Boundaries!

[JBloggs]

Interesting.......what % of guests do any of you have this happen.
Would also be interesting to know what demographic of people?......Such as...age group....perpetual B&B guest, casual B&B guest....Northern or Southern folk......East or West folk?.

Interesting.......what % of guests do any of you have this happen.
Would also be interesting to know what demographic of people?......Such as...age group....perpetual B&B guest, casual B&B guest....Northern or Southern folk......East or West folk?

Do you really want to know?

It is not high, but the demographic is ONE and the same, GROUPS.
You might remember a long time ago I had a bluegrass group - indiv recorded musicians all of them, here to jam, it was MLK Weekend. Any-how a couple of them got into our foyer desk drawers. I was here where I am now and can hear all the talking in the foyer. One pulled out a Hebrew New Testament and declared loudly "Hey look! They're Jews!" Well if you might know Jews do not have/use the New Testament, only the old in Hebrew. So long story longer this NT was a gift from a guest and I put those sorts of things in the guest areas typically. Guest gifts.

 

[JBloggs]

Okay so what part of THEY JUST CHECKED IN and went into the closed doors of the kitchen yells HOME to you? ha ha
There was no redd up the table, there was no "This innkeeper is so friendly we just wanna help!" I won't post that on here, if they lifted their plates to carry it into the kitchen, THAT is not an intrusion, they are being sweet. See the difference? THAT is not what I am speaking of, I am talking about guests going behind your closed doors that have a private sign displayed near them.

 

[muirford]

Thanks Morticia......
It would appear to be that it is that "Home" atmosphere that instigates the no boundaries attitude.
When I visited friends and family....I always cleaned up after myself......bringing dishes, cups and glasses to the kitchen........rinsing and into the dishwasher......I always felt it was the right thing to do....and felt awkward when not doing it.........I'm in someone's home..

I cannot count the number of guests who want to help red up the table after breakfast. We tell them we appreciate the thought but DH does the dishes and he has his routine and we cannot upset his routine. That takes care of it.
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I cannot count the number of guests who want to help red up the table after breakfast.

Now you know, Kathleen, you are going to have to define red up - or more commonly, redd up - for those who don't have that particular bit of Pennsylvania/Scotch heritage. I use it all the time and used to think it was PA Dutch, but it's not.
From a Word Detective column in 12/2000: "While you don't mention exactly where you grew up, if your grandmother routinely told you to "redd up" your room, there's a statistical probability that either you were living in, or your grandmother was from, Pennsylvania. "Redd up," meaning "to clear or clean up," arrived in America with immigrants from Scotland and northern England, and while Scots settled all over the eastern US, the phrase seems to be most commonly heard today, for some reason, in Pennsylvania.
The root of "redd" (which by itself means "to clear or clean") seems to be a combination of the Middle English and Scots dialectical word "redden" (meaning "to free or clear an area") with another Middle English word, "reden," meaning "to rescue or free from." The same tangle of roots gave us the word "rid," and is closely related to the word "ready." And none of this, by the way, has anything to do with the color "red.""

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I also thought it was Pennsylvania Dutch (part of family heritage which since we are explaining is actually PA Deutch (German)) but we used it in the Northern Panhandle of WV and it is also a common term in Steubenville, Ohio area (just across the river). Being as how my home area is only an hour from Pittsburgh (proniunced Pixburgh) it is all a mish-maash.
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Being as how my home area is only an hour from Pittsburgh (proniunced Pixburgh) it is all a mish-maash.

It really is just Pittsburghese. DH spent his whole life in Philly before we moved away and never heard the term until he met me. Although I grew up in the middle of the state, we talked Pittsburghese.

 

[JBloggs]

Thanks Morticia......
It would appear to be that it is that "Home" atmosphere that instigates the no boundaries attitude.
When I visited friends and family....I always cleaned up after myself......bringing dishes, cups and glasses to the kitchen........rinsing and into the dishwasher......I always felt it was the right thing to do....and felt awkward when not doing it.........I'm in someone's home..

Thanks Morticia......
It would appear to be that it is that "Home" atmosphere that instigates the no boundaries attitude.

Uhhhh no. It is the NOT HOME atmosphere, the nosy parkers, the sticky beaks. It has NOTHING to do with HOME. Nothing whatsoever. In fact these guest stated they were at a B&B with no one on the premises (so altho I checked them in no less than 10 min's prior they must have thought I fled? yeah right).
PART 2
RING! RING! RING! 945PM.
This is our bell on our office door. Dh throws on his emergency shorts and goes out there. "We are locked out of our room! The key doesn't work!" He says.
DH (bless his heart) Did you try them both? (There is the room door and the side door which has a stairs down to the gardens that he spent an entire day shoring up and reinforcing with concrete the other weekend). The key fob has TWO KEYS, one for each door.
Guest "Yes, neither of them work!!"
DH calmly states "They do work"
Me in my room thinking JUST GO UP THERE AND SHOW HIM. Dh is there thinking, Look old man I go up there and you look like an idiot in front of everyone!
Guest "They don't work! We need to get into the room!"
DH "Okay" and takes the keys and they all (six people) go up. He puts the first key in the lock turns it and opens the door. Leaves and comes back downstairs to watch American Pickers on TV.
I ask, "Did you open it on the first try?"
"Yep"

 

[Innkeep]

I have a lock on my kitchen door, but a fairly large open pass-through between dining room (part of common area) and kitchen. Early on I would lock the door, but one of the groups decided that they wanted to put their left-over pizza in my refrigerator, so they climbed through the pass through, knocking over things on the way through. I decided it was probably safer just to leave it open after that, because I didn't want to find someone head first in the middle of the kitchen floor. Since then I have only had one interloper who put his entire cooler on one refrigerator shelf Ewww.

 

[gillumhouse]

Okay so what part of THEY JUST CHECKED IN and went into the closed doors of the kitchen yells HOME to you? ha ha
There was no redd up the table, there was no "This innkeeper is so friendly we just wanna help!" I won't post that on here, if they lifted their plates to carry it into the kitchen, THAT is not an intrusion, they are being sweet. See the difference? THAT is not what I am speaking of, I am talking about guests going behind your closed doors that have a private sign displayed near them..

I understand your frustration with the idiots. We have long ago established the fact that there is no cure for stupidity - other than termination and they are not worth the price of a spit wad muchless anything lethal.
BTW - several on the PAII have told of guests doing exactly the same thing and more and when they caught them, in addition to saying OUT told them to never ever do that at another B & B. They are trying to educate the uneducatable.
Your particular idiots must hold the record for how long it takes to invade private areas. I wonder where they thought you were? In the bathroom so they would be safe? Hmm, how long would it have taken them to find THAT most private of rooms?
We have had the key idiots - Ahhh, you have to turn the key in the deadbolt lock and the doorknob at the same time to make the door open.

 

[One Day]

This is awefull.........they wouldn't do it if they were at a hotel or motel.
Some people just feel the need to test others........see how far they can go......and what they can get away with......more to the point.......what more they can get for what they are paying.
I personaly have a very short tolerance for this behavior

 

[wendydk]

Every so often, a guest will follow me into the kitchen when I take their credit card for checkout, and one evening, a guest actually opened the door marked "private" and walked right in...other repeat guests were having dessert in the dining room and were mortified. I always thought it would have been funny if we were back here doing the dirty when he walked in without even a warning knock....that really grinds my hiney....as if we aren't squeezed for privacy already!