A Story that Might Help Owners Understand The Sitter Side of Things as Far as Planning

I wanted to share a recent experience I had that I think could be helpful for hosts as far as understanding how things work on the sitter’s end. And also I think a good lesson for sitters in trusting their intuition, which can be challenging when there doesn’t seem to be anything outright problematic about the listing, etc…

We applied for a sit and the application was read within minutes, but after two days of not hearing anything I withdrew. They emailed us almost immediately apologizing for the delayed response and asking if we were still available. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and felt a nudge to open myself back up to the opportunity. So we proceeded with scheduling a time to talk.

On Friday we had a video chat with the hosts, and all went well. They offered us the sit and we accepted. There was mention they hadn’t booked their flights yet, but I didn’t think that in and of itself was a huge deal, but it did raise a bit of a flag for me the way they said it. Since I had withdrawn my original application, I let them know they needed to invite me to apply and I would and then they could offer a confirmation.

In my experience, hosts typically do this pretty quickly, often within minutes of getting off the call.

They didn’t send the invite until Monday afternoon, almost 72 hours later, along with a message that they still hadn’t booked their flights, but that the dates ‘wouldn’t change more than a day or so.’

But based on our plans to do this sit, the day after we spoke, I booked one that ended the day this was one was to start and another the day this one was to end . While they mentioned they hadn’t booked their flights yet, there was no mention the dates might change. If they had done that, we would have told them right away we couldn’t commit, and to get back to us within X time with definite dates or else we would look for other sits.

So we had no flexibility if they decided they wanted to leave earlier or return later than the original dates. But even if our schedule was open, I wouldn’t have agreed to sit.

As a full-time sitter, not knowing the exact dates of their travel for some indefinite period of time would have hindered my ability to schedule other sits. If they decided to shorten their trip, it might have left us with a short gap in our schedule we couldn’t fill and we would have to pay for accommodation unnecessarily.

In their mind, a more casual approach to planning their trip, and slight alterations to the dates, probably didn’t seem like a big deal. I didn’t take it as any intentional affront to us or them not caring about our schedule,etc… It is just a good example of how hosts may not realize what goes into planning on the sitter’s end.

While some sitters may have more flexibility, and won’t need as firm a plan, that isn’t the case for most of us. If you are a host and the dates you are posting are not 100 percent definite, it would be helpful to note that in the listing.

If you are reluctant to make firm travel plans until you get a sitter, that is understandable; but once you find one, if you don’t finalize your plans relatively quickly, and confirm that sitter you liked, you risk losing them, as these people did.

I am sure they will find someone else but they really liked us because we were very experienced, and it is possible they may not get other applicants about whom they will feel as confident. Hopefully they do.

And for the sitters, the intuition thing. When they hadn’t replied in a couple of days, I just had the nudge to withdraw. It wasn’t any major bad feeling, there was nothing in the listing that gave me major concerns,etc…

It was just the usual feeling I get in these cases to just let it go and move on. And seeing how things played out, it validated that initial feeling. And I believe I felt guided to connect with them anyway to strengthen my belief in trusting that intuition. It wasn’t some horrible experience that caused us any major problems; we are already in the process of finding other sits for these dates, which should happen pretty easily given the number of sits in the general area in which we are looking.

I rely heavily on these gut feelings and it has seemed to serve me very well in the decade I have been doing this. Letting those feelings guide you is my number one tip I would give to newer sitters without a doubt.

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Thank you for sharing your experience with such clarity. I agree completely with you.

I am in a similar situation with one of my sits, whereby I was told after applying that the dates were not definite, flights had yet to be booked etc. The HOs implied that the sit was far enough in the future that this didn’t present any issues. However, I have found another sit that would be a perfect fit, but which I am unable to apply for since the dates appear to overlap by a couple of days. It is really important for sitters (especially full time ones) to have confirmation of dates, to allow them to make plans on either side.

Side note, I always enjoy reading your posts as they are so clear, rational and compassionate :heart:

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Since you have mentioned intuition before, you may be interested in the work of Dr. Martin Seligman, who heads up the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. I’ve read several of his books - all excellent. There’s been numerous studies around this and he’s written a great deal about it. One article that I saw when looking up his info:

Unpacking Intuition
A Conjecture
Martin E.P. Seligman and Michael Kahana
University of Pennsylvania

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We are not full-time sitters, but like most people we have a life outside of THS and definitely have other travel and commitments. We have learned to ask potential clients for their flight information before committing to a sit. If they say they haven’t booked flights yet, I tell them that we can’t commit to a sit without firm travel arrangements.

