, people trying to learn too much information from you without revealing anything about themselves, people who treat those they consider to be of a lower status badly compared to those 'above' them, people who don't match their actions to their words, things like that, and maybe, some subtle appreciation about character that makes you untrustworthy that I have never come across.

Has anyone got any advice?

At first, I wasn't fully convinced, and now I remain unconvinced, but expectant

We have new information about the new Beatles biopic, and for the Beatlemaniacs out there, this is liquid gold. I heard someone wonder whether production was spending all their money on wigs because they look exactly like The Beatles' hair from Shea Stadium footage, while at the same time forgetting to spend it hiring actors who actually look like The Beatles.

Either way, there's massive expectation for this new film, or should I say 'films'? Apparently, there will be a film for each Beatle, so we'll get to see every member's particular POV. This can generate something very interesting artistically, or maybe entertainment-wise, but I don't think it will carry a huge revelation about the band or a particularly outstanding overview.

I am not a great fan of biopics in general; they tend to encapsulate an otherwise chaotic or at least diverse artist's life into a very condensed character who is set on their goals and goes through a pretty standard hero's journey arc.

Artists' lives do not go that way, and I still haven't found a biopic that truly captures the essence of a life without making it fit into that prefabricated narrative. Not to mention, we have so many original Beatles recordings that it would be much more fruitful to watch a documentary on them if we want to learn about their trajectory than to watch the chewed-up version in a biopic.

I understand I have very strong opinions about biopics, lol, and in the end, I'm still going to watch it, and I will probably be moved by it if it has a good dramatic arc; all I'm saying is that I see red flags here and there when I watch the actors being chosen for celebrity and not for resemblance, and things like that.

It will probably end up being like The Odyssey, something based on a very popular story, but with a 'Hollywood' twist to it. How do you feel about it?

What happens when you combine fun and work?

It means you're probably scrolling through memes on the company's dime, and we are all about that! How do people just, like… seriously work all day? That's exhausting. People who do that must get burnt out very quickly. I need some time to unwind between every task I do. So that means I meme! I don't know a single coworker who doesn't meme during work hours. That being said, we are a comedy sight who stays on the pulse of meme culture, so… Yeah, we're definitely biased and are living the millennial dream. Why do I specifically say millennial? Because that's the generation that invented the meme! I would include Gen Z, but I feel like, at least at a glance, they are the generation that dreams of becoming an influencer. Am I wrong? You know I'm right. Of course, there are outliers in every generation, but you get the picture.

So have you memed on the clock yet today? Then let's get you started stat! You have come to the right place. We love memes, and we love memes we can share with our coworkers. There is something for everybody in here! Heck, even if you love your job, you are still going to have to laugh off some annoying moments. So, if anything, memes are keeping employees sane and working at their best! 

Would you homeschool your children?

Homeschooling is a not-so-new form of teaching that is becoming more and more mainstream in the U.S. But it's also starting to be a trend among families all around the world. Some people find it great, as now their children can learn in a safe environment with the help of their parents and have more time to do other activities as well. Others hate it for many different reasons. Some people say it is isolating and can cause development issue to the child or develop an inability to socialize. Others say that only teachers are capable of teaching, and that if a child is homeschool they will never actually learn. Whether you agree with one of these postures or have a different one. We can't argue with the fact that every day more and more families resort to it.

In the story below, we encounter a personification of these two postures. On one side, we have a father who pays for private school for his child and thinks that it is the best option. The child loves going to school. It opens the world to different future paths, and they learn a lot. On the other side, we have a mother who believes that their children childhoods are better than anybody else's because they get to play more and learn through it. The problem with these two siblings started when the mother implied that the brother's children didn't have such a good childhood because they are obliged to attend school.

Now, this argument escalated a lot during this family reunion and transformed it into a family feud. Now these siblings aren't talking to each other as they both think the other person is in the wrong. I don't have a firm opinion about homeschooling, so let me ask you. With whom do you agree in this matter? Do you think that, leaving the homeschooling topic out of the way, the sister was a little too harsh on the brother's decisions? Who needs to apologize first? I just hope this family can leave this issue behind and get along better with each other. 

We all wish for a technicality to save us from actually studying for an exam or completing an assignment, but this student took this wish to the next level.

You remember that wonderful moment in high school when you were facing an impossible-looking question on an exam, and all of a sudden you hear your teacher ask for everyone's attention so they could say: "There is a mistake in question number X; please ignore it and move on; you will all get full credit for it." Wow, what a thrill.

Since then, every exam and every assignment you complete, whether your in high school or in college, you hope for that beautiful moment to repeat itself. It doesn't even matter that you studied hard and put in the work, being handed full credit without having to do nothing is always a blessing that no one would ever take for granted.

When you have an extremely stict, and some might even say annoying, professor, you might the burning sensasion to "cheat the system" even more. After all, it is one thing when a nice professor admits they were wrong, and a whole other thing when a mean professor does it. Anyone who has even been to school knows how rare it is for a stict teacher or professor to admit to their mistake, and even more rare for that mistake to translate to "free" credit for the students, so baring witness to that is a treasure indeed.

The student who shared their tale below managed to do exactly that. Their stict professor went on and on about the importance of following his formatting guidline, which resulting in one student following the instructions to the tea just to prove a point. There were enough loopholes in the professor's syllabus that the student could submit an empty paper with only the formatting guildines in tact, and since the professor claimed that those who follow them would get a full score, he had to make that happen even for a paper that contained nothing but page numbers and the right title font.

Maybe you just need to ask sooner…

In the corporate world, you will hear a lot of sayings for different things, and one of them is "first come, first served". You are going to hear it when you get to the communal kitchen and every fork has been taken, when you get a more annoying task than the older employees, and ESPECIALLY when you want to ask for PTO time. For the time off, companies usually give priority to the employees who have been at the company for longer, but sometimes they do seem to treat everybody the same and just give it to the person who asked first. That seems far more fair, as everyone is now entitled to those days if they organize fast enough.

When in the story below we encounter this situation of multiple employees wanting the same day off, here is where the saying we previously mentioned has to become a rule. Is obvious that a small company wouldn't accept multiple employees gone at the same time, especially if they are from the same area or store. So when these two employees started requesting the day that already two other employees had asked for, my answer became obvious. If I were the manager in this situation, I would have simply said no. They can't take the day off because other people asked for it first. Next time, manage your time beforehand so we can avoid this situation.

The fact that those employees who were denied the PTO said aloud that if they didn't get it they would just call off is so dumb. Why would you say something like that? Don't you realize it can get you fired? Some people… What also got to me was that this manager really tried getting them the time to go to the concert. This person worked out a plan where they would be able to come work, go to the concert, rest after it, and come back the next day, and they said no. This boss had no business working this hard for people who weren't organized enough. I get the fact that they wanted the free day, but it's not possible, so work with what you got. Especially if one of them wasn't even allowed to take time off yet. 

What should you do when your neighbor sells your belongings out from under you? With claims that they were "abandoned."

This is just stealing with extra steps.

A neighbor allegedly sold this apartment dweller's motorcycle right out of his reserved parking spot while he was away caring for his sick father. He assumed that it had been stolen because, well, it had, and filed a police report. Another tenant was the one who told him that the same neighbor had been telling everyone that he had moved out and then sold the bike.

Malicious compliance works best when you give people exactly what they ask for, doesn't it?

In this case, it was a handwritten, coffee-stained, dog-eared notebook that became the official office manual because that is what they demanded. So it's only fit for the former employee to share the story with the people who love Malicious Compliance the most.