Women, Beware

Women%2C+Beware

During my morning routine, I check on social media to get my daily dose of all the celebrity gossip and breaking news I missed in the eight hours. My Twitter feed seemed normal until I stumbled upon a post.

In my years of actively using Twitter, I have seen similar posts of users bringing awareness to new sex trafficking tactics and tips for women who travel alone, but the post I came across was chilling.

On October 13, Twitter user @moneyymaya created a thread detailing her horrifying experience at the Cambria Hotel in Washington, DC.

According to the initial post, @moneyymaya was in the shower around 1:00 a.m., she checked in at 11:30 p.m. when she heard a loud banging coming from the main door of her hotel room. When she came face to face with the noise, a man with dreads wearing a blue shirt, jeans, and a mask had unlocked her door.

Thankfully, there was a doorstop.

“If it were not for the doorstop, he would have been in the room with me,” her post stated, “he successfully opened my room door, repeatedly hitting the door stop and screaming, “open the [expletive] door, let me in.” I watched him out of the peephole as I pushed the door closed. He ran down the hallway.”

After he ran off, the user contacted the front desk and relayed her encounter with the intruder. As alarmed as @moneyymaya was, she was stunned to hear how collected the woman at the front desk was at the story.

The woman at the front desk was already aware of the situation.

The girl working said, “I’m aware of the situation. that was housekeeping trying to get into the room. He accidentally came to your door instead of the room next to you.”

Like many, she continued in her post, “In what world is housekeeping coming into the rooms at 1 a.m.?” This situation hits close to home. It chills me that my family and went through something similar.

In August, my family and I visited Delaware to see family, and we stayed at The Sleep Inn & Suites in Dover, DE. Not to be dramatic, but the atmosphere felt off as soon as we arrived.

It even got to the point where we tried getting a room at a different hotel but seeing as it was the summer and, on the weekend, the rates were too high. So, we stayed.

I wished we hadn’t.

Around 6:30-7 a.m., we woke up to knocking at the door. Since it was early in the morning, we were all confused and alarmed. My grandmother started to head for the door when it opened.

We were met with housekeeping apologizing profusely for walking in. We didn’t call housekeeping; we didn’t even check out yet, so why were they in our room unannounced?

To see @moneyymaya’s experience makes me fearful that this is a common occurrence.

What makes her situation even crazier, at 8:30 a.m. she received a text from the hotel stating she can request housekeeping at any time as a part of its Housekeeping Upon Requests system.

But wasn’t that housekeeping intruding on her privacy around 1 a.m.?

By noon, the user spoke to management. The manager was just as shocked to hear she was told housekeeping was at her door but failed to contact the user about the encounter.

“He said ‘I wanted to contact you but didn’t want to call your room too early’ it is noon and you have not contacted me” she detailed in a post.

To make matters worse, when she arrived at the Cambria Hotel, she immediately felt unsafe as she noticed the “construction and vans/totaled cars and car repair shops” surrounding the hotel. She had a gut feeling that something about the hotel seemed off, so she called a friend on FaceTime.

In her thread, she explains seeing a woman standing on a corner with AirPods, watching her as she began unpacking her car. Then seconds later, seeing a man sitting at a table in front of the hotel talking on the phone. In the user’s theory, they were speaking to each other, both watching her.

@moneyymaya describes walking through the lobby as “sketchy and weird” but she checked in, grabbed her room key, and headed towards her room.

As she leaves her room to make a second trip, she finds another “man standing halfway down the hallway staring at me as if he is watching my room. He then goes into the housekeeping closet”.

She clarifies in her post that wasn’t the man at her door.

After getting the rest of her things, the man and woman watching her outside were still there, she finished her night with a shower. Then the banging at her door starts.

Ladies, I know we are often told to be careful during our travels and to pay attention to our surroundings constantly; but this is life-changing advice as there are people out there with awful intentions. I hate to imagine what would have taken place if there was no doorstop.

I thank @moneyymaya for sharing her story because it was definitely eye-opening for me, and I’m sure for other women.

To view her Twitter thread, visit here.