Journals of a Hotel Manager

A couple of months after the flood we rounded up several teams of security guards and housekeepers to inspect every single guest room for damage. Since electricity had been down we were preparing for further damage from mildew which would not be covered by the insurance.

The team I led was on the second floor when a nauseating smell hit us. Had a guest forgotten to flush the toilet? Second floor was mostly banquet meeting rooms and a handful guest rooms. The meeting rooms turned up clear and as we approached the guest rooms at the end of the hall the smell thickened. Eventually we located the room and I still remembered the room number, #226. When I opened the door with my master key I was fully expecting to see a decomposed body in the bed, although I knew in my heart every single guest was accounted for during the laundry trolley evacuation. The bed was bare, the toilet was clean but the smell engulfed us like a death shroud. I had never seen a decomposed human body, but I surely thought that was the smell.

The four of us struggled to open the balcony windows for fresh air. But the moment we took a lungful of the expected clean, sweet air, it was the foul odor that filled our nostrils and mouths as the smell seemed to have been emitted directly from below #226. Gagging, we retreated back into the corridor to recover.

Further study of the location of #226 revealed that it was adjacent to the banquet kitchen elevator. Had someone died in the elevator?

Several hours later when we managed to pry open the elevator doors it was mercifully bare of any human body. But the mysterious smell lingered in the air and on my mind. The constant stress of having lost count of someone: a night shift staff who had fallen asleep in the locker room; a hard working guy who wanted to pull a double shift and camped out in his car; a hooker who was too ashamed to come out after the business was done; a driver who waited in the car for his rich boss at the hotel (with the hooker)… the possibility went on and the fear gripped my heart every time I thought about “what if…”.

Eventually the stinking smell was credited to our wonderfully successful banquet operation. Apart from the owner’s daughter’s wedding, the banquet kitchen had prepared enough food for an army for the week ahead. Sadly, it all rotted away in the sewage and gasoline.

Miraculously, no one lost his life in the flood when every car was brought up to the street level and every corner was inspected after the water had been pumped out. But the fear for the worst took its toll. I had trouble sleeping and no appetite. In addition to many other challenges, I developed severe vertigo five months after the flood which doctors called the Meniere’s disease.  Medicine, aromatherapy, massage did no trick.  When I left a year later, the symptom disappeared as mysteriously as it had started.