Soooo, my shift started at 7:00 this morning. About 30 minutes in, I hear what I can only assume is sumo wrestling from the second floor. It’s loud and it vibrates everything. There are no rooms on the first floor, so the only person it’s really bothering is me. I already know which room it’s coming from because I regularly have issues with people in this room (it’s a large room—used to have a hot tub, but now it’s just a whole lot of space, which is perfect for kids who don’t know how to sit tf down).

I called the room. “Hey, this is the front desk. We were getting complaints from someone on this floor and I just wanted to make sure everything was okay in your room.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s my granddaughter. She’s autistic.”

😐😐😐😐😐

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this excuse. It gets tossed around in hopes that the listener can somehow suddenly ignore the stomping/screaming/screeching. And I do have a soft spot for kids on the spectrum. But I also know that their stimming can still be a problem.

At one of my old hotels, an autistic baby actually did cause a disturbance with other guests. And the guardian got upset with the front desk because we asked her to try and keep it down. Something to the effect of “Don’t stay here if your family member has autism because they will threaten to kick you out!”

At the end of the day, people come to hotels to relax. They want peace. And that peace is not easily achieved when someone—on the spectrum or not—is keeping up a lot of noise.