Reviewing an overly demanding guest

[faheem]

Hi @jaquo,

Nice to hear from you again. It feels like it has been a long time.

@jaquo

The guest you describe sounds to be a bit of a pillock. (Well, maybe a LOT of a pillock).

As mentioned in the review, I still think he’s basically a nice person. But didn’t seem to have much of a clue. And seemed quite self-absorbed. Also, he didn’t seem to be someone who got out much or was exposed to other cultures. Along with his indifferent command over the English language and some less than propitious circumstances, that was overall, not a good combination for a homestay.

I haven’t mentioned this here before, but he didn’t review me. But after I posted my review, he sent me a rather plaintive message via Airbnb, the first and last I’ve heard from him since he left. He implied that we could have been friends if it hadn’t been for “stuff” happening. Not his words, obviously. I didn’t reply, because I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t particularly want to continue a pointless cross-continental conversation. It’s true that he seemed relatively inclined to chat, compared to the average guest. And I’m generally willing and even happy to talk, especially to people from other cultures. One can learn so much talking to people. But I found trying to understand him both excruciating and borderline incomprehensible. Not his fault, of course… So it was a bit of a non-starter.

@jaquo

You may remember that I am a very relaxed host and a pillock doesn’t bother me once in a while. Swings and roundabouts. Although the problems you had with this guest is why I much prefer to have guests who stay for three or four days rather than weeks.

If I get guests who are bothersome for whatever reason, I can console myself with the fact that they’ll be gone in a couple of days.

Yes, I feel the same way. I generally prefer guests for shorter periods. As I’ve occasionally told people, if they are nice, I’m sorry to see them go. If not…

But it was hard to pass up a longer stay for a reasonable-seeming guest. Things haven’t exactly been jumping round here. While India is normalizing after the pandemic, things have been, and still are, very slow on the international guest front. And they are (or used to be) my bread and butter. I was just looking at my guest book from just before the pandemic shut things down here in March 2020, and I was surprised at how busy I used to be. For the last few months before the shutdown it had been a continuous stream of guests. It hasn’t been like that since.

@jaquo

I use a ‘speak and translate’ app that is fabulous. There are dozens, if not more, available. Prior to the pandemic most of my guests were from South America, Europe, Russia, etc. and the app was invaluable.

Yes, this was suggested to me in another channel. Possibly the Unix and Linux Chat Room on Stack Exchange, where I hang out. Recommendations of preferably free ones are welcome. But actually this doesn’t come up very much at all. Nearly everyone who comes through here speaks more or less fluent English. Or if not fluent, at least passable. I’ve never thought about why.

@jaquo

Consider too that some of his foibles might be a cultural thing as @muddy suggested. Or he might have had mental problems of some sort.

We all have mental problems, of one sort or another. Depending on your definition of mental problems.

@jaquo

I get this often. I tell the guests every time it happens. But I also make sure that the margin on my nightly price is enough to cover this from time to time.

I don’t tell people about this sort of thing consistently, but maybe I should. I worry about coming across as a fusspot. Also, I don’t necessarily pay that much attention.

@jaquo

I once had guests who, on their second day, alerted me to ants in the apartment. They were fine about it but I had the exterminator come straight away. (The are on a monthly contract and their last visit had only been a week or so before the incident).

Happily I don’t have exterminators on contract. Yet.

@jaquo

I might be wrong but it seems that you are pussyfooting around a little here. If a guest is doing anything I object to, I confront them straight away in person. When I first started using Airbnb, I found that guests were pretty good at ignoring messages if they so choose!

Yes, you probably have a point there. Though part of the reason for writing the message was to put the problem “on record”, just in case the guest tried blaming me for the infestation. Guests have got refunds for less. Though I didn’t think he would try anything like that, and didn’t. He isn’t the kind of person who would try something like that.

But yes, telling people to their face would be best in cases like this.

@jaquo

Great to hear from you.

Great to hear from you too.

