Staying at someone else’s house for a few days can often lead to interesting situations where you don’t know what you’re supposed to do. Everyone handles the minutiae of life differently, and the last thing you want to do is offend or annoy your gracious hosts by double-dipping a chip or drinking directly out of the OJ carton.
In the spirit of those scenarios, what follows is 5 House Guest Situations that may or may not have occurred while I was staying with Tyler and his family last week. I’ll tell you how I handled each one, and you can let me know if you would have done the same thing.
(To be clear, though these are written as if they all occurred, I might have made a few of them up.)
5 House Guest Scenarios
Scenario 1 – The Q-Tip: There was a jar of Q-Tips on the sink in their bathroom so I used one to clean my ears. After using it, there was some visible wax on each end of the Q-Tip. Should I drop it in the wastebasket? What if this family doesn’t clean their ears with Q-Tips, sees my soiled cotton stick in the basket, and thinks I am gross? What if they always wrap their used Q-Tips in toilet paper so no one has to see someone else’s ear wax? Should i stick it in my pocket and dispose of it later?
What I did: I dropped the Q-Tip into the trash basket and made sure it landed in a somewhat obscure position. If I was going to be judged for having a little wax in my ears, so be it.
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Scenario 2 – The Twitter Hijack: Tyler and I have been racing to 1000 Twitter Followers and he’s currently destroying me 929-778. He left himself logged in to Twitter on his laptop, which I had full access to all week. I could have stayed up all night and blocked everyone who follows him. I could have wrote 929 tweets offending every single one of his followers personally. I could have taken a ball peen hammer to his laptop and destroyed it, which wouldn’t have hurt his Twitter numbers but would have made him angry.
What I did: I hijacked his account twice (here and here), but opted to go the playful route instead of the malicious route. I’m sure he would have done something mean and nasty to me, and because of that, you should go unfollow him immediately.
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Scenario 3 – The Garage Door: We got home late the first night and went right to bed. I got up a little later to get some more water in the kitchen and noticed the garage door was open. Do I close it for them and do a good deed? What if I leave it open and the house gets broken into and we all die? What if they want me to leave it open because their 2-year old likes to go outside for a cigarette around 4am?
What I did: I left it open and went to bed. If the house does get broken into, maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll screw with Tyler’s twitter followers as they’re stealing his computer.
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Scenario 4 – The Pee: I got up around 3:30am and headed to the upstairs bathroom to pee. When i got up there I noticed the last person to pee had not flushed. (note: this does not gross me out at all.) Knowing that their children were asleep across the hall, I wondered if the reason for the bowl of yellow was because the noise of the flush might wake up the kids. Do I add my own pee to the mix and let it mellow? Do I flush it and hope no one hears? Do I just go outside and pee and avoid the toilet altogether?
What I did: I added to the yellow and let it mellow, after all, it’s only pee. And besides, there’s nothing worse than waking up someone else’s kids.
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Scenario 5 – The Toiletries: I decided to save $15 by not checking my carry-on bag on my return flight home. Only problem was, I couldn’t take my hair gel, shaving cream, and aftershave with me. Considering all 3 were almost newly purchased, that’s about $10 worth of product that I was ditching. So do I throw them out or do I leave them as a gift for Tyler? Is it gross to use someone else’s shaving and hair products?
What I did: I cleaned all 3 products up to look shiny and new and I left them sitting on the bathroom sink. Figured it wasn’t gross to leave them, and he could decide whether or not he wanted to use them.
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So, do you think I should have played any of these out differently?
Had these scenarios happened to you, how would you have handled them?