Inspired by the thread on house-sitting etiquette in which the owners of the house expected the pet-sitter who'd agreed to pet-sit for free fto pay the owner's cleaner while the owner is away, I wondered if anyone else has a tale of a last-minute change of rules?
Years ago I agreed to go and look after a friend's lovely old farmhouse in the mountains in Spain for three weeks. I'd worked with the friend in London and she and her husband had emigrated about 10 years earlier. We'd stayed in touch all that time. They had a finca, several acres of land, two dogs, several cats, chickens, goats, two rescue donkeys and an aviary full of budgies and lovebirds all needing daily care. They also had a massive garden that needed maintaining, including a small vineyard, and literally hundreds of planters and plants in pots that needed water morning and evening.
This was presented to me as a holiday opportunity — and yes, there was a swimming pool — in a lovely area. It turned out to be the middle of nowhere. It was nearly an hour to get to a decent supermercado. It also turned out that they'd got builders in, converting one of the outhouses into a casita, and that I was required to supervise and give them lunch and supply drinks throughout the day. On the day I arrived they presented me with a complicated animal feeding and care schedule that started at around 7am and continued till 9pm, when the donkeys and the goats were brought in. The day after that they drove me to the airport, they flew off and I drove back on my own.
After the first week, when I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown, I phoned them and asked if it would be okay if I got my friend Sally out to help me. Of course, they said. So Sally flew out from the UK at her own expense and things improved. At the end of three weeks we drove to the airport to collect the my friend and her husband and they seemed a bit subdued. They came into the house and seemed surprised that everything was so clean and tidy. They inspected the grounds and all the animals and seemed pleased that everything wasn't just still alive, but apparently happy and well. They ate the dinner we'd cooked for them using the vegetables that we'd kept alive and they let us clean up after the meal. And then my old work colleague, the owner of this little farmstead, took me aside and said: 'We've been thinking, Gusty. I know we said that it was okay for Sally to come out and join you, and it's not that we're not grateful for everything the pair of you have done, but she's had a free fortnight's holiday and use of the swimming pool and.... well, we think it's only fair to charge her a token amount to cover the cost of electricity and so on. We thought £150 a week, £300 in total, seemed fair.'