For the crime of my baby crying at 4:00PM, the guests in the hotel room next door began to bang on my wall. When the crying did not immediately stop, they confronted my wife and me in the hallway.
When Your Hotel Neighbor Decides To Bang On Your Wall…
Temperatures hit 115ºF in Los Angeles over the weekend and I used the opportunity to escape to Santa Barbara, CA. The Hyatt Centric has been fully renovated and re-branded as the Mar Monte Hotel, hearkening back to its original name. It’s now part of Hyatt’s Unbound Collection.
Anyway, it was 30ºF cooler in Santa Barbara, which was particularly refreshing considering we’ve had apocalyptic-like skies in Los Angeles due to all the raging fires around us.
I’ll have much more to say about the hotel property itself in my review. Today, I want to focus on an incident that occurred as we were preparing to check out.
It was about 4:00PM. Heidi and I were packing up to leave and little Claire Marie was crying. She’s beginning to teeth and (surprise, surprise), babies tend to cry when they teeth. She had just been fed and her diaper was clean, so that wasn’t the issue.
Well, after about 10 minutes of her crying the neighbors had apparently had enough and began banging on our shared wall.
Shortly thereafter, I heard a knock at the door.
Oooh, a confrontation?
Turns out it was the general manager with a room manifest list in her hand. It was now 4:05PM and she asked if were checking out today or would be extending our stay. I thought maybe the neighbors had complained about us, but she didn’t mention the baby.
I let her know that we would be leaving shortly and she thanked me.
All of a sudden, one of the neighbors popped her head out of the room next door. She started to yell at me about how I needed to keep my child quiet.
My children are far from perfect, but during this stay my three-month-old daughter and three-year-old son slept for 11 hours through the night and were generally very quiet in the room. In fact, while we all took an extended afternoon nap I had to hear the same woman yapping on the phone about some loan she was trying to close. If anything, I should have banged on her wall. 😉
I should have just gone back inside, but I responded to the lady by pointing my index finger at her and telling her that I did not appreciate hearing all the details about her Home Depot loan on the phone all afternoon.
You should have seen her jaw drop…
Her husband came out and began yelling at me not to point my finger at his wife.
Meanwhile, the GM tried to play peacemaker and calm us both down.
But the man yelled, “You are horrible parents! Horrible! How can you let a baby cry like that? You are the worst! Your kids should be taken from you! You’re a threat.”
He turned to the GM and said, “They should be put in jail!”
Heidi and I just looked at each other and started laughing. That made him even angrier, but I just turned to the GM, shrugged, and we went back into the room. Thankfully for our neighbors, we left moments later.
General Manager Writes Me
We soon left the hotel and walked down to the beach for stroll and some coffee. We then hopped in the car to drive back to Los Angeles.
Before I even reached home, the GM had sent me a note:
Mr. Klint,
My apologies for the fiasco earlier today with your neighboring room. Your family seems lovely and I am sorry that is the way your trip ended. Should your travels bring you back to Santa Barbara I would personally assure you were taken care of and would like you to enjoy a night back on us.
Please reach out direct when ready to take me up on this offer.
Again my sincere apologies for having to endure the behavior of the other guests.
While I have no idea whether the GM is just a shrewd diplomat and sent the same note to both parties, I was surprised and appreciated it very much. I’d like to think she just sent it to us! Either way, good for her for taking the initiative because it was inappropriate.
CONCLUSION
I’m not one to hide the poor behavior of my children. Remember little Augustine’s horrible flight on United from Zurich to San Francisco? I can only be thankful that the kids were very well behaved during our stay or else this really could have turned ugly.
Our neighbors were an older couple. Maybe they never had kids. Maybe they haven’t had young children in decades. Or maybe they were just having a bad day. In any case, 4:00PM is different than 4:00AM and a little compassion goes a long way…
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At that point, I’d have raised a different finger on my hand 😉 . Well done on your part — and the GMs, too.
I thought about it! 😉
Ha!
Define “distinctly Floridian” please.
Jimmy Buffett? Marco Rubio? Carrot Top? Deion Sanders? K.C.? Gloria Estefan?
Good article other than a snarky ending.
I didn’t mean it in a pejorative sense. Tanned leathery skin like they spend all their time outside, golf outfits, pastel colors.
I read it the same way as Bobby Dale: snarky. Especially in full context of the final paragraph.
I would also defend you if they made snarky assumptions about you and I regret your stay ended on a sour note.
Very generous gesture by the GM. Good to see GMs around the property versus sitting in their office all day, it could also be because of staffing issues too.
Yes, a very unexpected gesture that I appreciated greatly. Ms. Braun is newly-appointed at the hotel and I expect she’ll do very well there.
I was with him until the summary too…as a tanned but not leathery Floridian. Matt, you’re better than that.
Goodness, I meant no offense to Floridians. I took that sentence out. No need to get side-tracked.
It wasn’t JUST a Florida thing. It was your snarky references to their life history about which none of us know anything. Empathy is important all around; we never walked in the shoes of those we judged that day.
Why can’t I speculate about why they acted that way based upon the way they spoke to me and my wife? That’s a big difference from an assumption or charge.
When my daughter was 1 years old, we were staying at 4 Seasons Westlake Village. We were playing at the family pool.
A crusty old man came up, yelled at me for “not controlling your daughter” and that she was making too much noise. I politely told him its a family pool, my daughter was one and nobody else had any issues. I told him there was an adult pool on site, and he could go there if he wants peace. He continued to grumble, went to the pool phone and called hotel security.
Security came, I told them what was going on, and they thanked me, and told the old man (and his group), there was an adult pool on site and to please go there.
