Guest banned after offering helpful hints to hostess

[conuly]

Dear Carolyn:

"Becky" and I stayed with my brother, "Dan," and his wife, "Mae." Becky and I are recently married and this was her first stay at my brother's place.

Later she texted Mae a thank-you along with some helpful hints about some slight hosting deficiencies -- nothing too bad, just that the guest room mattress needs to be replaced, the drain in the bathtub is slow, and that a lot of people can't eat carb-heavy meals first thing in the morning. Becky would sincerely welcome if someone did this for her and thought she was doing Mae a favor.

Mae is livid and has banned us from visiting. I wish Becky had checked with me before sending the text, but Mae is really overreacting. We were really good guests -- we only stayed three days, took everyone out to meals, did all the cleanup after a big meal, and always cleaned up after ourselves, so this was a minor annoyance at best.

I said so to Dan when I was explaining that Becky meant no harm, and now he's mad at me, too. My mom lives with my brother and has asked me to mend fences so Becky and I are welcome to stay there again. Where do I start fixing this mess?

-- Banned

Becky starts fixing it with an abject and sincere apology. Wow.

And then you hope really hard that it's enough.

Mae is overreacting maybe a little -- in her place, I wouldn't have banned you (out of love for Dan) -- but for you to suggest this says you still don't get it, how awful it was to send that critique. And just to Mae, not Dan, like she's the mistress of mattresses! Ugh ugh ugh.

Seriously. Maybe Becky would "sincerely welcome" the same, but that puts her among the thickest-skinned people on earth. That, or it's just theoretical and she has never in fact received an itemized list of her hostly deficiencies that her male co-host did not.

I don't know how else to say this to you. Becky just drove a spike into the hull of your relationship with your family, and you and she both need to admit that out loud to your whole family and then start bailing as fast as you can.

This is "adapted from an online discussion" so you can see more responses here: https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/carolynhax/s-2269999?fs

Comments

[eva_rosen]

If someone did that to a woman in my family, there would be a lot of slapping. News to Becky: when you're visiting, the hosts aren't your slaves nor your maids; cleaning after yourself is not some big gesture but basic civil behavior, and criticism about the house appliances and/or the food (barring a health issue that should be told before) makes you rude and likely not welcome anymore, with excelent reason.

[cereta]

Wow. Just...wow. Shall we list the problems here? At the very least, thank you, Carolyn, for pointing out the sexism that underlies Becky just sending this to Mae, as if Mae alone were responsible for all hosting decisions, even when the guests are her husband's brother and SiL. I would probably have hit that harder, given that (1) it is clearly a sexist assumption, and (2) even if it weren't, surely the point people on any such issue should be the two who are siblings.
And yeah: if I had opened my home, including cooking apparently more than once a day, and gotten something like this back, I would not have bothered with a formal ban. I just wouldn't be opening my home again for so much as a bathroom break for quite some time.

[ambyr]

I'm stuck on "a lot of people can't eat carb-heavy meals first thing in the morning." Look, houseguest, if you don't like eating pancakes in the morning, please, by all means, tell me. It won't hurt my feelings. I don't like cooking things that people don't want to eat, and it's no big deal to make you a double serving of eggs or hand you some fruit and yogurt instead. But phrase it in terms of a lecture about what people in general can and can't eat and I'm going to roll my eyes so hard I sprain something.

[beable]

I mean all of these sound likeissues I’d want to know about but not like that!!!!

Drain: tell me at breakfast (or whenever you next see me “by the way did you know the drain in the guest bathroom is a little slow”)

breakfast: Don’t fucking lecture me about what everyone wants because that’s hella rude, but if YOU don't want carbs in the morning feel free to ask me for reasonable alternatives (reasonable = eggs without the toast, fruit, etc i.e. things I’m probably offering anyways)

mattress: um yeah, actually don’t volunteer this one, but if you must feel free to be honest if I ask you how you slept. Answering honestly might be awkward but it’s way less rude than an after the fact text message!

[edenfalling]

Yes, this! Timing and context matter.

[ambyr]

Yes. The weird part isn't mentioning that the drain needs cleaning or that eggs are preferable to toast; it's holding onto that information until it's too late for the host to do anything about it.

