A post about a hotel staff member’s unexpected response to a guest’s “crazy” request has gone viral on Reddit.

The post, shared by John Patton (u/JBPII), has amassed more than 35,000 upvotes since it was uploaded on May 21.

Patton works for a commercial aircraft spare parts supplier and dismantle company of a small town in central Ohio around 45 minutes north of Columbus. He was staying at the Residence Inn Kansas City Airport hotel in Missouri during the surprise moment described in the post. “I was on a business trip for one night, and the hotel was arranged by my company based out of Kansas City,” Patton told Newsweek.

In a caption shared with the post, Patton noted: “I checked in to my hotel and joked with the check-in lady that as long as my room had a bowl of M&Ms [candy-coated chocolates] with all the blue ones removed, everything would be great. She laughed and told me about some other crazy guest request.”

Twenty minutes later, Patton was surprised to get a knock on his hotel room door from the staff member who “handed me this.” His Reddit post features an image of a bowl of M&Ms, notably missing the blue-colored ones, with a card that reads “You won’t have ‘the blues’ while stay with us. Enjoy.”

Patton told Newsweek that he had checked into the hotel around 12 noon on a Wednesday and there was no one else around in the lobby. “The lady at the desk was super nice and I made the joke about M&Ms because I had heard of a famous singer demanding that in their contract,” he noted.

Patton said: “I thought it was an over-the-top unreasonable demand, and that’s why I joked with her. She laughed and replied back with several stories from her own experience that were worse than that. It was very funny.”

Hotels in the United States continue to face staffing shortages. A December 2024 survey found that 64.9 percent of hotels are still dealing with staffing challenges since fallout at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic back in 2020, according to the 2025 State of the Industry report by the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA).

The AHLA report in 2024 found that guests ranked “staff interactions” among the top three reasons they would leave a positive review for the hotel. This year’s report said that “cleanliness continues to be a top factor influencing hotel selection (beyond price and location), and is the top driver of positive experiences and reviews.”

This year, hotels are expected to employ over 2.17 million people, increasing total wages, salaries, and compensation by 2.13 percent, surpassing $128.47 billion, according to the 2025 AHLA report. “Even though hotels are expected to add more than 14,000 direct employees in 2025, employment levels will still fall short of 2018 and 2019 levels,” the report said.

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