"This actually doesn't look too bad," Ronda said, sounding pleasantly surprised and nodding appreciatively as she walked out of the elevator into the second floor hallway. The decor was very different to the reception area, with lighter, more neutral colour schemes and soft but adequate lighting. Wheeling her case the short distance to the door marked 212, she added, "It looks like someone actually put some thought into this at least. Downstairs was dull, uninspiring, and didn't give me a nice welcome at all. Up here though, much better."
She used her key card to open the door, pushed it open, and wheeled her case inside. The spacious room had similar decor to the hallway and large windows which let in plenty of warm sunlight. One of the windows had been left slightly open, letting in a pleasant breeze. The furniture didn't look overly expensive, but it certainly wasn't cheap, and it looked to be in good condition. The bed was immaculately made up and the open curtains were arranged perfectly.
"At first glance, again, not too bad," Ronda opined to the camera. "It's not five star by any means, but this isn't a five star hotel, so there's nothing wrong with that. For the prices they're charging, this looks acceptable. That's just a first glance though. The devil is in the detail when it comes to hotel rooms. Let's have a look what lies beneath the surface and see if their housekeeping is up to scratch, shall we?"
To start, she walked over to the large wardrobe which stood in one corner of the room. "We'll start here. This is going to tell me a lot about the level of attention to detail I can expect from the rest of the room. If I run my finger across the top of this wardrobe and it comes away dirty, I'm going to start being concerned." Stretching up on tip-toe, she ran her finger along the top of the wardrobe and then held it up to the camera to display the result. It was covered in dust. "Oh dear," she said with a grimace. "Like I said, lack of attention to detail. I'm going to have to go through the room with a fine tooth comb. One way to guarantee a guest will never come back to your hotel is to put them in a room that isn't spotlessly clean. Judging by this, I'd say we're going to find this to be a lot less than spotless."
Resuming her inspection, she walked over to the bed and pulled back the covers. "Oh my God!" she exclaimed, almost gagging at what she saw. "That's fucking vile."
The camerawoman zoomed in on a stain on the bedsheet, which looked suspiciously like semen. From out of the shot, Ronda said, "At least we know someone enjoyed a night at Brianna's. Jesus fucking Christ. How can someone make a bed with that sheet? What the fuck were they thinking?"
"Have you ever seen anything like that before in a hotel room?" The camerawoman asked, now focusing back on Ronda.
"Have I ever been in a room that's supposedly ready for a guest and found the sheet covered in jizz?" Ronda asked incredulously. "No, I haven't. If this was my hotel, I'd go find out who prepared this room, and I'd fire them on the spot." She pointed down at the stain. "That is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in twelve years in this industry. What I'm wondering now is, will it be the most disgusting thing I find in this room?"
Walking past the camerawoman, who then followed her, Ronda said, "I'm going to have to check out the bathroom. If they can't put a clean sheet on a bed, I dread to think what they might do when it comes to cleaning a bathroom." She didn't head straight for the bathroom door though, which was just to the right of the room's entrance door. Instead, she stopped when she reached her case, laid it flat on the floor, crouch down and opened it, while saying, "I did anticipate that I might have to do something like this, so I came prepared. Or at least, I thought I had."
With a flourish, she pulled a pair of blue rubber gloves out of her case and held them up to the camera for effect. "I'm glad I decided to bring these, but now I'm wondering if I should have brought a full hazmat suit." Making an elaborate show of it, Ronda pulled on the gloves, finishing each one with a snap. "Why do I already get the feeling I might be doing this a lot this week? Well, here goes nothing," she sighed.
Ronda walked into the bathroom, the camerawoman again following along behind. Turning the light on revealed that there was a full size bath in there, with a shower and a cheap looking disposable shower curtain rather than a screen. The shower curtain was the first thing Ronda headed for, gesturing to it and saying, "This should be changed between guests, every time, without fail. I'm willing to make a bet that it hasn't been. I really don't approve of shower curtains in hotel rooms. This should be replaced with a screen."
Climbing into the bath, Ronda pulled the shower curtain open and groaned. "Christ. Look at this." Crouching down, she wiped a gloved finger along the bottom of the curtain and held it up to the camera, showing some kind of black gunk. "The thing's fucking moldy. It's been left closed and it's just gone..." Her voice trailed off as she moved aside so that the camera could film the mold, which was present on roughly a quarter of the curtain. "I thought I might find it dirty, but this is revolting. How can they expect people to want to stay in their hotel when they have rooms in this kind of condition? It's not just a lack of attention to detail. How the fuck could anyone miss that? They've 'cleaned' the room without even touching the shower curtain, which means they can't possibly have cleaned the tub properly either."
