This weekend my fiance and I invited 10 of our friends to his family’s beach house. We provided all the food and alcohol, everyone had a great time, and by all accounts it was a resounding success. However something has been at the back of my mind since then - most of our guests didn’t help out with the cooking and cleaning.
My fiance thinks it was similar to a dinner or house party, where you wouldn’t expect guests to set up or help clean. But my feeling is that a weekend is different from a few hours, and that it would have been gracious for our friends to have helped out a little more.
For instance, my fiance and I were the last to get up Sunday morning, and nobody had even started to clean up from Saturday night. They’d made themselves breakfast, but no one had stacked the dishwasher or thrown out the plastic cups, or even cleaned the utensils they’d used to make breakfast. I cleaned up while they chatted at the table, and only after all the work was done and I had sat down did they ask if there was anything they could help with.
I don’t expect people to sweep or to polish the windows, but as a guest I’ve always tried to help out by doing the dishes, helping with dinner, or setting the table. My fiance thinks that makes me an unusually good guest, rather than our friends being unusually poor guests, but I think that helping out is just what guests should do.
I’m not actually as resentful as this post makes me sound, and I didn’t communicate my irritation to my friends. But I’m just a little taken aback, and now I’m wondering if I’m being reasonable or if my fiance is right.
As a guest I would never dream of not at least offering to help with the housework if I was staying overnight. I’ve actually been told to stop when I started washing the dishes after dinner before by my hosts, it just seems like the thing to do. In fact, I usually make sure to cook at least one meal while I’m over, usually breakfast, just because I hate to inconvenience people and I’d feel guilty letting them do everything for me.
When I’ve hosted, I’ve never required it, but everyone has always offered to help by doing small things like rinsing off dishes before I loaded them into the dishwasher. So I guess my answer is you’re both right. You shouldn’t expect it automatically, but as a polite guest they should have offered.
I think your guests were a bit thoughtless. A bunch of us spent a weekend last summer at a friend’s cabin, and we helped out where we could (her parents, who were staying with us, wouldn’t really let us do much, bless their hearts).
I always take it for granted that guests help out when they can. I don’t ask my guests to do any work, of course, but when they ask me if they can help with anything, I usually take them at their word and ask them to set the table, or stir the soup, or any other small thing that needs to be done. But YMMV, I suppose.
No, they are guests. However, it is good etiquette to help clean up as a guest. As a host, I would hope that people would help out, but if they didn’t, it isn’t that big of a deal. You always have the option of not inviting them in the future. My criteria is if they don’t help and I don’t like them, they will never get another invite. One FOAF kept on showing up for years to my annual bash without an invitation until I told my friend to quit telling the asshole when the date was.
I agree that a weekend is not the same as a dinner. It is rude not to offer to help. Your guests sound like a bunch of lazy, freeloading pigs. Stacking the dishwasher is the least they could have done.
I’ve been thinking about it a bit, and I think it also depends on the relationship of the host(s) and guest(s). If I am visiting a friend’s house but their parents are the ones actually hosting, they usually don’t let us, the guests, clean up or do anything more then maybe pass out plates. (Although if I know the parents well they’ll usually let me wash the dishes or something. If I insist.)
On the other hand, if the hosts are my friends I will help out as much as possible. Especially if the visit spans a weekend. (For dinner or drinks, it would depend on how close friends I was with the host.) And most of my peers think the same way, I think, from what I’ve observed.
I would at least expect an offer to help, or see them collecting plastic cups or drink cans to throw away. I agree with the argument that they are the guests and you are the host and therefore have the housework responsibilities, but it’s usually just a polite gesture to offer help with the cleanup.
Guests have zero responsibility to help with chores. However, good manners on their side dictates that they should offer to anyway. I can see why you don’t feel great about it and I wouldn’t either. However, it isn’t good etiquette to require specific help from any of your guests. That idea can mean that none of your guests offer the help that you need and that is the risk that you take. Requiring work (or money) of your guests means that they aren’t guests anymore but just people that exchanged entertainment for barter much like a restaurant patron washing dishes in the kitchen to pay for the meal.
There’s a world of difference between having a single guest or one couple visiting a family vs. having a whole group of friends come to a cabin or beach house. Whenever I’ve gone to friends’ cabins, I always help with the dishes and cleaning. I couldn’t imagine waking up before the host and not cleaning.
Bolding mine.
If a guest is feeling “at home” or “comfortable” or whatever enough to make themselves breakfast, they should feel more than welcome to throw away the plastic cups.
They’re unusually poor guests. A good guest would, at the very least, have offered to do something.
They made themselves breakfast and didn’t clean up?
If I’m spending time somewhere as a guest, but am comfortable enough to make myself breakfast before my hosts wake up , I’m cleaning up after myself. That’s pretty much how it goes with me, though my experience is limited to family visits and there is varying degrees of comfort depending on who I visit.
It’s pretty rude to not at least offer, and they really should have cleaned up after themselves since they made the mess in the first place.
Well, if it was a “party” weekend, they should at least pick up all the beer cans/liquor bottles, clean up the puke, and take the trash out. And don’t remake the…soiled beds. :eek: Wash the damn sheets.
I think you’ve learned something about these friends. I can’t imagine being a weekend guest and not offering to lend a hand. At least go through the motions! As a host, one shouldn’t “expect” it but at the same time, every guest should know that part of being a good guest to help out, at the very least clearing their own dishes and breakfast things. Especially with 10 people – it is much more work to clean up after 10 people than cleaning up after 1 person 10 times.
Heh, nope. I’d wanted a banana for breakfast but it turned out someone had already packed the fruit away to be taken to the beach that afternoon.
Once again, heh. Would you believe that they didn’t make the beds either. This is going to sound unbelievably petty, but what the heck. On the last day I asked people if they could strip the sheets and chuck them in the laundry basket (I would have done it myself but I didn’t feel comfortable going into their rooms when they hadn’t packed yet). The guests who had helped out over the weekend had left their doonas (comforters?) folded at the end of the bed; the guests who hadn’t helped out had left their doonas in a heap in the middle of the bed. It took me just a few seconds to straighten the doona and pillows, but I did think to myself “who the hell leaves their bed like that?!”