National Trust visit spoilt by overzealous staff or AIBU?

[Sunshineismyfavourite]

Visited a beautiful NT country house today. Huge 17th century house with Capability Brown landscaped parkland. The house has lots of art by Van Dyck - one of my favourite artists and I was really looking forward to spending a couple of hours with DH wandering around in the beautiful spaces enjoying the peace and quiet. However, every time I stopped to look at a painting one of the staff would come up to me and start talking. This happened several times in every room we wandered into. I totally get the enthusiasm and expertise of the staff but I wasn't really interested in hearing about the Civil War etc., I just wanted to enjoy the paintings in peace. We do visit NT properties occasionally but have never found this to be a problem before.
The staff just seemed to be unable to read my body language as I was trying to walk away or indicate that I didn't want to talk or listen to them by not responding or engaging with them. Short of telling them to shut up it was impossible.
It was a very quiet day with not many visitors so they were probably bored but it was way too much for us.
AIBU by being a miserable bugger (I know I'm quite unsociable at times) or should I be allowed to wander round in peace? Perhaps they should give out 'don't talk to me' badges with the tickets if you want to be left in peace!

Docents - I had no idea this was a word @RawBloomers! I often look things up from MN and most of the time the turn out to be typos!

YANBU, as my NN suggests I work in a museum and in the past, we've had over enthusiastic volunteers like this.

All I can suggest is that you leave polite feedback detailing your experience, and hopefully further training will be provided.

That's brilliant! Maybe I should put this quotation on a sweatshirt and wear it on every NT visit!

Bad idea, the print would be so tiny, the letchy ones would be peering at your chest for hours😂
One of these maybe

They're volunteers, cut them some slack. And learn to put a hand up gently to ward them off and say 'Thank you, but I know this artist and I'd really like a few minutes just to take a close look.'

And anyone who thinks they'll get any peace and quiet in a National Trust property at half term must be barking.

See now this is a bit of a silly overreaction.

Volunteers are the backbone of these places and we really couldn't manage our museum and events without them.

But that's not to say management wouldn't have a quiet word with them if they were inadvertently spoiling visitor experience, rather than enhancing it.

And anyone who thinks they'll get any peace and quiet in a National Trust property at half term must be barking.

Half term was last week in some places

We had this at Seton Delaval Hall - but I LOVED it, but was in the mood for it that day. If I hadn't been, I'd have politely disengaged

Just say, 'Thank you, I love places like this where I can take it all in very quietly.'

I would love to have the history of everything explained to me!

Problem is is that most of them aren’t staff, they’re volunteers. This means you have lots of lonely old people who do the role because they want to chat and have an opportunity to speak to people. It pisses me right off-just leave me alone.

That's a good and polite way to word it, I will use that on the future.

I was once visiting an NT place with my DD and her friend, they were about 7 and a volunteer came up to me to tell me about the property, information about the family who owned it (I knew this anyway as my gran was a distant cousin) and what had happened to.the property during the war. The volunteer was a chatty man and wasn't engaging the girls at all, my DD was and is still a very curious girl and tends to wonder off, it was a bit, "during the war.. " talk and DD and friend had left, they walked most of their way through the house and ironically I got asked if they were mine as I must stay with them..

Is it Blenheim Palace OP? From what you've described I would guess it is.

It's my favourite NT place, I love to visit. The grounds are amazing.

Seem to remember a couple of stewards who gave us information every now & then but didn't feel overbearing.

Will take note when I go again.

@user1471462634 When did Blenheim Palace become National Trust? I’m sure I had to pay separately when I went there a few years ago - might go back if it’s NT now.

Why are adults telling other adults to 'use their words' on this thread? Why are women infantilising other women? Bizarre behaviour.

In answer to the OP, I completely understand and it is so difficult to extricate yourself when someone is in full flow - it IS rude to stop someone talking and not as easy to do as people claim. NT volunteers do need to be better trained but at the same time there's something lovely about people wanting to share their passion, isn't there? You don't want to curb volunteers' enthusiasm, but striking a balance in their interactions with visitors is vital so as not to irritate and actually detract from someone's experience. It's a fine art and I'm not sure it's something you can actually teach, as it relies on the ability to read people.