The guy continued to grumble, so I went up to him, smiled politely, and said I could meet him in the parking lot and settle this. I offered to have my lawyers draw up an agreement/waiver of responsibility, in case any side gets hurt or gets killed. And I will have a notary, lawyer, and witnesses present to make all signatures official. He walked away very quickly and did not say a word.
You don’t mess with mama or papa bear.
honestly, there have been so many edits the discussion moment has passed.
The important thing is the compassion you mentioned needs to work both ways or it doesn’t work at all.
But as an aside, my late father used to advise, “When you’ve made the sale, stop talking.” More than one of us were with you 100% until your gratuitous last paragraph. That’s still likely true.
I only edited one sentence in the last paragraph…
@SHP
Are you advocating violence against another human being…? If so, that’s an inappropriate response, especially if directed against an elderly person, and for something so trivial.
I think so. Everyone wants to “just step outside” like it’s the in thing to do now. Idiots.
I would have asked the couple next door how did they manage to raise their children never crying in public. Furthermore, the husband should let his wife fight her own battles. Women don’t need men to instill respect.
It’s unfortunate that there are so many miserable and intolerant people out there. Way too many of them. You get enough garbage thrown at you on your blog, sorry to see people also doing it to you in real life. 🙁
Two words: Second Amendment
Yeah, I am glad the fiasco worked out okay, and yes that GM did appear to handle the situation effectively, but I feel it is too bad you ended the piece with those ageist and other assumptions. Because I’m a “boomer” living in hotels nowadays, I keep noticing humans of any age, of any category can act thoughtlessly or carelessly, and I keep reminding myself none of us knows what others are living through or have lived through that might contribute to extra crankiness or whatever. Most folks are not what they seem at first, I’ve learned.
I did not make charges, I just wondered out loud…not sure where the ageism was.
Did it ever even occur to you that there were other guests in the hotel?
Wow, you could hear a full loan discussion and they could hear a baby crying, don’t think I need a full review to tell me that this place sucked!
So the walls suck. Got it. We had a reservation there next month but will switch to the Simpson House now.
I’ll have the full review up tomorrow or Thursday…nice property overall. You can’t beat the location.
Oh, I forgot to mention I found your response to the neighbor lady about hearing her Home Depot rant clever, funny and perfect in the moment – lots of people don’t realize sound travels both ways through walls, so maybe that became a teaching, awareness-raising moment. How wonderful you could laugh afterward. Since I’m traveling on, I bring small sound generators along, just in case, one for each wall if needed, that mask next-door noises enough to calm me, without being noticed on the other side – white to brown fan-like sounds. Anyway, happy travels, everyone!
The edit was done before I got to this article, but being a Floridian, I can imagine what it said knowing that Californians all seem to carry a bit of a superiority complex. Go figure, a Californian disparaging anyone. There is an abundance of self-unawareness these days.
I said was they looked like Floridians with their leathered skin, golf outfits, and pastel colors. It was meant to be descriptive, not a denigration. Calm down Joe. I love the Sunshine State.
I don’t negotiate with terrorists. I just refuse to confront angry people. My reaction would have been to roll my eyes and close the door. But you had the best comeback with reciting her phone conversation.
Are you swaddling at all? It’s the most amazing technique. Not with the neighbors (though they clearly could use it), but with Claire Marie?
We do! It’s a little less effective these days since she can now eventually squirm out of it and roll over, but we’ve used it from the very beginning.
You seem to get yourself into a lot of angry situations.
Never intentionally…
How sad for that couple. This reminds me of a stay in a NY hotel when I checked in around 11:30PM after a long flight and could not wait to get to bed. As soon as I laid down my head into the pillow the next door neighbor started to “play” with his partner on their bed. Oh boy, were they loud!!!! Well, the banging on the wall and screams coming our of their room were rather entertaining. I was way too tired otherwise would have knocked their door and ask to join the party. 🙂 Worst than having a kid crying is to have a neighbor that leaves the alarm clock on after leaving the room. Problem is you can not really pin point which room the alarm is coming from. Anyway, that is why I love living in a house that is far enough from my other neighbors.
Perhaps 10 min non stop loud crying is a bit much in a hotel room ever at 4pm
You did not Mention you tried anything to calm her other than checking the diaper.
-Mom of 2 kids
You handled that very well!
As long as you try to teach Claire Marie not to kick the airplane seat in front of her…
Crying is expression but kicking is, in socialist lingo, aggression and hegemony.
What your missive tells me is that I would NEVER want to stay at a property where they likely spend more on what the lobby looks like than they do on providing adequate soundproofing between sleeping rooms.
So dear little Claire is getting her choppers. My old grandma used to swear by Tincture of Opium for teething, but I guess it’s banned these days. As for the incident: it’s unreasonable to blame children under the age of 5, or their parents for that matter. After 5 or 6 the expectations of behaviour should develop.
I would be livid to get a room with such thin walls; the noises are either very annoying or grossly intimate…
The HD comeback was great! I would have asked if she got the LOAN also!!!!
I can’t believe people would react in that manner. I don’t have children myself so I am not always the most understanding, but I at least realize that babies cry and it can’t be avoided. If they were that disturbed, they could have nicely asked the front desk if a room change was possible. If they were polite, they mind have even received an upgrade.
Agreed. They probably missed out on a nice ocean view room. We were on the East side.
In traveling, you sometimes run into awful people. I decided long ago it was best not to engage with them. Let the FA/manager/proprietor deal with them.
She’s beautiful! If you and Heidi get sent to the big house, I’ll be happy to take care of her.