Hospitality sucks. Options

[*Mercy*]

So I’m spending the summer working in Buenos Aires. You had some time to kill between six months in Brazil and your flight home, and asked if you could stay with me for a few days. Okay. I’m a nice girl. After all, we’re both from the same midwestern small town, and so few of us actually get out, there has to be some sort of solidarity, right? I haven’t really seen you since high school, maybe twice a year, but you crashing a few days at my studio can’t be that bad. (Right, studio. As in one big room).

So you get here. You are, by my estimate, saving $60USD by staying with me for a week (yeah I’m not sure where the few days stretched into seven, but okay). That’s based on a per-night price of $8 at a hostel. Which would be in a bunk room. Without security for your valuables. Or a kitchen. Or cable. So we’ll say you’re saving around $140. Do you bring me any sort of thank you gift? Absolutely not. Ohhh wait. There was the one brazilian candy you gave me. You know, the one candy out of the entire box of them. That was really sweet.

I let you have some of the expensive sushi that I had ordered. You were still hungry, so you ate some leftovers in the fridge I had been saving for lunch the next day. Okay. So then over the course of the next seven days you consume: my milk, my orange juice, my cornflakes (the unopened box is almost empty), my granola, my peanut butter, my eggs, and my pasta. I think the list would have been several paragraphs longer, but I took you grocery shopping. Right. I suggested that you go grocery shopping to buy some food for yourself, then I escorted you to the store. Oh and then you also used my laundry detergent. Not all of it though. You left about a teaspoon in the bag, and when I asked why you bothered, you said, “I didn’t want to use it all”. Right. Thanks.

Your laptop is broken so you have to use mine. First of all, I hate people using my computer. That’s why it’s password protected. Second of all, there’s an internet café literally right across the street. But oh no. My poor mac was submitted to hours upon hours of your usage. I swear you f**ked something up; it had frozen maybe once before in the two years I’ve had it, and then in the past week, it freezes daily. But oh no, when I asked, you have no knowledge of this.

Oh and then there was the day that I invited you out with my Argentine boyfriend and some of his friends and I. You rolled up to the club in a espn hoodie that I swear you had in high school and tennis shoes. Classy. Federico and I left you in the club chatting up some girl (I was very nearly in shock upon seeing that spectacle), rushing back to my apartment for some much needed alone time. Not even five minutes after we arrived, I swear to god I had just taken off my coat, the buzzer sounds. “Yeah …. I should have just come with you guys.” Translation: I missed the Guy + Girl + Empty Apartment = equation. Wow, I have never seen Fede so mad.

So then the maid came and yelled at me because apparently under the sublet contract I can’t have guests. And because, in break my ghetto-south american queen bed apart to form the two separate twin beds that it had originally been, I apparently used the sheets that I wasn’t supposed to use. And now I have to take them to the cleaners. When I explained this, did you realize that the reason I was going to have to pay for all of this bedding to be laundered is because you were here? Because, you know, an offer of reimbursement might have been nice.

You had been planning on staying here again after traveling around Argentina and before flying back to the States. So when I said that I didn’t think that would be a good idea, based on what the maid said (I was absolutely thrilled to have an excuse) you had the nerve to get an attitude. “Well it’s only one night”. Right. One night your ass is going to be sleeping in a hostel.

Oh and then there was the last night that you stayed here. I had only been counting down to it for four days or so. You decide to go out with a friend that you know in the city. Shocking, because you had never had plans of your own before, and did whatever I did. Naturally you didn’t invite me to join you. No, I did not want to. But hello, you’re my guest. Anyway. So I give you my keys (yeah, only having one set was a pain in the f**king ass all week as I rearranged my schedule to let you in). Four am, I hear you come in. I’m sleeping because you know, it’s a Wednesday. I work tomorrow. You’re in the bathroom for a while hiccupping. And then you come and lay in your bed. Thankfully I managed to build a barricade between the two so I didn’t have to watch you sleeping. But I hear your breathing change and you’re asleep. Six am, I’m woken up, and when my eyes adjust, I realize someone is coming into my room from the balcony. After my heart skips about four beats, I realize there’s nobody in your bed and indeed, it’s you sneaking into the room. You are trying to fit into the approximate six inch gap that you’ve made in the sliding glass door. I don’t know why you don’t just slide the glass, genius, but whatever. And you’re feeling along the wall as if you’re blind, or in some sort of spy movie. “What are you doing?” You don’t respond. “Hey. What are you doing”. “I’m just …. just looking for something I left in Brazil”. “What the f**k. Just go to bed.” I get up and go to the bathroom. Come out. The main door is open and you’re standing in the hallway waiting for the elevator. In your boxers. WHAT THE f**k. “Go in and go to bed.” “I’m just ….. just looking” “I don’t care. Go to bed”. I deadbolt the door behind you so you can’t escape and cause some sort of disaster that will inevitably get me kicked out of my apartment building. You go lie in bed, mumbling, and I’m awake for the next hour.

So you finally left today. Didn’t get to talk to you about the nighttime incident, because you were still sleeping when I went to work, but you took your things and parted. Doing your dishes for once, which I appreciate, although you did a shit job of it. After stripping the sheets and taking them to the laundry, recreating my faux queen bed, and sterilizing the surfaces that you were most likely to have touched, I finally went to the bathroom.

And opened the toilet to find a floating piece of shit that you had left behind.

Thank you. I really could not have come up with a more poetic ending to my saga. Shit guest, you have officially ended my Midwest Solidarity campaign. I hope you enjoy the hostel.

I was on craiglist and encountered this rant about a person who had let someone stay over for a while.

And it got me thinking "God damn i know what shes talking about." For example My fiances brother is kinda like owen wilsons character in "You,Me&Dupree".So he pretty much wore out his welcome in like 10 mins.

So with that said.Do you like having guests stay a couple of days or one night (SLUMBER PARTY!)?Or do you just like to return to the tranquility of your normal life?

[0nadia0]

Ahhh that sucks! I would hate for that to happen to me! I don't mind it when guests stay over at my place, just if they don't act like that.
There was this one time when my cousin was visiting and stayed over at my place for a month, sleeping in my room, using my bathroom, eating my food, then complaining about it all. But I guess it's nothing like what happened to that person