After having had over a dozen very enjoyable and trouble-free housesits, the last one was very challenging and I would like to hear the opinions of other sitters on how best to deal with difficult owners.
The owner seemed to < removed>, < removed> and < removed>. How do you deal with this? Unfortunately, you only find this out in personal contact and not in the communication beforehand. It was clear at the handover that something was wrong with her, but for the cat’s sake I stayed, of course. Afterwards it became very unpleasant for me.
You can’t award any stars for the owner’s behaviour in the review.
Without knowing what’s in the middle, I would somewhat disagree. I think you can learn a lot from a video chat. You can ask open ended questions and get an idea of how someone might respond to certain situation. You can see an attitude based on what they ask or don’t ask you. Usually, I have some interaction after confirmation and befor the sit starts so there is more opportunity to know who and what you are dealing with.
I also think if the sit was unpleasant there is probably a way to get that unpleasantness accounted for in the review, but it’s about “what happened” not your feelings or opinions about what happened or your speculations about the owners issues. For example, did the behavior and what happened fit into communication or hospitality? Were the responsibilities and petcare as described?
As a sitter reading reviews of a housesit, I’d be less impressed with the adjectives used to describe the host, and more concerned about what actually happened on the sit.
It’s challenging to know how to respond, given the considerable edits to this original post.
We’ve only really encountered one sit - in over 40 - where the pet parents could be described as ‘difficult’, and it very quickly became apparent (though not so during the video chat). We took the dog for a walk whilst they continued their packing and ate their lunch (we’d driven a long way but were not offered so much as a drink on our arrival, let alone invited to share their meal) so were able to speak in private and recognised that this was not what we’d anticipated. Since it was a short sit, we decided to continue and were ultimately glad that we did; the dog was a darling and the area very interesting. But, we learned from the experience: if this were to happen on a future sit of longer duration, we’d be more assertive instead of feeling like we’d been put on the back foot.
I think it’s important to value yourself and your own wellbeing, and thinking about what you could have done differently to make things more positive is worthwhile, whereas berating yourself and feeling bad about the situation for a long time afterwards is not. You cannot change other people, you can only change yourself.
You most certainly can rate the owner’s hospitality in the star rating and can detail any unacceptable behaviour in your review, just ensure it is factual rather than an emotional outpouring.
I’ll assume OP speculated about the HO’s mental and emotional state. You can rate communication and hospitality. Stay factual and unemotional and brief/concise.
Once, I had an owner that I knew was not very easygoing. There was micromanaging, and I had kind of expected that. But then there was a thing that got under my skin.
Halfway through the month, I then wrote back that if they had doubts about my mental acuity that I was willing to resign from the sit and to go back home.
That put an end to the messaging. But we had clashed, so it was not unexpected that I got three stars.
Read the reviews. Then read what the HO said about each sitter. Then have a video chat and ‘feel’ them out. If ANYTHING seems over bearing in any way, we will decline. Too many other options out there for there to be any ‘hesitancy’ about who you sit for. We read A LOT into the reviews and if they are prone to leaving no reviews or 4 stars a lot of certain categories, etc.
. Who edits this to become unreadable and useless? 