Women Leaves Children in Hotel Pool Unattended. Refuses to Gives Room Number.

[cobright]

Please link to the indication that calling the police was the employee's first reaction, because I can't find it.

I did misread that. The woman tells the cops she showed her room key when asked. So she had already been contacted by the employee. I stand corrected on that matter.

Has anybody here stayed at this property and confirm that (a) the hotel is identified on the key card and (b) that the current validity of a Hampton Inn room key card can be verified by simply looking at it?

They watched her enter through the locked pool gate. That's a decent test of a working key card. The employee could have looked up the room number she gave and saw the room was booked for an adult and two kids. And I'm 90% certain they took her license plate number as well at check in.

 

[sam_gordon]

They watched her enter through the locked pool gate.

WHO did? And where did you get that information?

And I haven't been asked for a license plate in YEARS when checking into a hotel. Heck, I barely get asked for a make/model. And I stay at Hamptons and similar.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

That's just silly. If a parent were sitting in the bleachers watching their child run laps at the school track, would you call that child unsupervised? Are the little league outfielders unsupervised? The word literally means to watch someone.

I think a pool is a bit different. The inherent risks of a pool make supervision and immediate access more salient than a child running laps around a school track.

I know people can go back and forth over the supervision aspect meaning did she or did she not have at least an eye on her kids but if we're talking about a pool there's a bit more at stake. Does that mean everyone has been perfect throughout their lives when it comes to that? No. So I'm not trying to make the case that everyone has always supervised their children just saying not all situations are comparable in the risk evaluation there.

 

[mrodgers]

That's just silly. If a parent were sitting in the bleachers watching their child run laps at the school track, would you call that child unsupervised? Are the little league outfielders unsupervised? The word literally means to watch someone.

Apologies to you. I had no idea that child drownings happened so often at your school track and little league games. I should have given it more thought.

 

[china mom]

If you look again, it appears that the pool is elevated above ground level by about four feet. A person sitting in a car would not be able to see anyone actually i the pool.

 

[china mom]

Has anybody here stayed at this property and confirm that (a) the hotel is identified on the key card and (b) that the current validity of a Hampton Inn room key card can be verified by simply looking at it?

Hampton Inn is a Hilton company and they have stated that all of their properties (Hampton and Hilton) use the same key card with no identifying marks specific to a hotel. I am betting I could find an identical key in my house right now if I looked.

 

[china mom]

I did misread that. The woman tells the cops she showed her room key when asked. So she had already been contacted by the employee. I stand corrected on that matter.


They watched her enter through the locked pool gate. That's a decent test of a working key card. The employee could have looked up the room number she gave and saw the room was booked for an adult and two kids. And I'm 90% certain they took her license plate number as well at check in.

Ah, there's the rub. She adamantly refused to provide a room number or a name and gloated about that in her FB feed. If she had provided them, this would never have been an incident.

 

[kymom99]

As a person who was the safety manager for a major waterpark and neighborhood pools for 17 years, seeing two child play unattended in a pool would not have caused me to think anything other than, "Great, two more young unattended kids in the pool."

You guys would be shocked at how many kids under the age of 8 are dropped off at neighborhood pools and major water parks without their parents walking in the establishment. Or their parents would be in the water park, but in a completely different area of the 70 acre park.

The difference there is there is probably a lifeguard. Hotel pools don’t usually have lifeguards so parents are responsible for watching their kids.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Hampton Inn is a Hilton company and they have stated that all of their properties (Hampton and Hilton) use the same key card with no identifying marks specific to a hotel. I am betting I could find an identical key in my house right now if I looked.

If it's the one in the picture of the article linked in the OP..yup I have 3 right now. I'm a bit of an odd person in that I've kept some of the keys from places. They are of course useless for key entry but just flashing it won't mean anything.

 

[kaytieeldr]

That's just silly. If a parent were sitting in the bleachers watching their child run laps at the school track, would you call that child unsupervised? Are the little league outfielders unsupervised? The word literally means to watch someone.

Child running laps at the school track is supervised and monitored by coaches and staff; parent is observed only, and there by choice. Little Leaguers are supervised and monitored by coaches and staff - some of whom, yes, are parents. But the child's nonparticipating parent sitting in the bleachers is, again, there by choice to watch.

Plus, in neither case is the parent separated from the child by a phone call plus a car door plus an undefined and unspecified number of feet plus lawn plus a gate plus the distance from the gate to the child, with no other responsible adult closer. No, the couple by the pool is not responsible for the safety of health of those children.

