Allyah McIntyre stays in a lot of hotel rooms. As a U.S.-based flight attendant, she’s checked into more of them than most people will in a lifetime, and she has never once walked in and simply put her bag down. “I don’t care how many hotels I go to, I will never stop doing my hotel security search,” she says at the start of a 17-second TikTok that’s been viewed around eight million times. The search itself is quick. She checks anywhere in the room she can’t see behind, like the closet, the bathroom, large cabinets, behind the door and under the bed. “I check anything that I can’t directly see behind,” she told BuzzFeed, adding the box spring to the list because, she notes, it’s hollow inside. @flightattendantbaelee My hotel security routine. | Stay Safe!! #flightattendant #hotel #safety #adayinthelife #futureflightattendants ♬ original sound – Lea The detail people fixated on was the coat hanger. Rather than pulling back the curtains with her hand, McIntyre uses a hanger to sweep them aside, a trick she says she learned from a more senior flight attendant. “If they grab something, it’ll be a hanger and not you,” she explains in the video. Then she secures the door, and this is where her routine moves from habit into hardware. She travels with a portable door lock that goes on in addition to whatever the hotel provides because she doesn’t put much faith in the hotel’s own. “I feel like the hotel locks are there to give you peace of mind, but in reality, they’re not very hard to maneuver past,” she told BuzzFeed. On top of that, she wedges a doorstop with a built-in alarm under the door. “It’s very loud, and it will for sure alert me as well as others if necessary.” The comments split, which is more or less the point of the video. Some people described doing an identical sweep for years and were relieved to find they weren’t alone. Others thought the whole thing was excessive. A few shared their own additions, like propping a desk chair under the doorknob or checking the room before letting a child walk in. One word came up often enough that she made a second video about it. “A very common misconception that was commented on my last security search video was that I’m paranoid,” she says. “I’m not paranoid in the least bit. I don’t do my hotel security search because I’m going to find someone or find something. I do my hotel security search in the rare case when there is someone or something in my room.” @flightattendantbaelee ** Portable door lock & door stop alarm are linked in my bio ** MY Hotel Security Routine | Stay Safe #flightattendant #adayinthelife #hotel #safety ♬ original sound – Lea By the way, the door hardware is not unusual advice. Portable travel locks and doorstop alarms are routinely recommended for solo travelers. They’re cheap, and they address the one genuine gap in hotel security: A surprising number of people can end up holding a key to your room, including staff and previous guests with a card that never got deactivated. The quick room sweep costs nothing either. The hanger and the box spring are a different thing. Those are less about likely risk than about the specific scenarios that stick in your head when your job puts you in unfamiliar rooms in unfamiliar cities several nights a week. McIntyre isn’t recommending anyone else adopt her entire routine. She’s showing what a decade of hotel rooms does to your habits. “I stay in hotels far too much to become relaxed,” she says. You can follow @flightattendantbaelee on TikTok for more interesting and entertaining travel videos.  The post Flight attendant’s unique hotel safety routine includes a coat hanger, a door alarm, and the box spring appeared first on Upworthy.