Do YOU know where I parked my car?

I usually work morning shifts, which are good and bad. The good things include leaving before the shit-storm that is the mass check-ins and dodging the big check-in issues such as lack of available room types (e.g. sticking a family of four into a room with one king bed because we ran out of two doubles) and dealing with some fairly big room issues (e.g. no A/C...whoops!). However, the downside of working the mornings is that you get all of the complaints from the night before as angry people leave the hotel. It's very important to steel yourself against this onslaught otherwise, you're in for a long day.

We all had to share a queen size bed. We want compensation!

Due to the inevitable angry mob of patrons, I usually like to spend my first hour in quiet mentally gearing up for my day. However, between 6:00am and 7:00am, you can sometimes find some weirdos. This is the time for the epic late-night part people to come back to the hotel and you have to deal with their insanity.

So there I am, compiling my list of excuses to the common complaints when a woman comes to the desk and she is obviously drunk. She is a good drunk though because she is at least friendly. She begins rambling rather incoherently for a few minutes. I play along because I'm a nice guy and it's my job to smile instead of club drunks with the broom handle coated with spikes that I keep behind the desk. After the initial stupidity occurs, I start to grow impatient because, believe it or not, I have work to do (again, readying the lies that I need to tell other guests about why their tubs aren't draining) and this lady is preventing this. So I ask her:

Me: Ma'am, what exactly can I help you with?

Woman: Well, I need to get to my car. I need to pay the meter.

Me: Okay...

Woman: I parked in a parking lot.

Me: Okay...

Woman: How much do I need to pay for parking?

Me: Well, I don't know because I don't know where you parked. Did you park in our garage?

Woman: No. We parked at another lot. Do you know where that is?

I should interject some information here. I work in the major area of a major city. Within a one block radius of the hotel, there are at least three different open parking lots and two parking garages. Moving on...

Me: Do I know where what is?

Woman: Do you know where the parking lot is?

Me: I know where several parking lots are.

Woman: Well, I need to pay the meter, so I need to go to my car.

Me: Okay, well if you can tell me where you parked your car, I can probably point you in the right direction.

Woman: Well, I parked in a lot where I paid $18.

Me: Well, that doesn't help me at all.

Woman: My husband knows where the car is, but he's being mean to me right now and he won't tell me. I'm sorry, as you can tell I'm really drunk right now.

Me: I can tell. Do you think it's a good idea to go looking for your vehicle right now in your condition?

Woman: Do you know where I parked my car?

At this moment, I've stopped caring. This woman has actually asked a complete stranger where she parked her car. I'm starting to lose my cool, so the safest thing to do is to point her in a direction and have her wander around aimlessly in a big city. I did just that. I pointed her to the closest parking lot and wished her the best of luck. The hilarious part about this is that she doesn't come back for a half hour. The parking lot is a 2 minute walk at most. I had a good chuckle imagining this drunk woman wandering around the city asking the random crazy people where she parked her car.

Yeah, I know where your car is...

It turns out that the woman only came back because she realized that she didn't have the car keys. I found this rather dangerous because this meant that this woman who couldn't remember where she parked or how to follow simple directions to get to a parking lot was potentially going to drive somewhere. Hilarity could only ensue.

I found where I parked my car!

Fortunately, the woman never came back down. I didn't see her until the following day when she was leaving the hotel (supposedly sober) with her husband and kids. I can only hope this woman didn't forget a child somewhere. She didn't ask me, so I'm not sure.