My First Guests from Hell (a rant)

[Michael956]

Last night around 10:30 p.m. I was awoken by a loud commotion. I heard a woman crying and talking very loudly and incoherently right outside my front door. I looked out the peephole but saw nothing, and realized the sound was coming from the ground. My first thought was that a mentally ill homeless woman had decided to camp out on my front stoop, and then I thought of my three Airbnb guests sound asleep in their rooms who would be awakened by this noise straight out of an insane asylum. It sounded like the woman was crying on a cell phone to her mother, as she kept saying, "mom, mom". From my side of the front door I said, "I'm calling the police", in hopes that would make her leave. She angrily said, "Why are you calling the police!", and as I was turning around to get my cell phone I heard the sound of a key entering the lock and the front door opened. Rather than finding a crazed homeless woman, I was confronted by the sight of two women, a mother and daughter from Jacksonville, FL., sprawled on the ground instead of sound asleep in the their guest room as I had imagined. I was barely able to guide them down my long hallways to their room. I had to hold the mother up to keep her from falling down as she could barely walk. When I opened their bedroom door, the daughter collapsed in the bed and the mother fell down on the floor. I helped her up and she hugged me several times. When I left their bedroom door was open and the lights were on, but they were silently passed out. I went straight to my laptop and wrote to Airbnb, telling them I wanted to report their behavior and have it on record in case I need their help today in kicking them out. I then looked at the daughter's Airbnb profile and saw that she described herself as a "professional bartender and Navy wife". Figures. They both seemed like a pair of perfectly respectable middle class women when they arrived yesterday. If they are contrite and do not create another disturbance I will allow them to finish their three night reservation, but if not they will be back out on the street. This morning I am dreading facing them, as it's going to be very awkward and embarrassing, and I'm also dreading a possible complaint by the other guest. It only takes a couple of one star guest ratings to lose my "Superhost Status" and ruin the reputation I've built up on my listings. Later last night in bed my thoughts turned dark and I questioned the very concept of allowing total strangers into my home. Then I reminded myself that I've hosted over 200 complete strangers from around the world since I started seven months ago, and up to this point they've all been angels. I'm up now, and at some point I'm going to hear their bedroom door open and I'll have to put my social worker hat on and deal with them. What I never expected was that I'd have to play cop and security guard, too.  I live and host alone, so I just wanted to come here and rant to my fellow hosts who understand what this kind of situation is like.  

[Lisa723]

Wow.

[Patricia86]

Michael. 
First, don't let ABB hold the serenity of your home hostage with your Superhost status.  When we were hosting a lot, we didn't notice a change of reservations requests from when we had it, and when we didn't.  Your house is your sacred, private space, and you should be the only one who decides who is allowed inside. 

I was glad to read that you have loved almost all of your guests.  We have had some guests from hell (like the young lady who told her stalker BF where she was staying, and he showed up at our door, drunk and angry, or the young Muslim woman who sneaked her BF into the house over night, and, the next morning, her father calling us to yell at us, or the one who burned a hole in our mattress), but we have had far more wonderful guests. 

We have great memories of the women we have hosted-- from the English woman who learned to drive a stick shift with my husband, to the one whose backpack was stolen (with passport) and returned to Vallejo PD, so hubby drove her to retrieve it. 

Sorry to hear about your crazy guests.  I hope the matter is easily resolved. 

[Alexandra316]

@Michael956That really sucks. Hopefully they are contrite and embarrassed about their behaviour today and don't end up repeating it. If it's a one-time event, hopefully other guests are understanding. Honestly, if I were staying somewhere and another guest came back drunk and disorderly one night, I would think that was on the guest, not on you, especially as it didn't go on all night. 

Early in my hosting career, I hosted a mother-daughter who were in wine country for one of their birthdays. They came back drunk and disorderly, and they were driving. Their car ended up on my neighbour's lawn, and the police ended up at our door. It was horrible: they refused to be breathalized, and there was a scene. Thankfully, the neighbours were cool about it, because that could have easily ended my hosting. In that case, they did behave for the rest of their stay - they never apologized, but they didn't do anything else. I did report the incident, and they were thrown off of the platform. 

I get the feeling based on reading your other posts, you will deal with this with grace. It's a bad situation, but again, hopefully they will straighten themselves out after their embarrasment subsides. 

[Michael956]

@Alexandra316  Thanks so much for your response.  It's good to know I'm not the only one who has experienced something like this.  What is it with mothers and daughters who get so drunk together that they become out of control!?!?!  Thankfully it all ended well this morning.  The two women were very embarrassed and apologized profusely both to me and to my other Airbnb guest.  Fortunately the other guest (who was woken up by them but who later told me he quickly figured out what was happening) is very easy-going and he and the two women ended up chatting in a friendly way over breakfast.   I ended up rather liking both of them this morning, quite unlike last night when I thought they were behaving like street trash!  All of us---me, the mother and daughter, the other  Airbnb guest and two friends of mine who dropped by this morning all ended up having a lovely breakfast together and chatting non-stop for two hours over coffee.  They promised there would be no repeat of last night.  All's well that end's well! 

[Alexandra316]

@Michael956Really glad to hear that everything worked itself out! Thanks for updating: that's excellent news. 

[Shaun69]

@Michael956

Buddy you might be surprised and both ladies might apologize in the mourning! I had a situation last week where I found two guests fast asleep on the lawn at 0230, it caused me lots of worries but at 0920 they both came and apologized, that the great thing about human beings we are all totally differant!!!!!

Best of luck

Shaun

[Patricia86]

Shaun,

One of the problems with this is that neighbors are sometimes fearful of having ABB'ers in their neighborhood.  Or they simply don't like the extra traffic.  Or they just like to cause trouble.  So, apologies and contrite feelings don't really help when your neighbor is doing their best to shut your ABB business down and will use whatever ammunition it takes (like someone passed out on the lawn) to do so. 

[Michael956]

@Shaun69  Thanks, Shaun.  You're right.  As you can read above in my response to Alexandra, it all ended well this morning.   It's amazing how alcohol can turn people in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!  Cheers. 

[Ria16]

@Michael956 Nightmare indeed. Lucky they didn’t inhale on their own vomit or you would have had to deal with forensics on your door step  this morning. They must be truely seasoned if they managed breakfast. What a good soul you are.