I don’t really find that strange. My eyes aren’t the greatest, and have a real problem with (to me) underlit rooms. I can’t use CFL’s. I feel like I have to get one of those helmet lamps.
I see where you’re coming from, but it seems like a weird request to make as a houseguest. We use the same wattage bulbs throughout the house, and it’s not like I have a secret stash of 150-watters somewhere.
I wouldn’t make a request like that normally, but it depends. I wouldn’t stay at someone’s house unless we were close enough to be like family, and a request like that wouldn’t make anyone feel strange. I’d probably say “hey, can I buy some brighter bulbs and give you a few bucks for the extra electricity?” If a request like that created an awkward tension, we really aren’t very close friends, and I shouldn’t be there.
I have to admit to doing this one time by mistake. I was used to the one at my apartment where the shower activator thingy would automatically drop back down when you cut off the water.
Some of my own peeves:
–Dried toothpaste spit on the side of the sink.
–Discolored towels due to makeup remover.
Pretty minor compared to some of the nightmares I’ve read so far.
Putting the soap inside the tooth glass, thus rendering the soap unusable, and giving anyone who uses the glass a mouthful of soapy water. Not once, but repeatedly.
When people “help themselves” to the TV, Xbox, Computer, Wii, etc. without asking. Especially the computer, I often have important and private work going on. If you want to surf or check email, ask me damn it, and I’ll log you on as a ‘guest.’
And my guitar, don’t touch it. Don’t point at it. Don’t even look at it. This interview is over!
Thank you for the post-traumatic flashbacks.
We had a houseguest a few years ago. Three days turned into three weeks, during which time we had to put up with:
[ul]
[li]Half-empty two-liter bottles of Coke sitting uncapped on the dining-room floor, waiting to be knocked over.[/li][li]The same half-empty two-liter bottles of Coke sitting two feet from the kitchen sink and trash can.[/li][li]The minute Airman or I had to get up to go to the bathroom or get a sandwich or soda, the houseguest would get on our computer and browse his Facebook and Myspace pages, then stay on until he was finished. Did I mention this was the end of the semester, when we had final projects due?[/li][li]Wheedling to borrow our cars to do whatever, but not so much as offer a few bucks for gas.[/li][/ul]
Yeah, I know. I needed to quit being such a fucking doormat. But it wasn’t me being the doormat. I have no problems saying “no” under those conditions, and I did. I don’t care if you’re my guest. It’s my space, I’m letting you use it, and you’d better stay out of my way.
Robin
Robin
Seems like there’s a difference between “guest” and “taking someone in,” here.
I can’t imagine thinking towards a guest: “I’m letting you use it, and you’d better stay out of my way.”
When people arrive at my door and I open it and say, “Hi! Welcome. Please come right in before the cat gets out.” And then my guests stand there, slack-jawed, in front of the open door like cattle while Houdini Cat stalks the open door and prepares his grand escape. I’m trying to be welcoming and cordial and get you to step. inside. the. house. now. so I can close the door.
I’ll say it again, really nicely, “Come in, come in, before Kitty discovers the door is open” with a little more urgency in my voice.
If I have to say it a third time, I will shove my guest out of my way and say in a much more rude tone, “Look out! Kitty’s making a break for it!”
And if Kitty manages to slip by, I make the guest go outside and hunt his ass down.
All I really wanna say is “Goddammit, who in the hell stands there in front of an open door?”
Selfish Dumbasses.
Years ago I had a friend who would walk in and stop 6" inside the door, then start removing his coat and talking. Every. Fucking. Time.
A group of us went to visit a friend. It was 20 FUCKING BELOW outside. Dumbass is the first in the door. Stops dead, starts removing his coat and talking. Warm air pouring out of the house, literally a fog around us from the warm moist inside air hitting the bone dry -20f outside air, the rest of us standing on the porch shivering. Host repeatedly asking him to step out of the way and let us in. The rest of us asking him to move. Dumbass gets angry and tells us to be patient, because he’s taking off his coat. Finally I grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved/forced him forward to where the rest of us could get in and close the door. Host thanks me profusely. Dumbass screams at me for shoving him.
If I’d have had more sense, after grabbing him I shouldn’t have shoved him forward, I should have pulled him outside and thrown him in the snowbank. Then the rest of us could walk inside and close the door on him.
Ah yes. Thanks, Chimera, for reminding me of the other reason I hate the door-loiterers: I am not air conditioning my entire block. I only use heat for two months out of the year, but I run the A/C like ten months out of the year.
Close the damn door.
My dad and stepmonster were staying with me once and I woke up to find my front door wide open. At that time, the A/C was on (because they were hot, so I turned it on for them), and I had Houdini cat and Catzilla, and my little dog. Nobody was accustomed to being let out untethered in the front yard. I got out of bed and found the cats standing the living room, staring at the open door in horror. (The dog was in the bed with me.) I reamed my stepmonster a new asshole and her excuse was: it was easier for them to load their car up and besides, it wasn’t hot enough yet in the day for the A/C to kick on. So fine. Leave the storm door open and close the screen door, so I’m not running all over the neighborhood collecting my cats.
