This is an actual conversation I had with the stranger that came to my door on Saturday afternoon. While reading this, try to imagine my small, enraged, batshit-insane Chihuahua barking incessantly throughout the conversation.
Background: I live in a small condo complex on Martha’s Vineyard where I am one of only three year-round residents. Most of my neighbors spend a week or two on the Vineyard every summer and rent their units by the week the rest of the time for $1500-2000/week.
WOMAN: Hi, I’m renting your neighbor’s house, unit 6.
ME, HOLDING THE AFOREMENTIONED ENRAGED DOG: Uh, hi.
WOMAN TO DOG, SPEAKING BABY TALK: You’re not very nice are you? No your not. No your not. You aren’t very nice at all.
ME: Yeah, um, he doesn’t like strangers.
WOMAN: Anyway, I’m renting unit 6 this week and the pool is full of dead caterpillars.
ME: Excuse me?
WOMAN, SPEAKING SLOWLY: The pool is full of dead caterpillars. They’re all over the bottom of the pool. It needs to be cleaned.
ME, NOT UNDERSTANDING: Yes, it’s really sad.
WOMAN: So could you call someone? The pool service or whoever?
ME: Um, no, I don’t have a number for the pool service. Maybe you should call the people you’re renting from. They’re really nice and I’m sure they’ll take care of it.
WOMAN: I don’t want to bother them at home. So you don’t have a number?
ME: No. I don’t.
WOMAN: You have no way of getting in touch with them?
ME: No. I don’t.
WOMAN: Are you saying you don’t use the pool?
ME: Well, yeah, actually I don’t.
WOMAN, SARCASTICALLY: You don’t use the pool?
ME: Um, no, not really. I go to the beach sometimes. You know, to swim. In the ocean. But I really don’t use the pool.
WOMAN: So you’re telling me you have no way to get in touch with the pool service.
ME: No. I don’t. Really, I’m sure if you call the people you are renting from, they’ll take care of it for you.
WOMAN: I don’t want to bother them at home. They aren’t even proper caterpillars.
ME: Excuse me?
WOMAN: The caterpillars in the pool. They aren’t real caterpillars, not the kind that butterflies come from.
ME: I’m pretty sure they are real caterpillars.
WOMAN: So you won’t call the pool service?
ME: I have no idea how to get in touch with the pool service. Honestly. I don’t.
WOMAN: It seems like you would but if you say you don’t, fine.
Erin has a theory that tourists coming to Martha’s Vineyard think the entire Island is an all-inclusive resort and that we, the residents, are all staff. The woman in unit 6 has inspired us to make t-shirts with a map of the Island on the front and “Staff” on the back.
I. Attract. Crazy. People.
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Sounds like a conversation I had last week with my work’s benefit office….very circular argument. And, I can picture YOUR conversation, complete with dog barking and all, because that’s exactly how my 3 little dogs act. You’d think a small army was invading anytime someone knocks on my door. Thanks for making me chuckle Susie!
Erin’s theory is correct. Just like the roads aren’t real roads and people can just wander randomly across streets without following proper pedestrian safety, etc. It makes me feel like your enraged batshit Chihuahua!
Reminds me of the time I was in Greece and I was shopping in the local pharmacy, when an American tourist came in to ask for cough syrup. The pharmacist didn’t speak English, so he said so – in Greek – and shrugged. The tourist merely repeated, louder & slower, with a southern twang: ‘cough syrup! You know, Ro-bi-tu-ssin?’ When I couldn’t stand it anymore I stepped up & told the pharmacist in Greek ‘the jerk wants medicine for a cough.’ I was so embarrassed by his behavior. What is it about vacations that make some people behave like that?? *sigh*
Well, ah, well . . . it’s not in the store. The shirt I mean. When will you start carrying the shirt. ??? hahaha . . . only kidding.
I don’t think it’s exclusive to MV, although it might heighten there in the summer tourist season. I love the dialogue. I have to compliment you for keeping your cool, though. I’d have probably ripped her a new one at some point. Your patience-span is much loner than mine. :O)
It explains a lot, really. That Erin is smart! I suppose it’s one of the pitfalls of actually living in a tourist spot.
What if you had also been a renter?
And, if you’re attracting crazy people, what does that say about all of us?
Oh, I saw an article recently that was ranking the worst nationality for tourists–and surprisingly, we Ugly Americans were not the top of the list! That honor went to Russian tourists. And apparently the Japanese and Chinese are right up there, too… It made me feel marginally better about my country, anyway.
So, what kind of caterpillar doesn’t turn into a butterfly? Wouldn’t that make it a worm?