[jaquo]

@faheem

Recommendations of preferably free ones are welcome.

Faheem I use one called Speak and Translate. Its name just about describes what it does. Or you can use it for text translations too.

You simply speak into your phone and the app then speaks it back in Portuguese or Danish or whatever language your guests speak. (There are large buttons to use to set the languages)

When I got mine, and it was quite a few years ago now, it was free. However the free version limited the number of translations per day. That number wasn’t enough for me (I tend to talk a lot )

So for $9.99 I upgraded to unlimited translations per day.

It has many, many languages including many I’d never heard of - Chichewa? Frisian? Hmong? Kyrgyz? None of those are typos.

It makes me smile that it differentiates between different English - there’s Australian English, Canadian English, UK English, US English and, the one that surprised me, Indian English. I never knew that there was such a thing.

[muddy]

@jaquo

It makes me smile that it differentiates between different English

Hey, I used to have to watch any Guy Ritchie movie with my ex-boyfriend, so he could translate. None of it sounded like English to me, and I could barely understand a word of the dialogue.

[jaquo]

@muddy

None of it sounded like English to me

i’ve seen English movies on tv here in the States featuring actors with regional English accents - Geordie, Yorkshire, Cockney etc., - that have had subtitles!

[muddy]

The subtitle translations in Spanish for English speaking movies can be hilarious. For starters, they won’t even translate some things- like if a character says “Jesus Christ!” I suppose they consider it blasphemous. They will substitute something mild and without religious associations.

The funniest translation gaffe I ever saw was some pretty awful movie starring Darryl Hannah. The plot revolved around her getting a job transcribing a book for an author who had gone blind. All the actors had British accents, either real or put on for the movie. In one scene where they are sitting at the dining table having breakfast, which the housekeeper/cook has just served them, the author says “Poor Mrs. Murphy…” (some reason why he felt sorry for her). Then he goes on to tell Darryl Hannah that as they are going to be closely working together, he would like to know if there is anything about him that bothers her, that they should work that stuff out beforehand.

She says that yes, she doesn’t like it when people use the word “poor” to indicate that they have sympathy for someone. Except that because of the accents, it sounded like “po”. Whoever wrote the subtitles in Spanish thought she said “pork”, so they translated it to “No me gusta que tu dijiste cerdo Senora McMurphy”- “I don’t like it that you said pork Mrs. McMurphy.”

[gillian]

@muddy

Then they end up with a ridiculously long list of rules that make them look like some micro-managing control freak you’d be afraid to book with.

haha, i feel like this!! but in the listing my guest manual is very short and i try to keep it positive, like “here’s all the stuff we have for you!”. The rules are in the House Rules section. My actual printed guest manual does indeed get longer each quarter when I update it.

@muddy

If a guest forgets to turn the AC or lights off when they go out, that’s irritating, but common. Part and parcel of being in the hospitality business.

agreed, this happens to us all the time. guests also leave the outside cottage light on. I recently went and sprayed the glass cover with a frosting paint to try to tone it down a bit. Asking them not to leave it on all night just doesn’t work, and i don’t want to nag people about a light.

@fionajk42

“Good” guests will not be put off by long house rules, in fact I think they are encouraged as they can be confident the host takes pride in their property.

I am of this opinion too!

@faheem

@muddy

@faheem Here is a recipe for a non-toxic ant killer that may save you from having to pay for fumigations. (There are so many kinds of ants, but we call those tiny red stinging ants fire ants)

Thank you for the ant killer recipe. Do you use it yourself, and does it work reliably for you? I’ll try it if ant problems recur. (The guest today was eating in the room, and I got a bit panicky.) Presumably you need to use multiple paper towels in different locations. How many paper towels do you use? My guest room is a 12 ft by 12 ft room.

you can buy a product here called Ant Rid. it’s like a thin honey and i think is based on boric acid. not great for cats but my cats don’t randomly eat things, they are pretty fussy, plus they’d have to consume a lot to get truly sick.

