I have been host for almost 5 years and have 3 airbnb's in my backyard which is a small urban farm. Two of them share an outdoor composting toilet and shower. I recently had 2 ladies in their late 60's book one of them. They arrived around 11.00pm and made a racket loud enough to wake up the neighbors and other guests. Even though they were in the bottom of the garden, I could hear them from my house. I was about to get out of bed when the noise quieted down. Next morning I was up early watering the garden and headed down to check on their toilet when I see the door is wide open and there is a bum being wiped (in full view of all my other guests and the street). I retreated but noticed that next thing she sat down and did her morning business still with the door wide open and then another full-view wiping session ensued. I went down there to take care of checking the toilet only to find there was a pile of poop which had been stood in on the floor, and down the front and around the toilet (which had been poorly wiped). I cleaned it all, washed and sanitized the bathroom because I knew that one of my other guests would be heading down that way soon and went to discuss toilet hygiene with them and tell them that as their host I would never expect to have to deal with poop. Next thing, 3x times before 7am, I had to head down to ask the offending pooper to please lower her voice because if I could hear her speaking in the house, then my other guests and neighbors could most certainly hear her too. The lady whose name the booking is in (awfully sweet) left for a long day of training while the pooper stayed all day. A bit paranoid about the state of the shared toilet I kept checking during the day. The pooper could simply NOT follow simple instructions to sprinkle the provided sawdust over her doings to prevent flies, nor could she remember to latch the toilet door which kept blowing open (signs up for both these things). I tried speaking to her, made no difference. Later I messaged the booking lady about the issues of keeping noise down, following toilet instructions and latching doors. The next day I was mowing the lawns when I noticed the pooper had put a bucket right in front of the shared shower. If I was a guest, from where it was placed, I would have thought the shower was out of commission or closed for maintenance. I moved the bucket back to their airbnb and next thing it had been moved to block the shower again. I explained why I'd wanted it moved but it made no difference, she just put it back. Later in the day I saw her wondering with a bowl around the garden and next thing she dumped something in one of my containers....turns out it was a bunch of food scraps which I had to get out and dispose of properly. I have to be especially vigilant about doing anything that invites vermin or flies so I provide a compost bin (marked as such and in the house rules). I just can't have people dumping food scraps wherever they please. I have to think about the conditions it breeds for all my guests. That night I asked the booking lady if we could have a chat and I went through all the house-rules her friend was breaking and how she appeared to have a total inability to take the needs of others into account. She agreed that it was unacceptable but said that her friend had lost her mother and was 'an extreme version of herself' and that she would be leaving on Aug 1st. I agreed that if she spoke to her that I would do my best to be empathetic and hang in until the 1st. But oh Lordy.....at 6am the next morning I again had to go rushing down there because she was speaking at volume 200! That was the last straw for me. Clearly she had a total inability to either 'hear' or reform her behavior. They were booked through to August 9th.
I asked them if they could find a different place that was more conducive to the poopers emotional state for the 4 days and offered to:
1) to refund the booking lady for the remaining 4 nights that her friend would still be with her so they could pay for alternative accommodation
2) for her to leave anything she wanted in the airbnb which would then be waiting to welcome her back on Aug 1st
They did find another place, I no sooner refunded them when then they cancelled the rest of the booking, so they scored. But seriously....how do you deal with a situation like this one? I'm just totally stymied and how do you even begin to rate or write a review because it's a review that's going to impact the sweet booker's name?
