Hotel Lifts 17-Year Ban On 'Worst Guest Ever' After Horrifying Seagull Incident
By Mustafa GatollariApr. 15 2020, Updated 10:56 a.m. ET
When you think of the people who get banned from hotels, you probably start picturing rock stars from the '70s who can't help but throw TV sets out of windows. And normally, you'd be totally right. There are plenty of examples in history of celebrities being outlawed from staying at hotel chains because of their wild behavior in the rooms.
And while rock stars and celebs might treat their hotel rooms with an amplified reckless abandon that most people have when they're on vacation, there are some situations where a room getting trashed is an honest-to-goodness mistake.
That's something Nick Burchill explained in a letter to the Fairmont Empress Hotel, apologizing for a series of unfortunate events involving seagulls, pepperoni, and feces, that occurred 17 years ago while he was attending a conference. The incident resulted in Burchill getting banned from the Empress, a decision he appealed in his letter.
"I officially applied to be allowed to stay at the Empress Hotel again," here wrote. "Here is my letter. Waiting for the reply. 18 years is a long time."
The letter goes as follows:
28 March 2018Dear Empress Hotel: This may seem like and unusual request, but I write to you today, seeking a “pardon."17 Years ago a string of unfortunate events led to my being banned from your hotel. I would like to explain the incident……In 2001, I had recently joined my current employer, xxxxxxxxx and I was also in the Canadian Naval Reserve. xxxxxxxxx was hosting a customer conference at the Empress and it was my first event with the company.I told my Navy buddies that I was coming out West and I was asked to bring “Brother’s Pepperoni” from Halifax. It is a local delicacy. Because this was the Navy we were talking about, I brought enough for a ship. In a hurry, I had completely filled a suitcase with pepperoni for my friends. Some of it was wrapped in plastic, some in brown paper. I took whatever Brothers would sell me.Just to be safe, I decided that I should keep it cool.My room was a nice, big, front-facing room on the fourth floor. It was well appointed, but it did not have a refrigerator. It was April, the air was chilly. An easy way to keep all of this food cool would be just to keep it next to an open window. I lifted one of the sashes and spread the packages of pepperoni out on the table and window sill. Then, I went for a walk…..for about 4 or 5 hours.When I had covered enough ground, I returned to the hotel. I remember walking down the long hall and opening the door to my room to find an entire flock of seagulls in my room. I didn’t have time to count, but there must have been 40 of them and they had been in my room, eating pepperoni for a long time.In case you were wondering, Brothers’ TNT Pepperoni does NASTY things to a seagull’s digestive system. As you would expect, the room was covered in seagull crap. What I did not realize until then was that Seagulls also drool. Especially when they eat pepperoni.
In a moment of clarity, I grabbed a bath-towel and jumped it. It stated to freak-out so I wrapped it in the towel and threw it out of the window.I had forgotten that Seagulls cannot fly when they are wrapped in a towel.This is all happening fairly quickly and this is mid-afternoon. The Empress hosts a very famous and very popular “High Tea”. I suspect this is where the large group of tourists was heading when they were struck by first my shoe, then a bound-up seagull (the seagull was unharmed, by the way).Let’s go back to my little housekeeping issue. The room was BAD. There was a lot of damage.I was new to my company and I was really trying to make a good impression at this important event. I decided that I would carry on for now and handle this whole thing later. I then realized that I had only a few minutes before an important dinner and that I only had one shoe.I made my way to one of the side doors and recovered both the shoe and the towel that were laying in some wet soil bear the walking path. The shoe was a mess. I took it back to the room. By this time, I had close the windows and the air was becoming quite ripe with the smell of digested pepperoni and fish.I went into the washroom and rinsed the mud off of my shoe. It cleaned-up nicely, but now I had one wet, dark shoe, and one dry, light coloured shoe.
I thought that was the end of it all until I was told that my company had received a letter banning me from the Empress. A ban that I have respected for almost 18 years.I have matured and I admit responsibility for my actions. I come to you, hat-in-hand to apologise for the damage I had indirectly come to cause and to ask you reconsider my lifetime ban from the property.
Sincerely,Nick Burchill
And Nick did show up with the pepperoni in hand as a peace offering for the hotel staff to let him return to the hotel.
All's well that ends well for Nick, however, his honest, disgusting, and hilarious letter ultimately got his ban lifted from the Fairmont Empress hotel.
His story was shared over 3,000 times and people were tickled pink by Nick's worst day ever, just look at the comments on his original Facebook post here.
But it did cost them a room covered in seagull excrement, feathers, and vomited pepperoni. Ugh.
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