They watched her enter through the locked pool gate.

Again, please, citation or link. Neither article I read mentioned this, or whether any employee saw them enter.

 

[tinatark]

Pretty crappy behavior of the mom. All she had to do was give her name or room number. Instead she made it into a huge thing. She was horrible to the police and to the hotel employee. Guess a lawsuit is forthcoming.

 

[DisLiss]

The article that I saw said there were only a couple of other families at the pool when this happened. All that the employee had to do was ask the other 2 families for the same info and this whole mess could have been avoided.

Exactly! That's a basic, common sense response. When I was a kid we were swimming at our resort pool and group of kids from a motel down the road (that had no pool) came over to use our resort's pool. And at first, they were loud & boisterous, but mostly fine. But soon their behavior got dangerous and gross. For example, they were eating and spitting food into the pool! (Why?!?!)

My dad got up, went to the lobby and spoke with management. On his way back he grabbed some snacks from a vending machine and called us out of the pool to come eat the snacks he bought us. A few minutes later, management came out and asked every single party poolside or in the pool to show their room key. Dad had us at the table, so it was easy to see that we were with him when he showed his key. (Because yes, management asked him as well, so as not to tip everyone off as to who "tattled". ) Everyone except for those kids showed their key, and the kids were escorted out.

It was easy & simple & fair. The kids from the motel knew what was coming before the manager even reached them, because they started getting out of the pool and gathering their things. And the pool was busy that day, so the manager probably had a dozen parties or more to ask, not just a few, but they did it, because it was the right way to handle the situation.

 

[disykat]

The thing was, there is no indication that there were other parents sitting in their cars in the parking lot so how could they have asked the others that were doing the same thing. She was the only one doing the questionable behavior. Every pool I've been to without a lifeguard says adults have to be supervising kids under a certain age. Of course they don't define that you have to actually be where you can see the pool and the swimmers in it because it's generally understood that supervising kids in water means you are in the pool area and can see the water and the kids as they are swimming in it.

 

[sam_gordon]

The thing was, there is no indication that there were other parents sitting in their cars in the parking lot so how could they have asked the others that were doing the same thing. She was the only one doing the questionable behavior. Every pool I've been to without a lifeguard says adults have to be supervising kids under a certain age. Of course they don't define that you have to actually be where you can see the pool and the swimmers in it because it's generally understood that supervising kids in water means you are in the pool area and can see the water and the kids as they are swimming in it.

I think only cobright feels what she did was OK. But, does/should doing something "wrong" automatically trigger the "are you a guest here"? If that's SOP for the hotel or chain, the hotel, chain, or employee should have said so and been able to show documentation that that's what they're trained to do. If they've claimed that, I haven't heard it. *IF* cobright is right and the employee saw her use her key to get back into the pool area, THAT should be enough to assume she's a guest.

The lady did not help herself at all. But unfortunately, in this day and age, I think people need to be extra understanding on how their actions will look to the public, especially when dealing with a minority.

 

[tinatark]

Exactly! That's a basic, common sense response. When I was a kid we were swimming at our resort pool and group of kids from a motel down the road (that had no pool) came over to use our resort's pool. And at first, they were loud & boisterous, but mostly fine. But soon their behavior got dangerous and gross. For example, they were eating and spitting food into the pool! (Why?!?!)

My dad got up, went to the lobby and spoke with management. On his way back he grabbed some snacks from a vending machine and called us out of the pool to come eat the snacks he bought us. A few minutes later, management came out and asked every single party poolside or in the pool to show their room key. Dad had us at the table, so it was easy to see that we were with him when he showed his key. (Because yes, management asked him as well, so as not to tip everyone off as to who "tattled". ) Everyone except for those kids showed their key, and the kids were escorted out.

It was easy & simple & fair. The kids from the motel knew what was coming before the manager even reached them, because they started getting out of the pool and gathering their things. And the pool was busy that day, so the manager probably had a dozen parties or more to ask, not just a few, but they did it, because it was the right way to handle the situation.

Maybe she was going to ask everyone, but since the parent who wasn't supervising her kids caused such a ruckus, she didn't have a chance to. I didn't see anyone else at the pool in the video.

I bet those kids were so embarrassed. I know I would have been!

