To complain about cleaner walking in on me naked

[Yolojo]

Staying in a chain hotel, Western Europe, 8am. I'm up but also naked in bed, having a coffee. Someone knocks on the door, I ignore it, not sure if it's my door or someone else's. Then the door opens and a man calls out something, I dive under my sheets and I think I shouted out 'there's someone in here', so the door closes. I throw some clothes on, go in the corridor and say to the guy that check out is 11, and also angrily 'don't come in my room, what the hell!' I didn't have a 'do not disturb ' sign on my door, but then I wouldn't expect to have to use it if I'm checking out before 11. AIBU to complain?

Not all hotels have a full time reception. Where I work I sometimes help with housekeeping and no one is on reception in the mornings to check people out, there is a locked box to just drop your key card in. So There's no electronic way of knowing who's gone and no receptionist to tell the housekeepers.

Our housekeepers start at 10am and do knock on doors and open them and shout if no one answers.
Check out is up to 11am and check in is 2pm. We are always desperately short staffed despite always having jobs advertised. Rooms would never be ready on time for check in if they only started cleaning after 11am.

8am is very early to be starting though but YWBVU to be angrily talking to the poor housekeeper like that, they were just doing their job.

should I then put the DND sign on the door when going to bed every night and take it off when I leave in the morning

yes. It takes ages to clean hotel rooms. If check out is 11 and check in is 3, they don't have enough time. They also whip round rooms daily, if the sign isn't up, so it is good practice to have that hanging all the time you're at the hotel unless you want them to come in.

8am is neither here nor there. But now you know, OP

Strongly recommend purchasing a door jammer. I travel a lot for work and it’s invaluable. I bought one after an attempted assault by someone who somehow got a key for a room I was in. they are really small, easy to remove quickly in an emergent, but make it impossible to open the door from the outside.

I would complain. They should only have gone in if you had checked out. I wouldn't expect someone to burst into my room at 8am and I'd be bloody pissed off if they woke me.

That's a good point imagine being asleep and be woken by the cleaner at 8 am in the morning. And yes I know that's what the DND signs are for but not everyone remembers or even thinks a cleaner will knock at 8am.

I put my DND sign on my hotel door for the whole time I’m staying (usually 1-4 days) as I hate having my room serviced. Generally speaking it’s best to put it on at any point that you don’t want disturbing.

Housekeeping staff don’t always know who has checked out, lots of guests just go if they’ve no bill to settle. So they really do go off the DND signs.

Normally inside a hotel room there is a deadbolt near the top of the door or a little bump on the door handle that can be turned as an extra lock. Might be worth putting a rubber door stop in your luggage and stick it under the door if there is no extra lock.

I do always put on the dnd sign while I am in the room. I also always wear pjs. Sadly I have stayed in hotels more than once where the fire alarm has gone off, once where the power went as well so was glad now to have to scramble trying to find my clothes.

What if you are the one having the emerganxy inside the room?

No one should be coming in to clean that early! He did it deliberately.

It's quite normal for hotel staff to start cleaning early in the morning. There's a lot of rooms to get to.
All you need to do, is put the 'Do not disturb' sign on. It's hardly rocket science.

@Yolojo The underlying root problem is that management has failed to install deadbolts or safety chains. That is clearly not your fault. The stuff about do-not-disturb signs, which call fall off of doors or be missing or get ignored, is a red herring: they often help but they are not reliable.

I think you could complain in a way clearly assigns blame to the hotel management, not to the cleaner, and I think that would be entirely justified and might also of service to future guests. You could specifically request that they install a safety chain or a deadbolt on the inside of the every room, in order to ensure the safety and dignity of hotel guests.

You could post the request as a public review, so that the management knows other guests will see your review and will know about the lack of safety locks unless they install them and then reply accordingly to your review. You could then send the review to the hotel manager to make sure they see it.

For example:
I felt unsafe in your hotel when I found myself alone in a room with an unknown man who had let himself in to my room at 8am.

