Dick

If you asked me two weeks ago about hosting on Airbnb, I’d have told you it’s been hard work, but rewarding.

Then we hosted a guest I’ll call Dick (not his real name, which is Morgan).

Dick was in town to watch his son play a kicking sport at one of the surrounding boarding schools, and he sounded perfectly reasonable when he inquired about staying at our place.

Our house isn’t fancy, but it’s clean, quiet, and cozy. The appliances are new, the floors refinished, and rooms freshly painted. There’s a landscaped yard with a deck, and some cool stuff like a chicken coop and reclaimed antique doors and eclectic artwork. We put effort and honestly our hearts and style choices into it.

Dick commented he was “fine” with what he dubbed our “low-end, no frills” digs when he was there by himself, but when his wife joined him, he went full-on Thurston Howell the Third, and yes, that reference dates me.

He was miffed we’ d neglected to mention in the listing that the washer and dryer are, to use his phrase, “under the house somewhere” so he never bothered to use them. We simple folk call “under the house somewhere” the basement, and ours is clean and well-lit with high ceilings and a very nice washer and dryer set.

The hot water in the kitchen didn’t work, even after he ran it for 10 minutes! We suggested he might be turning the faucet in the wrong direction, which he was. We said nothing about wasting water.

“The microwave is broken, needs replacing.” I told him it was new and should work; he answered: “not new, but cheap and easy to replace.” As it turned out, unplugging and plugging it back in fixed the problem and saved it from moldering in a hazardous waste landfill.

There were other criticisms and shortcomings, but I kept our exchanges civil, even spritely. Since he left the place neat, despite being a total fucking pain in the ass, I rated him five stars. I am forgiving, and figured he’d give us the same rating, a sort of A for effort. But he gave us a tepid four stars overall, with a mediocre three stars for accuracy and value.

A polite request from co-host son Micah that he might reconsider his review as he unfairly expected a level of luxury never offered on the site went unanswered, perhaps because Dick and his wife were already en route to Greece for the three-week spa vacation he’d bragged to me about.

One negative Airbnb experience has not completely soured us, but it has put us just the teeniest bit on edge. We learned that when opening your home to the vagaries of the short-term rental universe, you risk the occasional Dick.