This is not your house. The next time I go to your house, I’m firing up a fat stogie right in your living room, and I’m tapping my ash on your carpet. Backatcha. 
It’s mostly an attitudinal thing with me. I don’t mind houseguests, and will cook and clean and entertain as long as it’s on a social basis. The company of my guests is all that’s expected.
OTOH, I do have a problem with being taken advantage of. Someone who helps himself to our time, computer, utilities, car, and so forth with no effort to compensate for the utilities, gas, or who expects me to cater to his every whim is not someone who is welcome in my home, because that’s not a guest, that’s a mooch. Toward the end of Houseguest’s stay, there were some indications that he was lying about his circumstances, and frankly, I’m not sure he ever intended to move out except on his schedule. To cap it off, my sister-in-law agreed to co-sign a lease, which he skipped out on, leaving her on the hook for $4500. To sum up, this guy was a real piece of shit.
Robin
Speaking as a lapsed Orthodox Jew, the reasoning as I understood it was generally some combination of:
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Observing dietary restrictions is supposed to remind us of our duty to God, and of the pain of the Jews during Passover (etc.). Basically, we’re a people who have not always had the luxury of doing whatever we want, and voluntarily imposing the inability to eat whatever we want upon ourselves is a way of reminding us of that. You can summarize this as “keep Jews on their toes”.
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“People who don’t eat pigs don’t act like pigs”, as an esteemed Air Force rabbi once told me. Remember that this does not imply that “people who do eat pigs do act like pigs”. The idea here is that Leviticus expressly forbids pork (etc.) as an abomination unto the Jewish people, and kosher is just one of the many additional requirements that make up the greater moral burden on the so-called “chosen” people. I suppose the practical application of this is discipline. It’s not that any one requirement, like observing kosher or keeping the Sabbath holy, is seen as a more valuable use of time and money than other things; it’s that Jews are supposed to have a covenant with God which includes doing a whole bunch of these little things in exchange for protection and the ticket to heaven and all that stuff.
Do keep in mind that “aren’t there better things you could spend the effort on?” might be a little offensive to those people who sincerely believe that keeping kosher (etc.) is part of the whole package of things they must do to keep the good favor of a vengeful God. It’s pretty serious business to them, as it should be if they’re going to be into that kind of stuff. Doesn’t necessarily line up with my personal opinion, but that’s a topic for another thread.
Why doesn’t your husband talk to him about the cultural difference?
Like **levdrakon **said, I’ve had some good guests apparently.
But the one thing I can’t deal with is people doing illegal stuff at my apartment.
It hasn’t happened because anybody who knows me, knows I can’t have it.
Any guests, whether they’re there for the evening or for a week, know not to do anything against the law. If they ask, I tell 'em to go do what they need to do outside, way away from the property. I also tell them that if they’re caught I don’t know them.
It works well. See, what you do before you get here or after you leave doesn’t matter.
But dude, if you wanna drink and dance and be silly and eat and crash it’s all good!
Aside from that, I’m not too picky. Anything can be cleaned up, wiped off, or replaced somehow.
Holy gods. No one, and I mean no one, touches my Le Creuset pieces but me if they know what’s good for them. I’d have been forced to brain the bugger that burned eggs into my skillet.
The only time I remember being really ticked off was when my sister-in-law visited us in the Bay Area and helped herself, without asking, to a bunch of my baking staples. That was annoying enough, but she used them to make big batches of Christmas cookies and then told us to keep our mitts off them because she was going to take them as gifts to all the other people in the area she was visiting.
Oh HELLS NO. Somebody makes cookies in my house, I damn sure better get to eat some. Especially if they’re made with MY groceries! Why has this story upset me so much? None of me friends would ever do that.
Wow. Stories like these are the reason that only close friends and relatives we actively like are invited into our home. None of them would ever even think about committing the atrocities seen here.
Case in point: Back in 2001 my then wife was in a car accident and required pins and plates in her right foot. We moved her into the guest room so I wouldn’t jostle her as she slept. She was ordered to be as immobile as possible for the first week or so after the surgery - bed to wheelchair to bathroom and back. Period.
We both smoked but always smoked outside. For the duration of her enforced bedrest we bought a smokeless ashtray and tabletop air filter for that room. Our best friend came over to visit and give me a break from caretaking responsibility.
Despite the fact that both my wife and myself were smoking in the room, our friend excused herself to the back patio for a cigarette. When we assured her it was okay for her to smoke in the room for the next few days, she was still hesitant to do it.
Gag!
I just thought I would suggest giving everyone their own little plate of butter tabs sliced off a stick, that way there is no “cross contamination” of of the butter. No putting a community butter stick on the table.
If you use tub butter, you could get miniature bowls (like individual salt cellars)and give everyone their own butter that way.
Best part is, no having to tell grandma to ‘knock it off, that’s nasty!’
Amen, brother! I count myself lucky though. At least he didn’t grab some Comet and a metal scour to clean it. Well, at least not before I discovered the pan. Yes, after I bitched, I did have to stop him from doing that.