Winner: Most Awkward Moment Award

Back when I was working at the Birch Lodge, we had pay-per-view movies.  As is the general practice in the industry, the guest orders the movies from the room using their remote, leaving me out of the equation.  Every now and then, though, a guest wouldn't know how to order a movie.

One evening, I checked in four Hutterites into one room.  They were two unmarried couples in their 20s, in a room with two beds.  I didn't really think much of it when they checked in.  People of all types come to motels to have sex.  Two couples in one room is a little awkward, I guess, but I didn't care.  I didn't even know for sure that sex was their plan.  They could have just been travelling and didn't want to pay for two rooms.

A few minutes after they checked in, they called down to the office and asked me how to order a movie.  I tried to talk them through it, but they weren't having any success, and asked me to come to their room and show them how.  This wasn't an unusual request.  I always found it a little annoying, but it was part of my job, so I went to their room.  That was when things got awkward.  The two Hutterite women sat on the edge of one of the beds looking anywhere but at me, while the men had me order them a porno.  They didn't just have me show them which buttons to press and then do it themselves.  I had to do everything.  And the whole time I was doing it, I was picturing the four of them having sex.  I didn't want to.  It was one of the last things I wanted to imagine.  But there it was, running over and over again in my mind.  I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Bonus Porn Story:
This was still at the Birch Lodge.  A tough, 40-something blue collar worker checked in late one afternoon, and then checked out again 45 minutes later.  As I checked him out, I noticed that there was a movie charge on his account.  "That's obviously porn," I thought to myself.  After he left, I was curious what porn was worth it to pay the full price of a motel room (we didn't charge by the hour; it was all or nothing), plus almost $15 for pay-per-view porn.  I went to the computer that controlled the pay-per-view system, and looked up what he watched.  I forget the exact title of the movie, but it was something like "Young, Muscled Hunks."  Poor guy.  It can't be easy to be a gay middle-aged blue collar worker in southern Alberta.