We have also found that many HO’s post sits with their dates of travel, but want sitters to arrive earlier and/or stay later. I always confirm exactly when they want us to arrive and depart before accepting sits. Before I started doing this, we got surprised when a HO returned a full 24 hours earlier than we had agreed without any notice other than a text from the nearby airport saying they were a half hour away. And also got surprised when people asked us to be there a day earlier than we had planned. So we learned the hard way to insist on very specific details before we commit.

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What a classic story! There are all kinds of people in this world!

We have found that dates change pretty frequently.

I suppose Sitters could have a clause in their profile to indicate that they may not be able to accommodate date changes, and so it is imperative to have a solid understanding of the Owner’s dates before they agree to a Sit.

Owners might read this and think “whatever” :roll_eyes: and I suppose this information may not change anything, but at least the Sitter has tried to be clear.

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@PVGemini . It is interesting you say that about the date changes happening frequently–which I see a lot of people on here say-- because in our experience, it has been very rare a host wanted to change the dates after confirming the sit. Perhaps we have just been really lucky. I think that sitters letting the hosts know they may not able to still do a sit if the date changes can be helpful. Like you said, it may not prevent the issue totally but it could give hosts pause if they worry they may lose their sitter and possibly not find another one, or at least one they like as much.

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Perhaps we have had Sits with more dates changes than others as we don’t sit full-time and tell Owners that we are flexible from the beginning? Who knows?

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@strawberryjen Thank you so much…glad you enjoy reading my posts. That can be a tough spot you are in. If you think that not having those definite dates is going to pose a problem for you–which it seems like it is by preventing you from booking other sits-- it isn’t unreasonable to let the host know you will need to know exact plans for sure very soon, and if not, they will need to find someone else.

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@Voyager Thank you for the suggestion. I have heard of him but never read any of his work. I will check that out!

I just looked at the other sit and unfortunately, they have now found a sitter. However, I will definitely mention it again if it presents a problem.

This has also only happened to me once before. I had what turned out to be a great sit this summer where they changed the dates both sides of the sit about 4-5 times, which meant I had to scramble around finding Airbnbs. It would be great if HOs in such situations were mindful of the potential impact this could have on sitters and, of course, themselves, if the sitter ends up cancelling.

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It does seem there are people out there who live in their own bubble, unaware of the impact of their actions (& inactions) on the lives of other people.

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Like you @KC1102 I have rarely had owners change dates after confirmation. Yet in the past 2 weeks I have had two. The first is a repeat sit and I could accommodate the change. The second was booked 5 months ago for a sit late Nov to mid Dec. That owner has extended her holiday by 12 days which now includes Christmas and assumed all she had to do was change the confirmed dates and I would agree. She was quite taken aback when I said I was unavailable for the extra days as well as not considering I may have arrangements in place for Christmas.

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I always check the dates and times when I video chat and explain to the HO that I will book my flights/train travel straight after I am offered the sit and confirm such. I send the HO screenshots of my confirmed booked travel.
I’ve only had one HO change dates on me and that was a very local sit I recently did where they moved my arrival date back 48 hours. Should have taken that as a warning tbh for the rest of the sit!

‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell is also an extremely interesting read about those moments when we ‘know’ something without knowing why.

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Agree! I had a 3 week petsit with bookshelves filled with books to read. I read Blink during that sit. I ran out of time to read them all, but I took pictures so I could buy the others when I had a chance. Too many books, too little time.

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@temba To assume you could easily extend your stay by almost two weeks is a bit odd, especially around the holiday!

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This is why this is on my “nope” list:

• What’s listed doesn’t turn out to be the case. Like they’ve not actually booked travel and they think sitters will wait in limbo for them to decide. Doesn’t consider that sitters also have plans to make.

From this thread: Nope that! - #3 by Maggie8K.

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I rely on intuition - or gut feeling - as I think it is aggregated knowledge, it is not «just» a feeling. Based on everything I know, I can feel what is true or what will happen.

I talk about arrival and departure in videocall, shortly after conformation I tell them my travel plans and that tickets are booked, and that is it. One time a host wanted to prolong, I said the tickets bought after our agreement couldn’t be altered and they got a friend to pop by after I left. It was no problem to just say no.

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She was a newbie @KC1102 and it just hadn’t crossed her mind. She then suggested I do the original dates and she’d get another sitter for the additional 12 days. I explained why I did not do back-to-back with another sitter, again, she hadn’t realised the issues that could happen with that arrangement.

It also didn’t involve any flights etc for me as it’s within my own state, so I’m not really affected and will pick up another sit if I want to @KC1102. She realised she had stuffed up as she had really wanted me as her sitter.