 

[kaytieeldr]

*IF* cobright is right and the employee saw her use her key to get back into the pool area, THAT should be enough to assume she's a guest.

likelihood
That is a huge IF. It appears some posters are are exercising creative writing skills under the guise of providing unsubstantiated "information" .

If that's SOP for the hotel or chain, the hotel, chain, or employee should have said so and been able to show documentation that that's what they're trained to do. If they've claimed that, I haven't heard it.

All due respect, it should not be incumbent upon a business to show every rule in writing before interacting with any customer.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

If that's SOP for the hotel or chain, the hotel, chain, or employee should have said so and been able to show documentation that that's what they're trained to do.

That sort of stuff is usually for companies eyes only. There may be generic stuff available to the guest when booking/on their reservation or given/seen when you're there but companies don't just give their employee handbooks out to whoever asks for it. Def. if someone believes an employee did not act according to whatever policy the employee advised them is the policy a complaint should be made, then it can be reviewed.

I know back when I was in retail and was required, depending on the company, to ask for ID when using a debit or credit card there is not something I can just whip out and say "see this line here it says I must ask for xyz". When we required parental verbal permission (in person or over the phone) when I worked for the University's bookstore for purchases over $200 when using a parent's card (or parent's check) there wasn't anything I could whip out either. And when I was working for the insurance company that had a lot of internal use only documents. I legally was not able to disclose xyz on certain things and certainly couldn't e-mail confidential documents to tell the customer abc. I was however held accountable for policy and so was the company.

I don't really think you'd run into that where people can give you what you're thinking of other than a more generic but specific to this pool situation "supervision of minors (or a specific age) is required at all times" or something to that effect or "pool use is for registered guests only" or whatever. I usually see that stuff as a sign by the pool. There's a picture on google maps of the pool area and there are signs but I can't zoom in to read them.

 

[sam_gordon]

All due respect, it should not be incumbent upon a business to show every rule in writing before interacting with any customer.

That sort of stuff is usually for companies eyes only.

I was referring to *IF* this was truly SOP, after all the negative publicity came out, the employee, hotel, or chain could have easily said "That is what we trained her to do. She followed procedure." Then they could show documentation if needed. I wasn't saying they needed to show the woman much less every customer. *IF* the employee did what she was supposed to do, there was no reason for her to lose her job (whether voluntarily or not).

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I was referring to *IF* this was truly SOP, after all the negative publicity came out, the employee, hotel, or chain could have easily said "That is what we trained her to do. She followed procedure." Then they could show documentation if needed. I wasn't saying they needed to show the woman much less every customer. *IF* the employee did what she was supposed to do, there was no reason for her to lose her job (whether voluntarily or not).

Optics mean a lot. It's he-said/she-said thing at this point. It's why I said I hope Hilton investigated prior to putting out the statement (hope being the operative word). Even if they could say in print it will be hard for people to believe them and it will still leave an impression of racial discrimination and we don't honestly know that it wasn't regardless if the policy is to ask individuals if they are registered guests of the hotel. I would think generally speaking it is within their rights to ask for confirmation you are a registered guest but that doesn't mean that the employee in question didn't have bias and specifically ask a particular individual rather than all which could still mean issues. So to me again goes back to hoping they investigated it. That being said again optics involved here. Lot of people can be caught between a rock and hard place here.

I don't disagree that you can just show people but that's really not how it works in the public court of opinion and it doesn't necessarily mean the employee was 100% in the right (or wrong either).

 

[disykat]

It all comes back to my man with the crazy hat example. Could we have been looking at his skin color? Sure. But he was wearing a very crazy, memorable hat so it's safe to say that's what the majority of people were noticing. One of my sons used to run naked through the house yelling "I'm naked!" when he was about 3 and then say we were looking at him. His behavior caused us to look and we saw him naked because he took off his clothes, it was his fault - we weren't perverts seeking naked children out. There's a point where you have to realize your behavior is calling attention to you so you can't blame others for noticing.

Could this have been a case of racism? Sure, that's sadly always a possibility, but that doesn't mean that's always what it is. We won't know because the patron was doing something really suspect AND against the rules and the employee had good reason to question her. She wasn't supervising as required and she appeared to be hanging around a car in the parking lot, not a room in the hotel. Driving up and dropping kids off to swim at a hotel pool is a well known scam, so it's a pretty obvious assumption. That's why they ask people who are doing that for their room number so they can verify. I would have thought that's what was happening based on the description had skin color not been mentioned.