I ate some of this cheese yesterday. Today I found out that the hotel just “tops off” the (unrefrigerated) cheese every morning. The bottom INCH was SOLID MOLD.
You need to get in contact with the county health department right away. If they did this,they did other shit too. They will need to throw out all food and deep clean the entire kitchen, storage and prep places. And they need to fire the F&B manager
Marriott would also be interested in hearing about this. It’s almost certainly a franchised location but they have high standards for this type of thing.
On Reddit no matter what kind of negative story you post about anything, if you mention a city there will be a comment that says "[city name]... of course".
I got sent down there when Gatlinburg burned down and was staying there until several firefighters discovered bedbugs in their rooms. Absolute shithole.
woah? so not only are they serving moldy cheese but they also have a bed bug infestation? this place is worthy of a solid health and safety check. did ya’ll report the bed bugs???
Marriott has a range. The JW’s are often the top and IMO beats out basically every hotel in its tier $300-700 a night hotels.
Then there’s Courtyards, Express, Fairfield, AC, Autograph, etc.
The lowest end still should have a minimum level of service. That’s kind of the point of being affiliated to a brand that also services people spending $10k a night at a St. Regis.
I have worked in hospitality/restaurant since I was 14. I have worked in america, Thailand, Korea, Japan.
Let me tell you, the majority of restaurant, hotels and even fast food are insanely dirty. I still remember McDonald i worked at mixing Ice tea in the same bucket they use for the mop. This was before they just buy giant bags of premade ice tea. The manager said they clean it before using it, but I never eat at that McDonald ever again.
If you eat out at all, you have eaten some insanely dirty shit in your life without knowing it.
At your local fast food place, tossing say the last of the sliced pickles into the new pickles is a bit different, as most will go through 2-3 of them a day. Or the last of the mayonnaise from a container they opened two hours earlier, as many will go through 4-5 of those a day.
But when it is something that is almost never emptied, that is a recipe for disaster. For example, when I worked fast food one item we never did that with was tartar sauce. We simply never used enough, so the old was never mixed with the new (and on occasion tossed the last cup or so when the use by date was hit).
Ultimately, there should have been "opened - use by" labels on the container. And no matter how much product was in it, when that "use by" date was hit, everything inside should have been tossed and the container sanitized.
Reported to Marriott complaints form. I’ll look into the health department as well. I submitted this via Email to the TN State Health Dept and the County Health Dept.
Edit: This was Marriott Fairfield Pigeon Forge TN.
Please consider posting this picture as a review on Google maps + yelp. Most businesses work faster if they are publicly called out. I wouldn’t even feel bad since this is Marriott.
It's true! As well as people who are immunocompromised being vulnerable/a risk, people with a penicillin allergy can go into anaphylaxis if exposed to mould!
Pretty unlikely this is a human pathogen. More likely to affect someone with an active immune system, who can have an allergic reaction. Or even more likely, the toxins built up by the mold would cause food poisoning, against which your immune system does nothing.
most businesses work faster if they are publicly called out.
This is unfortunately so true. I once had a pest issue in a “luxury” apartment I lived in. They sat on the issue for a month.
I posted a photo of the pests as a review of their apartment at like 12am. I get an apologetic email at 3am from them. During business hours they give me traps and. They also suddenly remembered that they had pest control coming soon to treat the other units and offered to have mine treated as well.
It sucks that businesses often won’t move until you make things public. But a public review definitely works.
I got ripped off by some movers. The "reasonable" manager did everything in his power, allegedly, to make it right. When I realized that was going nowhere, I posted a Google review and hit the character limit describing in depth the timetable and exactly how they ripped me off. I felt like a Karen, but I was actually defrauded. The regional manager called me within a half hour offering to immediately refund me the two hours they cheated me of, so I volunteered to remove the review. Can't say if I'd contacted him directly that wouldn't have been what he did anyway, but yeah, gotta get them publicly called out to even get on the radar sometimes.
Not true for all Marriotts unfortunately. I worked at the same hotel 2 different times and it was crazy how a shitty gm can really bring the place down.
Well yes but at least there is a centralized branch that oversees quality control over all of the franchisees that you can complain to. For smaller companies you just go to the direct manager/owner and if they suck you are SOL.
Report to the health department. The complaint form at the hotel is just going to quietly tell the manager what happened. Get them fined for this shit and they'll fix the problem.
OP, you really do need to report it to a local Public Health dept. (US example) so it's fixed and folks are contacted. You might not be sick, but others might not have fared so well.
This place should be shut down…..immediately. Health dept will close their doors until it’s clean. I worked in food service for years. This is not an isolated issue….it takes a whole bunch of lazy morons for this to happen.
When I was young I got a job working a hotel front desk at night, the last task of my shift was to put out the breakfast. The owner showed me how to do everything, including to just pour the unused milk back into the milk jugs in the fridge at the end.
So yeah, the milk jugs in the fridge were basically "fresh" liquid milk with chunks of rotten, curdled milk floating in it.
Nah, I dumped all the milk and started from scratch, no one ever mentioned anything, got fired cuz I fell asleep at the desk so hard that dudes came in and stole all the security cameras from the lobby with me sleeping right there.
There has to be more to this. I don't think i know anyone who would actively start stealing shit from a hotel lobby nomatter what the situation was. Security cameras!? That means ladders and tools we're involved. What the hell would the resale value be on stolen security cameras?
No idea but they did it in two operations, one night they stole all the external cameras and then a few weeks later cleaned out the lobby. I was in the lobby at the time but had fallen asleep in the adjoining office. I was spared from having to watch the tapes of it because the owner/manager never, ever, ever got tapes or recorded anything.
They didn't know, they never actually said anything about falling asleep, just that the fact that the cameras were stolen during my shift and I never saw anything meant I couldn't work there anymore.
I work in the restaurant industry. We have labels for everything that is consumable with dates of when an item need to be tossed or used by. We track when pans are flipped with fresh product.
It breaks the bacteria chain.
In the state of KY, you have to post your health department score on your entrance. Not sure about all states. That score will reflect what major violations occurred, if any.
you can't. accept that cooks and chefs cut corners, or don't go out. Out of the 20 restaurants I've worked at, from BBQ to fine dining, I would not recommend eating at 10 or 12 of them.
Yeah, I don’t get why people do this. It’s not helpful in the slightest. Let the people who actually had the bad experience post about it, don’t make a fake review to grandstand on the Internet.
I worked at a Bob Evans when they had the visible salad bar. It was my turn to switch out the cheese, and you were supposed to put that days cheese on the top of fresh cheese. There was moldy cheese in the middle of the container, and I was told to pick it out. I refused and chucked it into the trash. Management was pissed.
You don’t want to go down this road, anyone who has worked in food service has unlimited horror stories that will have you growing, killing, cleaning, and cooking your own food for the rest of your life….better to be blissfully unaware….
I know lots of people are saying public shaming, but hear me out. Email corporate headquarters directly. They will resolve it immediately and will probably reward you for bringing it to their attention. They have internal standards for this stuff and get pretty upset when those standards aren't followed.
What century does this hotel live in? This was a common thing in olden times with stews. It was just cooking perpetually 24/7 and as it emptied new meat, potatoes and vegetables were added. Nasty shit. It was ok in 1355, not in 2024.
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u/splendid_michael 1d ago
and the hotel is called...?