What are the oddest objects hotel staff have found left behind by guests?

This is a tricky question. In addition to the usual-usual - wallets (not a frequent occurrence because the guest needs his credit cards to check out, but it still sometimes happens, sometimes with a few hundred in cash inside), small jewelry items (usually, for some strange reason, a single earring, rarely both of a pair . . .), cell phones, cell phone chargers especially (I've said before, some guests are mutant aliens who eat TV remotes, but just as many try to make up for it just a little by leaving a cell phone charger behind), loose articles of clothing, small electronic items like an MP3 player, occasional loose food items (maybe a bottle of water or soda), toys (usually a stuffed animal, baby doll or teddy bear) - we're always finding weird things guests left behind . . .

• A guest's entire baggage - not quite, but almost, a complete wardrobe. Where it gets really odd is when they never call to reclaim it. It's like the guy walked out with the clothes on his back, and never looked back. You'd think we should consider filing a missing persons report, but we lack either standing or sufficient reason to believe something bad actually happened to him.
• A refrigerator full of food. Or beer. Or bottles of liquor, sometimes unopened.

What would happen if I accidentally left behind a $50 bill in my hotel room?

Rules vary by hotel, but if I left a loose fifty bucks in a room when I stay in one, I wouldn't count on ever seeing it again.

The policy in hotels that I run is, if a housekeeper's 'tip' is over twenty bucks, she must tell us, and turn it in. We'll let her keep twenty bucks of it, and hang on to the rest in accordance with the usual lost and found procedure (thirty days). If the guest calls with a credible story (as in, he or she names close to the correct amount of money left behind) about how he left loose cash in the room, we send a check to the guest for the total amount we found, and we take the hit on the twenty bucks ourselves and let the housekeeper keep that part (we don't want to supply an incentive to dishonesty, or a disincentive to honesty). 



If it's in a wallet, there's no question: any indicator that it wasn't left for the housekeeper intentionally by the guest means that it all belongs to the guest. We handle it in accordance with our usual lost-and-found procedure. (With wallets and other things of obvious value, we don't wait for a call: we contact the guest.)

Back in the day, tipping the housekeeper was as to-be-expected as tipping a waitress. Large chains and franchise organizations have gotten away from it (you can still order tip envelops from a hotel supply house, but chains and franchise organizations forbid the use of them.)  Hotel owners went right along. Tips present a management challenge (disputes arise over how to divide them if more than one housekeeper services the room over several days, and any room attendant with any 'seniority' at all demands the 'right' to pick and choose what rooms she'll clean, and we'll get to some others . . .) 

If I purchase packaged food during a trip, never open it, and leave it in my hotel room when checking out, will the staff be permitted to eat it?

I'd rather they didn't, but I can't stop them, and they do it at their own risk. (I have no control over what they eat or how they procure their food outside the hotel, or during their off-duty time, either.) Perishable items are never left behind, and the best thing to do with them in a lot of cases is to throw them out, but that's going to be a little counterintuitive to a low-paid employee who sees an unopened food item that would otherwise go to waste.

We have policies that require high-value items to be turned in to lost and found, and that forbid taking any item from the hotel that you did not bring with you without permission; but if I were staying in a hotel and left behind an unopened bag of cookies or chips, or a couple of unopened beers in a six-pack, I wouldn't count on ever seeing them again.

Originally appeared on Quora