I'm a frequent NT visitor and when I'm bored of listening to someone telling me about a piece of tapestry I'm not interested in or whatever, as soon as there's a pause in their flow of information, I say 'You're so knowledgeable, I could listen to you all day, but I'm afraid I've only got half an hour and want to make sure I see as much as I can, so I'll have to move on now. Thanks so much' - and walk away briskly. Works every time and no one's feelings are hurt in the process.

The problem with many volunteers is the assumption that you don't know anything about the place you're visiting or the period of history it represents, which I find bizarre when you'd surely operate from the perspective of expecting the people who visit to have an interest in the place/period of history to start off with, otherwise they wouldn't be there. The best tour I've ever had in a heritage attraction was at Cardiff Castle, where the lovely tour guide asked us all what we already knew and what we wanted to know more about before we started. I said to him how rare this was and he told me he'd been humiliated when he first started by lecturing a man about a particular battle or something, and then the man, much embarrassed, had to reveal to him that he was actually the world's leading expert on that battle and was a Professor at Harvard, on holiday. From then on, the volunteer said he always checked first before he started sharing information. I think all NT volunteers need to be told that story as a cautionary tale - ask first!

It's not. It's still very much privately owned and costs a fortune to visit!

Not sure what the poster is referring to but they've got confused with somewhere else.

No it's not a silly over reaction. Giving constructive criticism directly to the venue is absolutely reasonable if you are not happy with part of you experience but that was clearly not the type of comment I was objecting too...

I had one tell me my handbag was too big & that I had to leave it in the entrance hall where we were standing. I protested that it had my wallet & camera in it & I wasn't going to leave it anywhere, & she got huffy & said, "I'll be here all the time! Nobody will steal it!".

Would any woman put her handbag down in a public place & walk away from it for half an hour? It seemed insane to me. Somehow she gave up or maybe was distracted & I walked off, because I kept my bag with me & toured the house. When we returned to the entrance hall on our way out, neither she nor any other NT staff was there.

The only way to escape being cornered and blasted with facts about 17th Century ceramics against your will is to get a selfless friend to pretend they are going to sit on an old chair with a passive aggressively placed teasel on it. You have approximately 30 seconds from when the siren goes off and all NT volunteers are obliged to stop "mid fact" to run and form a Trutex clad ring around the offender. You can't help your friend now, all you can do is leggit to the cafe a raise a cream scone to the fallen. Its what they would have wanted.

Great idea.

It may be a more American term, though I thought I first heard it in the National Portrait Gallery.

You could also pretend you don't speak English

I’m thinking Petworth … I’ve been collared there by room guides and it can be a bugger to get away.

‘The staff just were unable to read my body language’
you are so right OP

Heres my classic story
tiny baby in arms walking around NT property.
Baby starts crying and I’m wandering around getting a bit stressed but NT ladies keep approaching me to tell me about the building or furniture and just keep talking louder and louder to drawn out my baby who is also getting louder and louder to drown out the NT ladies and on and on it went in every bloody room I went in.

Now I don’t put up with it.
If I want to be left alone I just say I’m fine, I’ve been here lots of times before. They now leave me alone.

If you dont want to here all the chat just tell them.

If there are any NT volunteers on here please be aware some people just want to be left alone, some are not interested in every single painting, piece of furniture or the life and lives of every single person that lived in the building you are volunteering in. Many have probably heard it a dozen times before. So please wait for someone to ask you first!

ps. I start volunteering in the summer and promise to leave you all alone

Okay so if OP had to ‘use her words’ at the first painting, don’t you think she’d still have the same point if she had to tell them to leave her be in every tool she went in. It’d annoy me having to say it once. It’d full on piss me off if I had to say it 3/4/5 times

It’s not that the time volunteers give up isn’t appreciated..I hope not anyway. Most volunteers are really there to take care of the artefacts and furniture on display and ensure they are not broken, sat on or disappear. The problems start when volunteers don’t appreciate that some people want to visit the building and not have a chat.

It would be better if they responded to queries rather than assumed everyone had one in the first place.