This Badass Mom Decided to Pump in a Hotel Lobby After Being Told They Had No Room For Her
Before the seminar that she was attending began, Lynda Mazzalai Nguyen stopped by the hotel's front desk to see if there was a private place where she could pump. Instead of pleasantries and assistance from the employees at Embassy Suites' front desk, two different employees told this nursing mom that if she wanted to pump, she could do so in the bathroom.
Infuriated, Lynda told them that they don't eat lunch in the bathroom, so it's gross to expect her to contaminate her baby's milk there. But instead of coming up with a different solution, they offered her an array of excuses.
1) "No, you can't use the hotel rooms since you haven't paid for it." Uh, I paid a fee to attend the seminar which paid YOU, so YES, I am a paying customer.
2) "There are no hotel rooms available. We sold out this morning." LIES. I found rooms on Expedia!
3) "I don't feel comfortable putting you in an uncleaned room." So a dirty bathroom with urine and feces is better than a room someone just checked out of?
4) "As staff, we don't even have offices. Only the [general manager] has an office, but I can't ask him and it has big glass windows." I'm fine with windows! "But I can't have you in his office."
5) So you're telling me in the WHOLE entire building there isn't a single space for me to plug in for 15 minutes to pump for my baby? Office? Conference room? Anything? "No, there isn't. The conference rooms aren't private since you can't lock the door and people come in and out. "That's fine with me, I just need a room with an outlet. "Well, I'm not comfortable putting you in there." Work with me here.
6) What about employees who pump? Where do they go? "We don't have any employees who pump." An entire hotel staff and not a single nursing mother now or in the past?! Somehow I doubt that.
After Lynda refused to budge, the employee offered the wine cellar but based on principle, she decided to pump in the lobby — right next to the reception desk. "F*ck you, [Embassy Suites]. I'm livid," Lynda shared on Breastfeeding Mama Talk's Facebook page along with a photo of her proudly pumping. "Sir, you don't eat where you sh*t, so why should my baby! Do NOT piss off a mama who knows her rights and is a social worker to boot!"