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Miss Manners: They invited me to brunch at their freezing mansion
Greetings, everyone! I have been enjoying reading the entries and discussion in this community, and came upon this article today that I thought I'd share:
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Link: wapo.st/4csfhDU
Dear Miss Manners:
I was invited to a brunch as the only guest. The hosts live in a 6,000-square-foot mansion, of which all of the rooms could be photographed for a slick architectural magazine.
Brunch was delicious, but the rub of the situation was that the house was 54 degrees in temperature, and it was 15 degrees outside.
I am on blood thinners and I am very cognizant of cold. When I inquired if they were having heating issues, the reply was that the house is too expensive to warm up to 68 degrees, and that they do not like large gas bills.
I left about two and a half hours later, just after the repast, with near frostbite on my fingers and toes. Would I have been remiss in telling the hosts I could not stay because the house was too cold, and I was very uncomfortable physically?
I would like to have said this before we had our meal. However, I bit my lip and suffered through the whole unpleasant situation.
Making your guests uncomfortable is, without a doubt, bad hosting.
But calling your hosts rude, setting fire to the carpet and/or leaving early are bad guesting.
So how do we get you out of there without numbing your extremities?
You could confess your entire medical history to your hosts and hope that appearing pitiful convinces them to do the right thing. But this seems to Miss Manners both demeaning and not guaranteed of success.
Better to claim not to feel well in the moment and apologize that you had to leave before the meal was served — even if doing so requires a slight numbing of your moral sensibilities.
~~~
Link: wapo.st/4csfhDU
Dear Miss Manners:
I was invited to a brunch as the only guest. The hosts live in a 6,000-square-foot mansion, of which all of the rooms could be photographed for a slick architectural magazine.
Brunch was delicious, but the rub of the situation was that the house was 54 degrees in temperature, and it was 15 degrees outside.
I am on blood thinners and I am very cognizant of cold. When I inquired if they were having heating issues, the reply was that the house is too expensive to warm up to 68 degrees, and that they do not like large gas bills.
I left about two and a half hours later, just after the repast, with near frostbite on my fingers and toes. Would I have been remiss in telling the hosts I could not stay because the house was too cold, and I was very uncomfortable physically?
I would like to have said this before we had our meal. However, I bit my lip and suffered through the whole unpleasant situation.
Making your guests uncomfortable is, without a doubt, bad hosting.
But calling your hosts rude, setting fire to the carpet and/or leaving early are bad guesting.
So how do we get you out of there without numbing your extremities?
You could confess your entire medical history to your hosts and hope that appearing pitiful convinces them to do the right thing. But this seems to Miss Manners both demeaning and not guaranteed of success.
Better to claim not to feel well in the moment and apologize that you had to leave before the meal was served — even if doing so requires a slight numbing of your moral sensibilities.
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I have very little sympathy for hosts that obviously have means, but are too skinflint to ensure their guest’s comfort.
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My family of origin kept a basket of slippers near the door for guests to borrow. Because the house was kept no warmer than 64 in winter.
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For the guest to say, "I'm very sensitive to cold" (no additional explanation should be needed), and to ask for a blanket/slippers/coat
For the hosts to think ahead and to turn up the heat (surely a few hours of heat wouldn't have bankrupted them)
For the hosts to buy a space heater or two
etc.
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...just to add:
("But calling your hosts rude, setting fire to the carpet and/or leaving early are bad guesting.")
...esp. the "setting fire to the carpet" idea...;)
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Also, keeping a house too cold puts dwellers at risk for hypothermia and circulation problems. At the very least the hosts could have installed portable space heaters in the rooms they were using. LW was right to leave early.
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Re: burst pipes, you bring up a good point, and one I'd not considered.
And yes, I wondered how the hosts themselves manage at that temp all winter...I mean, I could see keeping the house temp in mid-60s, but 54? no.
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Low house temperatures in winter = increased risk of heart attacks.
I saw an official research paper by the New Zealand government's health department about it, they quantified that there were
X heart attack deaths in New Zealand in winter
but there would be [less than X] deaths if people could afford to heat their home to the minimum safe levels.
And there are lots of places in the US that get colder than New Zealand.
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