Courage to continue After I messed up...

[Patti191]

It has been a crazy few weeks.... Refrigerator  quit working ... I was unable to get one locally due to supply chain issues with COVID so I ordered one.  I was able to find an old one to get by until the new one arrived.  The day before the new one arrived I sold the old one that got me by.  The new one arrived damaged ... I was so upset they would need to reorder.  I looked at my calendar and I was positive I had no upcoming reservations for about 10 days and blocked my calendar.  Tonight I was at my property putting the bedrooms together and general cleaning.  I did not have everything put together as I was not expecting anyone.  About 10:00 my Ring doorbell alerted and I looked and someone was in the driveway.  I panicked looked at my calendar then the reservation popped up.  I rushed over let them in finished up some cleaning apologized profusely about no refrigerator and returned half of their reservation fee.  I am so upset with myself.  I have never done that ... I am a detail person and am so disappointed in myself.  I have worked hard for my 5 star super host and probably threw it all away tonight... this year has just sucked... first being closed up for three months ... lots of cancellations... finally some bookings and  then the refrigerator quitting with none to be found...  I will endure just sick about messing up and seriously I do not know why I did not see their reservation on my calendar.  Wish I could turn back the clock even just a few hours...  

[Paul1255]

Hey @Patti191  I hope you’re well.

It certainly sounds like you’ve had a tough time of 2020 so far, and your guest turning up when you didn’t realise they were coming must have been hard. (If it even was a mistake on your part, maybe there was a calendar glitch or you didn’t receive notifications of the booking?)

It sounds like you dealt with it in the best way possible, we all make a hosting mistake at some point- it’s a numbers game, the more guests we host the more likely it is to happen.

At times when we are feeling like we’ve messed up or let ourselves down it’s hard to see anything else but that negative event, so I thought a reminder of the 77 times when you did amazingly well might be in order 🙂 

[Katrina79]

@Patti191 I completely agree with Paul. Cut yourself some slack for doing the best you can and let this blunder go. I hope your current guests will appreciate your genuine honesty and be understanding. 

[Mark116]

@Patti191  You can't change the past, try to analyse what happened with the calendar, can you get a small size refrigerator locally so there is at least someplace for them to store a couple of items?  Humility goes a long way, apologize, maybe bring them something local as a gift, hope they are nice.   But, also, why didn't they reach out to you at all, that's weird, unless you have a total self check in w/no contact, otherwise, you'd think they would have messaged you to confirm their arrival time and check in procedure.