How do you handle 'time vampires'?

[Huma0]

Hello everyone, I wanted to ask how home hosts handle guests who require an awful lot of your time and company to the point where it's hard to get on with your work, tasks or to have a moment to yourself. Let's call them the Time Vampires.

The Time Vampire loves to stay with a home host, not simply because they enjoy the interaction but because they desperately need the company and attention. When they book a room, they feel like they also booked the host and that you belong to them for the duration of their stay (and sometimes even beyond). They expect you to spend every waking hour with them and never leave your side.

Here's how to spot a Time Vampire:

- I am a chatty person, but the Time Vampire will not ever want to end a conversation or let you take a break from it. Once you start chatting to them, they will not let you get away, to the point that you can't eat, take a shower, get to bed etc. etc. 

- If you tell them you have something urgent to do, like make an important phone call, they will ignore you and carry on talking.

- They will interrupt whatever you are doing. If you are cleaning, they tell you to stop and hang out with them instead. If you are trying to work, they will hover around you, trying to make conversation or showing you silly YouTube videos.

- If you try to escape, they will follow you around the house. They might even wait for you outside the toilet so they don't lose a minute of your time.

- They will want you to accompany them when they go out and, even if you have a valid excuse not to, will keep insisting.

- They will tell you very personal things about themselves and ask you intimate questions or make very personal comments about you. They want to see what you are doing on your laptop, phone, or writing in your diary. 

- What's yours is theirs. They will expect to eat/drink whatever you are having. They will help themselves to your personal items. They especially love opening things. Anything that is still brand new in the packaging must be unwrapped, even if they aren't going to use it.

- They will invade your space. The only part of my four-storey house that isn't communal is my bedroom. That is the one private space I can retreat to. The Time Vampire will want to come in to have a look, or they will try to get you out of bed in the morning so you can share coffee or breakfast. They have clearly been waiting for you and are starting to lose patience. Sadly, they are not just nocturnal.

How do you handle this type of guest, i.e. maintain your sanity, protect your personal space, not let your time be needlessly eaten away and still keep this especially friendly guest happy?

[Sarah977]

@Huma0  That's a really funny story.

One of my daughters went to Nepal when she was 19, and although she went with a friend, the woman got sick and went back to Canada after about 6 weeks, so my daughter was travelling alone. 

She's one of those people who always tries to see the best in everyone, is a huge empath, and is super sweet, with never a harsh word for anyone. She puts other's needs and feelings above her own, isn't very assertive regarding her own needs, often to her detriment.

Of course, as a young, cute, female solo traveler, she was constantly being harrassed by men, nothing dangerous, just an ongoing annoyance to field.

The last day she was there, after 4 months, she was taking a walk around a lake when she saw a guy on a bicycle pedalling in her direction. As soon as he reached her, he stopped and started to try to talk to her. She told me, "Mom,  I don't know what came over me, because I never talk to people like this, but I blurted out, 'Look, I know exactly what questions you're going to ask me, because every man in Nepal asks me the same questions, I know exactly when your English vocabulary is going to run out- I've been in Nepal for 4 months, I'm flying back to Canada tomorrow, and I just want to take a quiet walk by myself without being hassled.' "

The guy said, "I'm really sorry", and pedalled away. She said that was the first time she really felt confident that she could look after herself wherever she went. It took her finally giving vent to her feelings of annoyance to find her assertiveness.

[Huma0]

@Sarah977 

I really sympathise with your daughter's story. One of the advantages of being an 'older' woman is not having to deal with that type of unwanted attention.

When I was at school, we were given self-defence classes, but what would have been more useful is to have learnt how to assert ourselves and deal with these types of situations that happen every day for most young women (and also young guys to a certain extent). No one actually taught us that. 

I wonder if that has changed now with #MeToo etc.? Perhaps young women are more assertive now because they feel empowered to be and know that it's okay to tell someone, "No, I don't want this attention. Leave me alone."

I know I certainly struggled with it when I was young.