(I actually do want to know if my mattress isn't comfortable for visitors who are likely to be frequent repeat guests, but "the guest room mattress needs to be replaced" is not the way to do it. "The mattress was a little harder/softer than I prefer. I've found I sleep better with X type of mattress topper; if I bought one for my next visit, would storing it be an inconvenience to you?" is going to come across a whole lot better.)

[ellen_fremedon]

Huh, and I would interpret "needs to be replaced" to mean "at the end of its functional life"--drooping in the middle or coming apart at the seams. If Mae meant it as "not to my particular taste," that's ridiculously entitled.

[torachan]

Even if she meant "at the end of its functional life", that's still pretty entitled. You're coming somewhere and sleeping for free. You don't get to demand that people buy new furniture for you.

[cimorene]

This!!! You can pay for a place to sleep where you have the right to demand things about the mattress! When you're invited somewhere as a guest you get the bed they have.

[lilysea]

Even if she meant "at the end of its functional life", that's still pretty entitled. You're coming somewhere and sleeping for free. You don't get to demand that people buy new furniture for you.

I've complained about a friends mattress one time, and one time only - when the mattress was so bad that I was hobbling in absolute agony for the entire visit, barely able to walk around the house or to stand up from a seated position.

It was a very very thin, very very soft mattress and the metal bars of the bed frame dug agonizingly into your body through the mattress waking you every two hours from pain.

And that wasn't "I demand you buy a new mattress"

it was "Just so you know, if you have any more house guests with any pre existing lower back pain at all, that mattress will SEVERELY aggravate it"

and then letting them do whatever they wanted with the information, whether that was to warn people ahead of time, or buy a new mattress, or whatever.

[neotoma]

All of these things are stuff that would have been okay to mention in the moment, iow
"How did you sleep?" "Okay, but you might want to think about replacing the mattress soon" and the like.

But after the fact? As a critique as if your sister-in-law is running a B&B? Yeah, I wouldn't want you back either.

Also, going to Dan in an effort to get him to manage his wife, instead of telling Becky she needs to apologize is pretty awful of the LW.

[melannen]

Yeah, honestly the dysfunction I see here is less the criticism - it's all stuff I'd expect a visiting relative of that degree to mention if I didn't warn them about it first, with whatever degree of politeness is established in our relationship (although probably not from a new in-law on their first visit!!)

The dysfunction here is that Becky talks to Mae about house stuff; Mae talks to her husband; her husband talks to his sibling; sibling talks to Becky so that Becky can talk to Mae again; Mom talks to her kids but not either wife. If your family communication is at that level, then no, you are not at a point where you are sharing helpful housekeeping critiques.

[laurajv]

exactly — my MIL & I have exchanged this kind of info with each other about our respective guest rooms (“could you get a curtain for that ground-level window? it’s right by the bathroom so people need to walk by it naked to shower.” “the mattress in your guest room hurts my back a lot, could you think about replacing it?”), and it’s not a problem. but if i ever texted her post-visit with these kinds of complaints, she would be rightly irritated at my bringing them up in such a rude fashion.

[rosefox]

nothing too bad, just that the guest room mattress needs to be replaced, the drain in the bathtub is slow...

I burst out laughing, I admit.

Becky needs to apologize and then stop talking, possibly forever.

[moem]

Exactly. If I were Mae, I'd have told Becky that she would get her money refunded in full.

[ayebydan]

Becky needs to sort this herself. She is a rude and entitled shrew here.

I do not think Mae is overreacting AT ALL.

How rude to presume that Mae and Dan have the means to just go about fixing a drain. It clearly isn't high enough on their list to have been done already. Mattresses are all about personal preference. It might be in fine shape just too hard or soft for Becky's specific needs. I know I suffer when not in my own bed because I need a rock solid one but I don't complain to people about it. And, feel free to ask/say you're gonna eat something different.

[minoanmiss]

This is like the concrit debate applied to hosting.

Also OH BECKY NO.

ETA: for once someone's husband is entirely on her side, but in this case she's actually wrong and he's wrong to be!

[tielan]

Becky giving review-site criticism to a family member is WTF enough, but...the name choice is making me wonder if there's an additional racial element in it, too.