Imagine this scenario:

It’s midnight. You’re in a new city, and you’ve spent the day exploring on foot (read: lots of walking; tired feet). Afterward, you visited a piano bar and, due to high drink costs, had only enough alcohol to make you sleepy and to coat your teeth in that oh-so-pleasant layer of scummy sugar.

You walk into your hotel lobby to cash in on a room reservation that you’ve made ahead of time and already paid for in full.

There’s no one at the desk.

There’s also no bell to ring, so you figure you’ll just wait a few minutes until they come back from rounds, a smoke break, or whatever errand they may be doing.

About 15 minutes pass, and there’s still no sign of anyone. You start craning your neck toward the back room and calling “Hello? Hello?” in that pleading way that means you want nothing more than to just go to bed in peace.

You then notice a phone sitting in the lobby. Perhaps you can call the front desk and get it to ring in the back somewhere, where someone will pick up.

No luck. It just rings at the front desk where, as we’ve already established, no one is standing.

You try the same thing with your cell phone, yielding the same result.

At this point, it’s been about 20 minutes. This is getting weird and very frustrating. Where is everybody exactly? How is it possible that you are so close to collapsing into a comfortable bed for the night and yet so far away from it?

25 minutes have passed since you walked into the lobby. By this time, you’ve tried walking around the attached hallways, which only lead into mazes of locked guest rooms. You’ve gone in and out of the front door multiple times in hopes that some motion-activated bell would ring somewhere and get someone’s attention. You’ve called the other hotel of the same chain in town, and they said they would try to get a hold of someone. Their fruitless call also went to the staff-less front desk.

In a moment of desperation, you even screamed at the top of your lungs like you were being attacked because—let’s face it—this is an attack on your humanity.

What do you do now? Who else is even working at midnight?

I’ll tell you what I did: I called the police.

Yes, it was a ridiculous situation. Yes, the police probably have better things to do. But I was at a loss for appropriate action. I needed somewhere to sleep now. Plus, I’d already paid for this particular somewhere, so I couldn’t just up and choose a different one.

The police assured me that they would send someone over to make sure everything was ok. A few minutes later—we’re about 30 minutes in at this point—an officer walks in, and I admit with embarrassment that it was indeed me who called. He informs me that the other hotel across the parking lot (a different chain name) is actually attached, and he calls over the desk clerk from over there to see what’s going on.

The clerk says that he hasn’t seen our hotel’s employee yet tonight, and that she should have gotten in at 11. He knocks on the same door that we did—the one that employees enter to go into the back portion of the desk—and also yields no response.

So he slowly opens the door. I see his eyes pan around the room and then down to the floor. I see him give my fiancee a look, although from the angle I am standing, I can’t discern horror or annoyance specifically. The other employee enters the room and crouches down near the floor, gives a shake, then gives a significantly harder shake. Finally, there are signs of life.

The desk worker has been sleeping on the floor the whole time. Jon later tells me from his glimpse inside that she had set up a full bed for herself on the floor, complete with blankets and pillows.

I can’t hear if any words are exchanged, but the employee slowly emerges. Her hair is a mess, its short cut sticking out at countless odd angles. Her face shows no signs of remorse or panic, but rather she yawns laboriously, stretches a bit, and ruffles the back of her hair to smooth it down. In a small moment of victory for us, this ruffling actually makes her hair look worse.

The cop stands there just long enough to witness all of this, then whispers, “I’ll let you voice your complaint to her” and exits. I’m pretty sure he was trying to get out before he busted out laughing, and that he’s currently radioing in a pretty entertaining story to his cohorts.

So, finally, after she asks us if we’re “logging in” (…?) and to confirm our names—despite the the printout we handed her that lists everything in writing—we receive our keys. It is 12:40 a.m.

I sincerely doubt that this stuff happens to other people.