[Sarah977]

@Huma0  Thankfully, I have never experienced this with any of my home share guests. Some are certainly more chatty than others, but I've never had any who followed me around trying to monopolize my time if I was obviously busy, nor ignored me saying I needed to get to work on my projects. And none have ever helped themselves to my stuff. They might ask if they could use some of my milk or yogurt, but they have always replaced it the following day when they go shopping.

I did have one guest who almost never shut up, but she was out and about most of the time, so it wasn't too overwhelming. And another who was quite "heavy" and obviously loved to eat, took photos of all the restaurant meals she had here and insisted on showing them to me.

Funny, because I'm someone who finds food and cooking quite boring, and only eat because I have to in order to survive.

But she was otherwise quite sweet and harmless and actually had pretty interesting things to talk about, so she didn't bug me.

Perhaps you are being too politely British, but as others have pointed out, these types often don't even take blatant hints. But maybe instead of just saying you have to make a phone call, try, "You know, I'd love to be able to sit and chat with you, but I really have a lot to attend to on a daily basis. Maybe we can catch up over coffee tomorrow morning."

This approach might help in that you are giving them the impression you enjoy their company, no matter how false that is, instead of trying to dismiss them, and giving them a time frame as to when you would be open to giving them some attention.

When I first started hosting,  I thought about how long I could put up with a guest I might not like, so have a 2 week maximum. If a good guest wanted to extend, or a guest I had had before and liked asked to stay for a month, I would definitely be open to that. But I don't want any full time roommates- if I did, I would just rent the room out directly to someone of my choosing long-term.

With 3 private rooms and a lot of your guests staying long term, it seems way more challenging, because they are essentially roommates. And the longer they stay, the more comfortable they  feel and the more they feel it's their home. 

I guess you could take it as a compliment that they want to hang out with you 🙂

Someone once told me a quote from the writer William Burroughs about toxic people. It went something like, "If you feel like you've just lost a pint of blood, cut 'em loose."

[Huma0]

@Sarah977 

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@Sarah977 wrote:

"If you feel like you've just lost a pint of blood, cut 'em loose."

---

Great quote. Yep, I've had to do this in my private life with toxic friends, including a cousin that I was very close to throughout my childhood and twenties. When I think back to the evening that prompted me to cut her her loose, it was exactly like that. I felt that I had just lost a pint of blood.

Of course, with guests, it's a bit harder to cut 'em loose, but certainly a more direct approach might work better. I have had to say no firmly to guests who keep insisting, e.g. "NO, I'm really sorry but I cannot hang out in your room listening to you play guitar because I have new guests coming tomorrow and MUST clean the house," or, "I'm sorry, but I can't go out dancing with you because I really HATE dancing."

These were both male guests. I find it much easier saying no to a man than to a woman. I've found that throughout my career. I've had no problem being direct with, or standing up to, male bosses, but when I've had difficult female managers, I've really struggled. 

Do you think that having brought up your own daughters has helped you in handling your female guests? I'm not saying that female guests are more difficult than male ones, but they make up a much higher proportion of my bookings, so I'm more likely to encounter a female Time Vampire than a male one.

[Anne10908]

OMG this is why my introverted self, rents out the entire garden level suite vs doing house shares.  While I have debated host and self-check-in, I also do self-check-in as I do not want to be waiting up for guests.  Yesterday's guests (a nightmare of its own, see my post on New Year Shenanigans Started) for instance checked in after 9pm (saw that through exterior ring camera), when check-in is at 4pm.  With Self-check-in, they can show up whenever, so yes I take steps to protect from the TVs (Time Vampires)

[Till-and-Jutta0]

As we host since 2010 and share a private room in our apartment with guests from all over the world, I know these situations very well. From time to time you unavoidably experience

1. host fatigue
2. guests who’s company is not welcome

People who steal your time you can find also elsewhere: The bus passenger sitting next to you, or in the doctor’s waiting room – talking to you, and you are not interested at all in paying attention to their stories. If you don’t stop them in time, you’re lost. And that can happen at your home as well, with your flat share roommates, but also with your Airbnb guests, as some guests don’t book just a room, but also a person with whom they can communicate. Otherwise they would have chosen a hotel room.

