End Of The Tunnel
Back in 2005, I was leaving my job as the night auditor of a hotel to go to school in Arizona. The whole staff, with the exception of the manager and assistant manager, were pretty bummed out because I’d made it my mission in the year and a half that I was there to treat them all like people and not like paid slaves as a lot of the guests and management did.
The day before my flight, I went to Walmart and bought a big bag of Tootsie Pops. I went to the hotel at about 6 o’clock that night and got the set of master keys from my friend working the front desk. Starting with the comments section of a guest reservation for the following day, I left a trail of little riddles all over the grounds of the hotel. The back office, several guest rooms, a closet by the pool, in a bush, you name it. It would require pretty much everyone working to get the game finished before most of the staff went home at 5 pm.
The very last clue led to the maintenance tunnel that bisected nearly the entire building. And at the very end of the tunnel was my piece de resistance—taped to the wall, was a heartfelt goodbye letter and a bag of Tootsie Pops. The letter specifically ended with, “In this bag, I’ve put one Tootsie Pop for every single person that works at this hotel…except for the manager and the assistant manager, because screw them”.
A week later, I called up the hotel when I knew my friend who’d given me the keys that allowed me to set up the game would be working again. She told me that the game was a huge hit. Thanks to the walkie-talkies that we used every day to communicate back and forth, the entire staff (front desk, maintenance, housekeeping, and even the breakfast hostess) had gotten in on it and were following my clues to the prize.
I also called my mom, who worked at the hotel next door (which, funnily enough, was where Assistant Manager had started as a desk clerk). I told her about what I’d done and, after she stopped laughing, she revealed to me that Assistant Manager had been trying for a week to get my new number because “they wanted to talk to me about something”.
Story credit: Reddit / TheDemonClown