[NordlingHouse]

@jaquo

the one that surprised me, Indian English.

It tends to be quite verbose, and many sentence constructions would be considered archaic in the rest of the English dialect world. They took Dickensian writing to heart.

[muddy]

Did you ever watch that series, Deadwood? There were only about 2 or 3 seasons of it, but it was fantastic. Took place in the wild west, goldrush days. Most of the characters were based on real people, Annie Oakley, Wild Bill Hickock. The language was a mix of Edwardian English, and total gutter talk, mother%$#*%&, cock%#$%^&, peppered every sentence. I read about the making of the series, and apparently, that is exactly how people talked there and then. One of the lead actors was Ian McShane, a well-known Shakespearean stage actor. The series is well worth watching.

[Debthecat]

Pity they didn’t continue it! Definitely a favourite of mine.

[muddy]

Everyone I knew who watched it loved it- I couldn’t figure out why they discontinued it after only a couple of seasons. Maybe too outrageous?

[Debthecat]

Just ratted on line!
There is a Deadwood movie that ties up all the threads.
Now ratting to see if I can view it in Australia

[casailinglady]

@faheem

I’m puzzled by this eight second rule, if that is what it is. Presumably hosts spend more than eight seconds preparing for and interacting with guests. So surely it’s worth spending a bit of time checking if there might be a problem with said guest?

In web development, the site owner used to have 8 seconds to capture a site visitor’s attention. That means that slow loading sites have a higher bounce rate.

Now the metric is about 2.5 - 3 seconds - if a site visitor doesn’t see pertinent info in that first paragraph or image, then visitors bounce out. Metrics from Google Analytics and CPanel web stats show the 0-30second bounce rates first.

So you have that 3 seconds (being generous here because travel sites and booking engines seem to have a higher retention/sticky rate) to get your main points across.

[Keugenia]

@muddy

I’m familiar with diatomaceous earth, and it works to kill many insects, but not sure if it works on ants.

It worked on the sugar ants (teeny tiny ants, harmless except they get into food) that I had once in an AirBnB. But it needs to be food grade diatomaceous earth.

[muddy]

@Keugenia

But it needs to be food grade diatomaceous earth.

So it won’t harm pets, or non-food grade doesn’t work?

[Keugenia]

Non food grade can be harmful to your health.

Diatomaceous Earth for Ants: Complete DIY Guide – Bug Lord

[muddy]

I am familiar with diatomaceous earth, I use it in my garden. But sorry, I don’t see anything in that article which says anything about why non-food grade would be dangerous to your health, unless you are ingesting it. And even food-grade is dangerous to inhale.

[Keugenia]

That article only briefly mentioned it can be hazardous to humans. This article explains that in more detail. The problem is pool grade DE has been heat treated and has a much, much higher percentage of crystalline silica.

“Exposure of workers to respirable crystalline silica is associated with elevated rates of lung cancer. The strongest link between human lung cancer and exposure to respirable crystalline silica has been seen in studies of quarry and granite workers and workers involved in ceramic, pottery, refractory brick, and certain earth industries.”

Food Chemical Codex Grade (Food Grade) vs. Pool Grade Diatomaceous Earth: The...

[muddy]

Thanks. I knew about not inhaling it, regardless of whether it’s food grade or not (I’m always careful re breathing it with any kind of powders) but I didn’t know the non-food grade could have heavy metals like lead and arsenic.

[dpfromva]

Diatomaceous earth worked on ants in my suite after guests left spilled food behind the microwave cart. I have a 10 lb box (!) of the food grade stuff, after I used it to get rid of fleas on the dogs.

I sprinkled it on the upholstery and brushed it in, on the floors and swept it into the floor boards. Waited a day and vacuumed. Also brushed it into the dogs’ fur, careful not to get near their heads so they didn’t breathe it in. Then I sprayed the yard with beneficial nematodes.

Totally got rid of the fleas, which my groomer/breeder thought would be impossible without pesticides.