On the other hand, we have met so many lovely guests, had so many deep conversations, at the shared breakfast table or at a common dinner. Now, during the pandemic, I miss that. Because home sharing just for money is not enough compensation for all the effort. I also need the human relationship.

If you encounter a negative situation, it’s not the guest’s sole responsibility. It’s all about finding the right balance, and about matching:

1. When host fatigue starts, we just block the calendar, and take an internal holiday.
2. When I feel that I’m not comfortable with a guest, I ask myself what went wrong.
   It took some years until we succeeded in the right matching between guest and host. We adapted our listing accordingly, we have a clear Airbnb profile, and prior to booking we communicate with our potential guests.

This has been very important especially this year, when we had longer stays. I have to admit that we did not succeed in all cases. But it has been always an interesting experience, and though we are no professionals, we handled it in a professional way.

A Happy New Year to all – and Happy Hosting!

[Huma0]

@Till-and-Jutta0 

Happy New Year!

You make very valid points. However, I'm not talking here about guests who are simply chatty and want to interact with the host. I'm a very chatty person myself and I usually like the long conversations over the dining table. I host long term guests now and have spent a lot of time with recent guests, chatting, sharing dinner etc. and thoroughly enjoying it. One couple needed a lot of advice as they were relocating to the UK and looking for a long term apartment and finding it difficult. I really didn't mind at all helping them with this. They appreciated it, rather than expected it.

The Time Vampire is a different kettle of fish, as we say here. This is someone who doesn't understand boundaries at all. They do not respect your time, nor your personal space and they have an expectation that you will do everything for them. Quite often, they appear to be 'helpless', unable to do anything for themselves.

Host fatigue for sure is a thing. I have experienced it from time to time, particularly when hosting very messy guests or those that keep breaking rules or breaking things!

I don't think that was a factor when I was hosting these Time Vampires. I had other guests staying at the same time who did not stress me out at all. The other guests will often comment on the odd behaviour of the Time Vampire guest. 

[Huma0]

@Till-and-Jutta0 

As for your point about finding the right match, I do try, but sometimes a bad match slips through the net. The problem with the Time Vampire guests is that they don't always reveal themselves until they are already in your home! You would think there would be obvious red flags in the correspondence, like an over familiarity in tone or expecting the host to plan every detail of their itinerary, asking lots of questions about things they could easily just look up themselves, but no. More often, there are not obvious signs.

I am looking back over the correspondence with my worst ever Time Vampire to see if there are red flags.

- The guest instant books and sends a message responding to my pre-booking questions (which is good as a lot of guests seem to miss this). 

- I ask her a few more (standard) questions, which she responds to in a friendly way. She asks me a couple of simple questions, which I answer and she thanks me. All messages are friendly, but not overfamiliar. No red flags at all.

It's only on check in day that I realise she is flaky. We had agreed a check in time of 3pm (my window is 3-9pm), which she had said worked perfectly for her flight. At midday, she messages to say she's running early and is on her way! I politely told her sorry, no can do, previous guest just checked out and I have to get the room ready. She said no problem, she'll grab lunch in the meantime.

It was during the check in tour that I actually realised she was completely nuts.

[Kitty-and-Creek0]

@Till-and-Jutta0 

Thanks for your intelligent and very clear statement. You hit it totally on the head, I could not say it any better.

We are in the wilderness, in a very rural region, without neighbors, and we offer a wing of our spacious home to guests. We've so missed the lovely energy of hosting guests during this pandemic. We offer them the R&R they seek and we get to share this outrageous place with them. The giving and the sharing is a warm privilege that is nourishing to us; with or without socializing. Guests are so excited to be here, and express it in their individual ways.  The ones that bubble over are doing their best to let us know, and some choose to spend more time with us than others. Often it is cultural, and we have traveled widely enough to understand that. Others are interested in soaking up the particular vibe we have acquired from 30 years on the mountain. That is lovely too, and we can gift them that association for the time they are here. It is easy to gently put up boundaries, verbally and nonverbally, if it becomes necessary. 

As you stated clearly, host self-care is important. You have worked it out, as have we. 

May the newest year bring us all what we need, and the blessing of gifting that to our amazing guests as well.