You Wanna Talk about Cultural Differences? | Make Your Bed When You Visit The Farm
We had overnight guests Friday. We enjoyed bourbon and conversation in the evening after supper. This morning was a glorious fall morning-- a hint of fog, just cool enough, fresh. Mr. Big Food took our guests on an early morning walk about the Farm and then whooped up some fresh veggie-laden scrambled eggs served with the biscuits Miss M baked yesterday-- topped with wild dewberry jam.
One of our guests was from someplace and then Buffalo, NY, and then some places, and then Florida, and now Memphis. The other was an Italian.
Our guests don't seem like liars to me, so I took them at their word that they enjoyed their short stay on the Farm. Until I saw this:
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| The bed the grateful, |
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| Italian left me to make. |
To be clear, many people have visited the Farm and have not made their beds upon their exits. With certain delightful exceptions, females are better than males at making beds, Old folks better than Young, so my bed-making expectations differ. Folks that exert force to move things around the Farm get allowances. I have found that the condition of the room in which guests find their beds correlates to the attention they pay to maintaining their rooms and beds. So if I haven't made the effort-- they take that as a sign that they needn't either.
Fair enough.
But the Bunkhouse was as clean and tidy as it's ever been and these were straight guys but they did no work. (I lie. The guy previously from Buffalo picked up breakfast dishes and made an 'I'm not here with my wife but I'll do the best I can' attempt at throwing the bedspread around and clustering his towels.)
The Italian, as you can see, made no effort. He had a model. He understands models.
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| The Model |
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| But he made no effort. | |
All is well, though! The Italian is in our United States on account of some Grant from the United States Federal Government your dime, and so Monday morning, I'll just call Housekeeping.
Heh. I was taught that as a house guest when you left, you stripped your bed (but folded the blankets). It was assumed that the hostess would be putting fresh sheets on the bed after you left, and you saved her one step. It was also expected that there was a dirty clothes hamper somewhere that you could put your used towels and sheets.
ReplyDeleteMaking the bed was not a good thing because it meant the hostess had to strip it... but to just walk away?? not good !
You and Miss M agree completely. Personally, because of the layout of the house (the door to the guest room is just a few feet from the foyer, and as you can see, the bunkhouse is just one open space and so all of the guest beds are highly visible) I don't mind if people make the bed, or strip it and put the spread back on. I may not get to stripping, washing immediately. That's just me.
DeleteYou may appreciate what MBF said about the situation, "He might as well have been a Greek or a Spaniard-- expecting the German [me] to do the work."
Or...from what I've heard...his mother!
ReplyDeleteIn any case...we all know that making beds is women's work!
(By the way...I discovered a long time what the difference was between women's work and men's work...
If a woman does it, it's an unpaid chore. If it's paid work, it's men's work.
So...sewing at home is a woman's job, but if it's done by a man, he's a "tailor" and if's men's work...etc.)