It turned out that the man was one of your cleaners using the access provided by management, and he left quickly when asked to do that, but it gave me a real fright. Although he had knocked before entering, I did not hear anything because I was asleep in bed, and I was awoken only by the door opening and the man stepping inside my room. Any hotel really ought to have a safety chain or a deadbolt that when locked, ensures that the room cannot be opened by all of the cleaning and room servicing staff when a guest is sleeping inside. That will not only improve privacy and safety for your guests, but it will also reduce the risk of management becoming liable if you were to have bad luck and hire an individual who decides to commit an offense against one of your guests. Until this is remedied, as a female traveller, I would not choose to stay there again!

A review like that should only cause trouble for the cleaner if he is actually not supposed to be entering guest rooms at 8am, which is unfortunately also a real possibility! This is a bit long, but it is designed to make them see that while installing locks would cost a bit of money, not installing locks could cost them a lot more.

"burst" into a room the poor fucker thought was empty, what with the OP not answering when he knocked to see if anyone was there.

She said she wasn't asleep. She was sitting (naked) in bed drinking her coffee.

@PAFMO yes, I saw that.

But I worded the suggestion (which OP can always edit if she uses it) thinking, if I were going to post a review and contact the hotel management, possibly using my real name for both, then I might not want to share with others (maybe my colleagues would read my review?) the fact that I was naked when the dude walked in. That is largely irrelevant to the unacceptability of what happened

Also, I would not want the hotel management to use my non-response to the knocking as an excuse for the management not to put internal locks on the doors. There are loads of other reasons why a guest in a room might not hear knocking (in the shower? wearing ear plugs? hard of hearing?).

I believe that the burden should not be on a hotel guest to remember to put up a sign and/or listen carefully for knocks in order to have privacy.

I find the absence of locks inexcusable.

Happened to me I was in bed naked with a do not disturb notice on and they let themselves in. I shouted not today.

Choice of:

1. Putting up the Do Not Disturb notice
2. Replying to a knock on the door (absent 1)
3. Having a good look to see if there is a deadlock on the inside and using it
4. Hoping the cleaners are mind readers

Odd to choose 4 if you have a particular reason to not want someone to come in unexpectedly. Or at all, really.

Yes, completely unreasonable. He knocked, if you had said to come back later he would have.

Is this your first time in a hotel?

Just read all your posts & don’t think yabu at all. I wouldn’t think I’d need to put a DND sign up the pm b4 going to bed bcos 8am is way too early IMO for cleaners. Maybe if it’s a business hotel with mainly early checkouts but I’d have felt intruded upon - you could’ve been coming out of the shower etc /worse.
Appreciate cld’ve been a simple mistake in cleaners part if get a lot of business guests - but think they should have knocked several times & shouted “housekeeping” before entering.

Rooms are cleaned daily, it’s not an “on request” thing.

So you think a fake and false complaint is the way to go.
Weird.

Although he had knocked before entering, I did not hear anything because I was asleep in bed, and I was awoken only by the door opening and the man stepping inside my room

This bit made me laugh. How would she know he knocked if she was asleep and didn't hear it?

@PAFMO @MistyRuins Ok, fair points. My suggested wording was poor.

But, OP did nothing wrong, and she would have been entirely reasonable to expect cleaners to refrain from entering her room at 8am unless they were damned sure that room was unoccupied. Especially male cleaners.

And hotels should have locks that enable guests in their rooms to keep cleaners, maintenance men, etc. from just entering.

I don't think the OP was in the wrong, because it was the last day. Your room does not get guest housekeeping on the last day. It gets left alone until you check out, then properly turned.

If the OP had gone for breakfast and the man had come in, he'd have cleaned the room, reset the lock and locked her out as a guest who had left her crap behind.

On any other day, yes, she should have had the do not disturb sign up. But there should also be a deadbolt, because mistakes do happen (including the sign falling down and/or someone taking it from the outside).

You're allowed to feel uncomfortable about a stranger walking into your room while you're naked regardless of past sexual abuse. OP has explained why it's a trigger for her when others think it's no big deal as he didn't see her.

One would think if a person is going to have this as a trigger, putting a DND sign up and using the deadlock or chain would be standard practice for them.

You felt VUNERABLE????
yet you didnt lock the door (there is always an extra lock in the inside) you slept naked AND you didnt have the DND sign on the door
Yabu to have yelled
Yabu to want to make a complaint
Yabu to feel vunerable
Yabu for all other reasons