Videos of two people beefing over something of no consequence to the rest of us are the preferred form of 21st-century eavesdropping, but every so often it turns up something bigger.
Jennifer Biela, her friend and their five children had a room at the Crown Choice Inn & Suites in Mackinaw City in April, staying one night in preparation for jumping off to Mackinac Island the next day. When a toilet overflowed after 11 p.m., when everyone was in bed, she sought help at the front desk.
It didn't go so well, with the clerk, Benny Lieghio, calling Biela a "dumb Democrat" and ordering her and her party out of the hotel in the middle of the night. Watch the exchange here:
Hotel owner in Michigan calls a mother a "dumb Democrat" and kicks her out because the bathroom was flooding pic.twitter.com/W5xkOO0R0Z
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) May 26, 2021
The police were called, and backed the hotel, because of course they did. Biela, her friend and the five kids left at 2:30 a.m. and ended up 50 miles south in Gaylord.
And in keeping with exactly the sort of last-house-on-the-left, middle-of-the-night creepiness you sometimes find in rural areas, it turns out the Lieghio family owns pretty much all the lodging in Mackinaw City, no fewer than 28 hotels and eight restaurants, according to this 2017 Detroit News story about a shortage of foreign-worker visas that was giving the family staffing problem.
(It falls to Deadline Detroit to inform Benny Lieghio, if he's reading this, that the H2B visa shortage was imposed by none other than the Trump administration. You might recall that "no more foreign workers taking American jobs" was a popular position for the former president.)
The video of the exchange between Biela and Lieghio went viral, and the result has not been kind to the Lieghio empire. WDIV reports:
Crown Inn and Suites owner Joe Lieghio said that the person in the video is his cousin, Benny.
“I want them to know we’re very sorry for what happened. My family in no way agrees with anything that was said or how they were treated,” Lieghio said.
Benny has been suspended while the family decides whether to fire him. He sent Biela a letter apologizing and offered a free stay.
Biela noped out on that, saying she's not interested in staying in any of the family's hotels, saying she's since done some research and "this is not an isolated incident."
Sounds like the Mackinaw City Chamber of Commerce may have a problem on their hands -- that is, if there is a Chamber of Commerce outside of the Lieghio family.
-- Nancy Derringer