Turning and crouching even lower, Ronda examined the drain and groaned again in disgust. "Oh, God. It gets worse." She began pulling human hair out of the drain. After several tugs, she held her hand out to the camera, palm upwards. Resting on it were long strands of wet, matted hair. "Unbelievable," she said, shaking her head. "Absolutely unbelievable. To have this much hair in the drain, this tub can't have been cleaned properly for weeks, maybe months. I'm going to have to get Daniel and Brie in here to see this when we're done. Before that though, I guess I'm going to have to brave looking at the toilet."
Letting the matted hair fall into the tub with a splat, she stepped back out of the bath and walked across to the toilet. She looked down at it and said, "Okay, I'm done. Look at the buffers on this toilet seat. They're stained, filthy. I really don't even want to lean over the thing to do this, but..." She leaned down and ran another of her gloved fingers underneath the rim of the bowl. Sure enough, it came away dirty. Showing it to the camera again, she said, "If I was staying here as a normal paying guest, rather than making this show, I'd be taking my case and clearing out of here right now. This lack of basic cleanliness and hygiene is totally unacceptable. I'm surprised there wasn't a three foot long log sitting in there or something."
The camerawoman couldn't help herself laughing. At that moment there was a knock on the room's main door. Saying nothing, Ronda walked out of the bathroom and opened the door. Brie was standing there, a welcoming smile on her face. "Ms. Rousey. Nice to meet you, I'm Brie. Welcome to Brianna's. I'd shake your hand but uh..." She gestured to the gloves that Ronda was wearing and laughed nervously. "That doesn't look good?"
"Call me Ronda," the hotel inspector smiled. "Come in, Brie. I'm glad you're here, because there are some things you need to see in this room, particularly in the bathroom."
Over the next couple of minutes, Ronda walked Brie through the stain on the bed sheet, followed by the disaster that was the bathroom. When the tour of shame was over, Brie had a mortified expression on her face, looking like she was about to burst into tears. She walked out of the bathroom, with Ronda following along behind, and sat down on the end of the bed. "It's not like I don't tell them," she said despairingly, looking up at Ronda who had taken her gloves off and tossed them to the floor, near to her case. "I tell them all the time to make sure they do the housekeeping properly."
Looking down at her, Ronda's expression softened a little. "I'm beginning to get the impression, Brie, that one of the problems you have here is a serious lack of authority over your staff. The receptionist, she's your sister, yes? You look a lot alike."
Brie nodded and then put her head in her hands. "Nikki said you weren't happy with the welcome you got from her."
"She was sitting there taking selfies on her phone, and she made it plain that my presence was an intrusion, and that was with a camera crew standing behind me. I dread to think what she's usually like with your regular guests."
"Daniel's told her so many times about having her phone switched on while she's working."
"You know what I think?" Ronda said softly, sitting down next to Brie. "When I yelled at Nicole downstairs, that was the first time she'd been spoken to like that. Am I right?"
"Probably, yes," Brie mumbled and then bust into tears. "Daniel and I just aren't that kind of people. We just want to run a hotel, Ronda. It's all we've ever wanted to do."
"Come here, sweetheart," Ronda said, hugging Brie. "To successfully run a hotel you've got to be able to be firm with your staff. You don't have to be nasty, but you have to be firm. If you tell your people to do something, they need to know that there will be consequences if they ignore you."
Brie didn't reply, continuing to cry into Ronda's shoulder.
Outside of the room a few minutes later, Ronda gave a piece to the camera.
"This place... Jesus Christ. I'm starting to get an idea what's going on here, even before I meet Daniel. They're a couple of nice people who dreamed of opening a hotel, and they managed to realise that dream, the problem being that they have absolutely no idea how to actually run one. This isn't the kind of business you can run by being nice to your staff all the time. It seems obvious that they're being taken advantage of by people who don't really give a fuck about the fact that the business is failing and in danger of closing, knowing that they can get away with doing whatever the hell they want. One of them is Brie's own sister..." Her voice trailed off and she shook her head, blowing out a deep breath and shaking her head.
"I've got to work with Daniel and Brie to show them how to assert their authority, or this place is going to go out of business. It's as simple as that. The way it is now, I can see why they have almost no guests in the hotel, but that's not the only part of this business that's failing. They have a large restaurant downstairs, which I'm told is losing more than a thousand dollars a week by itself. I guess it's time to go and get something to eat."
Gesturing back at the door to her room, she added, "That's if I can actually stomach anything after looking over that shit hole."