I think you could sell that script to SNL. Charge big bucks. Or, alternately, let the kookoo dog bite her, and then sell it to Cops. Either way, I think we’re looking at Reality TV Emmy.
As a friend says of me, “You’re a freak magnet.” Looks like you are too. I’m a fairly non-violent person, but I think I would have been standing there thinking, “Get me a gun. Get me a gun. Get me a gun.”
hahahahaha!
Hey, I look like staff at places where I don’t work…where I’m shopping. And I always think the outerwear should be a clue. What’s even sadder is if it’s a yarn store or bookstore I often can help, but it makes me grumpy. Do I have “permanent retail schlub” written on my head? I earn a salary now. Sure, for most of my life I didn’t, but dude…The rich think they own us all.
I have a big dog that barks and slavers when anyone comes to the door, and I live in a hot place with no A/C–so the door needs to be open. When people come on my porch and insist on bothering me even though the dog wants to eat them, I say, “it’s not a good time.” This is more convincing when the dog weighs 60 lbs instead of 6.
Honestly, y’all, I’m not that patient. I was just sort of confused and in shock that anyone could be so pushy.
When I walked in to the living room Jenny and Erin’s mouths were hanging open in horror at what they had overheard and I was still sort of processing it.
It seems like she didn’t mind bothering you at home.
THANK YOU, Kristy! And she wasn’t paying me thousands of $$ either!
Right about in the middle of that conversation I would’ve said out-loud, “You don’t want to bother THEM at home, but you seem to have no problem at all bothering ME at home.” Then glared. Really hard. Like, louder than the dog. And then maybe also, “Because I CAN’T give you what you want, you assume I could but am just LYING? What kind of a person are you that you knock on a stranger’s door just to assume such malevolence of them?”
(OK. well. I would’ve said all those things the next day in the shower. But in a really stern voice, you know.)
Oh my god, how funny!! :0)
Thank you for sharing.
I would have lost it at some point that’s for sure. I hate it how some tourist think everything is just for them, no rules and they own everything.I always wonder if they behave like that at home too.
Oh and by the way, Germans are really bad when on vacation too. I’m German and have always been embarrassed how a lot of them behave.
I attract crazy people too! But that story takes the cake. You must have an incredibly high level of patience. I think it might have pushed me over the edge.
I can just see Amy Poehler and Tina Faye with a bat-shit insane Chihuahua…..Only problem with the t-shirts…there are only 3 year round residents in your complex.
Some people have a lot of nerve, don’t they. Thanks for sharing and thanks for the laugh.
I seriously don’t understand how some people can be so dense. And what was her point about not real caterpillars, anyway? I’d have been like you: rather stunned and unable to comment at the time but after. After! I’d have had whole volumes to say. (Right when it was too late, moment gone. you know)
Hi,
It must be a tourist thing. I grew up near Yellowstone and, even though there were a gazillion signs to the contrary, there are always those idiots who seem to think that the bison and grizzly bears are not really wild and were just put there for their entertainment. Sadly, some of these aforementioned folks, or their children, would end up at our hospital. “No maam, the cute bearsy-wearsy does not want to hold your toddler so that you can snap an adorable Xmas picture” (Shudder) (according to a friend of mine whose dad was a doctor, someone actually tried to do this…..)(that was many decades back, maybe the tourists are brighter now). Rude is one thing–what is really hard are the total idiots.
OMG- I know this is SO not funny but YOU are funny! Your writing style is great and a smile for my day is hard won today- thank you SO much!!! giggle snort cough…. Smooches from the sheep!
I love the shirt idea! I had a couple of people on bikes stop me and ask for directions–I told them that I would give them the directions only if they would put their helmets on the correct way–they had them on backwards!!!! Do you know how many people look at their maps upside down and wear their helmets backwards???
Wow. No words.
…and that she was okay bothering a neighbor and basically calling them a liar rather than call the people she had rented from….
wow.
If they weren’t real caterpillars, then it coudn’t be a real problem, right??
Unless I’ve been talking in public beforehand, I usually enter this kind of conversation non-verbally till I can determine where it’s going. If OK, I’ll help out as i can. If wierd, I’ll slip into a language the intruder is NOT speaking, and explain that I don’t understand them. Seems like where ever we are, I’m a magnet for the lost and confused. I call it my *”aura of competence”.*
First week in Germany I had folks coming up to me asking for help & directions. It happens whenever we’re on holiday and has occured LOTS here in Italy.
/giggle At least Jenny and Erin were there to corroborate! Otherwise you’d think you were crazy.
