I’ll never forget Candle Guy.

Just found this sub through /r/talesfromretail. Hi everyone! Since I’m here, I figured I should share a fun story.

This happened years and years ago, when I was working in the guest services call center of a hotel. It was actually on my very first day, so I wasn’t taking the call, but I was shadowing a coworker during her shift as part of my training.

It was a good chunk of the way into the day when this guy called from one of the rooms. The first thing I noticed was that he sounded old, like sixty or seventy years old. Failing that, it was like he had spent the last twenty years chugging gravel as a hobby.

Coworker: Guest services, this is [name], how may I assist you?

Guest: Yeah, can I get some candles sent up to my room?

Not uncommon to request stuff be brought up to the room, we just put in an order with Housekeeping and it gets sent up shortly. Candles was a new one, though.

C: Some candles?

G: Yeah, yeah, like ten candles. Due to, um, my, uh… current condition… I can’t leave the room.

C: O-oh. Alright, let me put you on hold real quick and I’ll go check on that for you.

G: Okay, thanks.

She puts the guy on hold and goes to dial the extension for housekeeping. Normally we would just use our internal program to fill out an order, but candles aren’t normal and she’s not sure if we can do it. As she’s dialing, she looks at me.

C: You’re hearing this, right?

Me: Is that guy naked? I think he’s naked.

C: I kinda don’t wanna know.

She dials up housekeeping and asks if we can have candles sent to a guest’s room. The answer is no because of the state fire code, which, y’know, makes sense. No big deal. So she thanks housekeeping and goes back to the guest’s call.

Now this isn’t a system where we can hear the guy while he’s on hold or anything, I dunno if those exist or not. When she takes the call off of hold we can hear him again, and I swear to you the first thing we hear when we take the call off hold is some smooth guitar and a sexy bass groove with a singer in the background. Some real sensual Marvin Gaye type stuff.

My coworker didn’t say anything right away, but she turned to me and mouthed “oh my god”.

C: Sir?

Music gets turned down. We can still hear it though.

G: Yeah?

C: I’ve checked with housekeeping, and unfortunately due to [state] fire code, we can’t allow candles in the rooms. Sorry about that.

G: Oh… oh, okay then. Thank you.

The guy hung up, sounding super deflated by the news. My coworker put her phone on break, which she had been doing in between calls a lot to explain stuff to me. This time, though, she just kinda looked at the phone and at me in surprise.

M: Do we get calls like that a lot?

C: You heard that too, right? Oh my god. That just happened.

M: I think we just cockblocked an old guy.

We moved on from there, and I’ve since forgotten a majority of my time in the call center, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget Candle Guy.