Provide Clear, Polite Instructions
Dear Miss Manners: All summer long, we share our house on a lake with friends, most of who come year after year to waterski, swim, kayak, play badminton, etc. Among them are a wonderful couple with three bright, happy, well-behaved children - but they are not good guests.
I let guests know that I need everyone to pitch in with household tasks. This couple is reasonable as long as they are given some direction, but thoughtless when it comes to going beyond the directions.
Other guests understand that when they leave, someone else is certain to be arriving, so they put clean sheets on the bed, lightly clean their bathroom sink and shower and empty their wastebaskets. This couple instead leaves their room as if they were leaving a hotel room, trash strewn around the room, not even always in the wastebasket, bathroom dirty and so on, effectively making me their maid.
They use the phone for social calls of up to an hour, in spite of my repeated hints that someone else is waiting to use the phone or that we might be expecting a call. Moreover, they have left us with phone bills exceeding $80 for the week.
I realized that they simply did not understand houseguest etiquette the time they said, “We thought we’d invite our friends, Lora and Schnora, to your house for the day. You could teach them water-skiing. You’d really like them.”
Not being prone to suffer in silence, I explained that although I may spend two hours a day taking our guests and family water-skiing, teaching total strangers would be a time-consuming and intensive affair, and I would prefer to spend my free time working or being with my children. They were genuinely surprised.
Never in five years have these particular guests arrived with a gift. Frankly, I am not looking for gifts; a number of gifts that well-intentioned guests have given us we could do without. But it is just one more indicator that this couple does not give consideration to being good guests. They do sometimes buy groceries and take my children with theirs to a fun activity like miniature golf, which allows me to get some work done. I want to continue our friendship with this couple, but given that they seemed to have missed proper instruction as children on being good guests, is it my job to instruct them year after year? Do I have no choice but not to invite them in the future?
Gentle Reader: That is the solution to guests who have no redeeming qualities. However, you like these people enough, and have entertained them enough, to put them into a special category of guest: intimates of the household.
That is the way they seem to feel, when they assume such family privileges as inviting other guests and freely using the telephone. All you have to do is to respond in the same spirit.
Intimates of the household (others in this category include visiting grown-up children of the house) know they are dearly welcomed, so they can take clear and polite instruction rather than hints:
“I’m so sorry you’re leaving. Here are some clean sheets and a trash bag. I won’t have time to straighten up for the next arrivals.”
“I’d love to meet your friends some other time, but I can’t deal with more guests now.”
“You’d better bring your own telephone. We need to keep ours free.”