Growing up in Woods Hole, stupid tourists (you know you can tell the diff) would ask my friend where the bridge to MV was. No matter what she would say, they wouldn’t believe her. So she directed them to the Bourne Bridge.
Love the t-shirt idea! Perfect!
I feel your pain! I grew up in Colonial Williamsburg and thought I had seen, heard, and been asked it all.
This one is a keeper. There has to be a book somewhere in all these dreadful tourist stories!
You should’ve offered to deliver a goat kid for her.
I have told Susan that she must have the Southerner affliction that prevents her from from being impolite no matter how well it’s deserved. Had I answered the door and had this same discussion, I might at some point have had to point out that I WAS at home, and when that had no effect, I might have offered to find her the number (for $50) or make the call myself ($200). Because if I’m going to perform Staff tasks, I’m going to get paid for it.
In my head that woman’s voice is sounding like someone from the old “Dragnet” series.
What a pushy person, she should definitely have her MV visitor visa revoked.
As for the t-shirts… I LIKE that idea…a lot.
We lived year round in the Hamptons for 10 years and it was the same way. We felt like the hired help during the summer.
“Proper Caterpillars” is cracking me up. I guess they didn’t have on their Sunday best when they drowned in the pool.
I think I would have said, “Well, you are bothering me, in my home. How is that OK?”
…and NOW I read the comments and see that honeebee said the same thing! oops! lol
Next time, just close the door at the first sign of rudeness–you don’t need it!
True story. Amazing.
Next time, after the 2nd “I Don’t Know” – shut the door. You’ve got far too much patience. As a New Yorker, I can assure that conversation would have been shorter.
Ooh, you’re so much nicer than I am. I would have lost it with this woman. While attending college in western MA, I worked at the Harbor View Hotel in E-town. We would get some of these entitled people and have to wait on them for a week. Yikes, did we ever head for the beach to get away from the hotel every minute of off-time.
Thanks for the giggle! I needed that today! And, if it makes you feel better you are not alone. Some of us just seem to attract the weirdos…it’s like they have a homing device straight to us. Perhaps she needs to try swimming in the ocean…but, I’m sure she’d want the service for the ocean to come clean up the sea weed, fish, and assorted flotsam and jetsam as well…hmmm…can’t please some people and can’t cure crazy…
I think she was hoping that if she could lay by the pool you would bring her an iced tea and towel. Lord, some people are just really rude.
Oh. My. God! “I don’t want to bother them at home” while standing on your doorstep! Unbelievable!
Maybe you need to hang a “do not disturb” sign on your door knob. I mean, since it’s a resort and all.
BWAHAHAHA
I have been asked to shuck corn at farmers market, which I think is pretty outrageous.
I do it if I’m in a good mood, but really farming isn’t a service industry.
But it’s true, people who come here expect full service. They’re spending a lot of money and they want what they want when they want it, period.
I find walking away to be highly effective.
“Proper caterpillars”?!? Is she an entomologist? I have lived in the country my entire life, and really wouldn’t be able to tell you which caterpillars were ‘proper’ and which were ‘improper’.
Also, if she had no trouble fishing one out and examining it so carefully, she could have picked up the net and cleaned them all out herself. IMO
I’M SO GLAD SUMMER’S OVER!!! I live on the Cape, and we get the crazies over here, too. They’re all insane. It’s not just you.
Favoritee bumper sticker: If it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?
ok i know that wasn’t funny
but it’s really funny
sick
people are idiots
w.t.f.???
you were very nice
i would have closed the door or started to perform sign language, asked her if english was her first language or
something smart-assed or shut the door…
entertaining too rich *itch
so she didn’t want to BOTHER her landlords but BOTHERING YOU was not something she second thought…yeah your right…you must be included in the rental package
…are you SURE you don’t use the pool?
(just kidding)
lotsa love
and deep breaths,
rona xoxoxoxo…
I guess a lot of us are “freak magnets” here!
And Erin is totally correct. I love spending time on the island and I would never bother year – rounders that way. I am sure all of us summer people flooding the island and clogging up the roadways are already enough of a nuisance!
I think Erin has something there…
Uh, okay???? It was okay to bug you, a perfect stranger, but not the people she rented from???? I think I’m missing something here.
When she said that she didn’t want to bother them at home, you should have said “you mean, they way that you are bothering me at my home? And you aren’t even paying me $2000 for the week?” You are a complete saint for putting up with that woman for more than 30 seconds.
Yup, just what I didn’t need to hear right before the leaf peepers start hauling ass up here to make traffic and think everyone with a New England accent works for them. Aren’t you glad the season is almost over on the island? Every year I live in fear of Columbus Day weekend.
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