Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think that a lot of people seem to neither have an idea of how to be a guest or a host nowadays?

150 replies

LadyBiscuit · 28/04/2010 19:59

At the risk of sounding like a terrible old fogey (but I am one so I may as well embrace it), whatever happened to wanting your guests to enjoy your wedding as much as you do? Or to feel comfortable, not awkward when they are invited to your home?

And since when was it okay to go round to someone's house and dictate to them whether or not the telly is on or off? Do some of you tell people to change the CD because you can't stand Coldplay?

Are we just all so self-absorbed and egotistical nowadays that basic manners don't matter any more?

It makes me very sad and a bit worried because tolerance for people's differences and peculiarities are what makes us an integrated society. Once you decide that your way of doing things is better than everyone else's our multicultural society's a bit fucked

OP posts:
JoInScotland · 29/04/2010 00:41

What about gifts? As in, I am not informed whether the carefully chosen or possibly handcrafted gift I send ever arrived. I am also therefore not informed whether the recipient enjoyed it/ate it/buried it in the back garden. I considered making up a form that I could include with future gifts that included those choices, please tick:

Thank you for the present Auntie, I

  1. enjoyed it
  2. ate it
  3. buried it in the back garden

I thought this might be some sort of one-off occurence at Christmas, but my nephew is 21, not 12, living away from home and married fgs. After a similar incidence where I have not been told whether his anniversary present ever arrived or if he did 1, 2 or 3 to it, he'll not get a 22nd birthday present from me. Sad. I must draw the line somewhere.

toccatanfudge · 29/04/2010 01:39

well...........when I read the title I was ready to post to say that there can be cultural differences in how guests/hosts are expected to behave depending on the relationship between the people.....

However.........having reading your post yaDnbu

WebDude · 29/04/2010 06:31

"as generations move on there must be some people who just drop standards"

I think (as an older person) I can say that we were "brought up" but some people seem to have been "dragged up" and it shows, by their lack of manners.

WebDude · 29/04/2010 06:36

For JoInScotland - at 22 he is probably beyond getting presents as one no longer (unless a very close family) knows what a nephew that age wants. As he is married, and will get a present from his wife, I somehow doubt he'll even notice but of course, if he does, you'll have a perfect response...

EcoMouse - what bloomin nerve. Moral of that is to open the bottle instantly and serve, if she ever gets in that house again (I have doubts it would be from an invite, but perhaps as guest of someone who was invited!)

bonnymiffy · 29/04/2010 11:12

Having got married 7 weeks ago I can honestly say that the Thank you notes are becoming a bit of a chore, but that doesn't mean I won't finish doing them!! Good grief it would be really rude not to do it.
And, when we stay with the in-laws I always strip the bed and fold the sofa bed back up, I thought it would be helpful (if MIL didn't like me doing that it would get back to me)
I would NEVER take a bottle of wine away with me if unopened. JoinScotland, I totally agree about thank you notes but wouldn't quite have the nerve not to send one the following year.
If the youth of today aren't following basic etiquette then standards are indeed slipping! What is the nation coming to??

bonnymiffy · 29/04/2010 11:13

PS I don't care if folks think I'm an old fogey, so long as they think I'm a polite old fogey

oldspice · 29/04/2010 11:34

Not yet a fogey but completely agree

Had a friend of my DD2 around and when i served lunch she said to me
"I had baked potatoes last time I cam to visit, can't you make anything else"
This child is 5 years old. I told her that if she didn't like them then mummy would give her lunch at home

Also, I always tell my kids that they should look after guests but recently my DD1 came home from a friends house and asked why she always has to 'play nicely' and 'share toys' when she has friends over but that when she went to her friends house, her friends mother said Friend X sould choose everything because it's their house....

Have the goal posts changed?

mousemole · 29/04/2010 11:37

I'm all for respcting elders but my MIL takes the biscuit...
When we had DS1 and had just returned home from hospital ( receovering from c section) my in laws came to stay for a couple of nights to see their first grandchild.
After they went home she sent me a letter telling me that I should put a waste paper bin in the guest bedroom and that she couldn't have a shower as the bath ( shower is over the bath) had a baby bath and child 'paraphernalia' it. There were some other barbed comments about our house as well.
So you can imagine how well that down with a post natal, sleep deprived hormonal wreck !!

ooojimaflip · 29/04/2010 11:41

I WOULD ask someone to change a Coldplay CD. Because they are shit.

Original poster
LadyBiscuit · 29/04/2010 11:47

I would do it in a much more sneaky way oojimaflip. I would peruse their CD collection (there's bound to be something better surely) and then exclaim 'Oh wow, you've got XXX! I haven't heard that in years! Oooh can we put it on?' Obviously that isn't going to work if there's only Sting or Enya to choose from but tbh I'm not sure I would want to return to someone's house if their taste was that bad.

mousemole - rude guests are every bit as bad (if not worse) than unyielding hosts. Unfortunately as she's your MIL, I don't suppose you can cross her off your guest list can you?

OP posts:
mousemole · 29/04/2010 11:48

oh so tempting Ladybiscuit but as you say pretty impossible. Needless to say the invites are few and far between though !

Original poster
LadyBiscuit · 29/04/2010 11:51

My nan wrote to my mum shortly after she had my sister (was a terrible pregnancy - my mother nearly died twice), saying that she didn't like the name my parents had chosen, that she had never known a nice one in all her years and that my sister was going to be destined to be an unpleasant person.

Amazingly my mother is still quite polite to her MIL's face (if not behind her back )

If I am like that, my DCs are within their rights to ban me from their homes

OP posts:
gramercy · 29/04/2010 12:09

oldspice: the same happened to me when I was little (many years ago!)

Always at my house my mum insisted I played what my friend wanted to and we had to watch Magpie. But at friend's house, we still had to watch Magpie and play her games because it was her house.

My mother was a polite freak, but I don't think it's stood me in particularly good stead because I think some people see other's good manners as weakness and an opportunity to walk all over them.

gramercy · 29/04/2010 12:11

I think generally that the younger generation is ruder than their predecessors BUT I think that the very rudest people I have encountered are 60-somethings. They seem to be a very arrogant group - me first, barging and intolerant.

minxofmancunia · 29/04/2010 12:19

YANBU, my sister is a mixed bag, when she comes she makes cups of tea, cooks cleans and gets up with dd in the morning . She would not dream of leaving a mess.

HOWEVER she jumps on the laptop as soon as she's here and uses it most of the time and hammers the landline, has been known to call Argentina on one ocassion. She bbysits and whilst doing so invites friends round and eats all our food, drinks all our booze including bubbly and sees it as repayment for babysitting. She literally walks in throws the fridge door open and starts eating. When she's coming she deliberately doesn't eat much as she knows we've always got "loads of nice stuff in". If we go to hers she doesn't have tea or milk/bread/anything in as she "doesn't use it" so we have to take our own food and drink . Can't sya much as she's babysitting but the way she makes us feel beholden to her for it does piss me off a bit. Sometimes think I'd rather pay and still have food in the fridge at the end of the night.

dds godmother one of my best friend came to stay last weekend. dd went in with ds for the weekend so she could have dds room. First thing she did was make some comment about how I should have made curtains for the dining room as she'd rather sleep on the sofa bed in there.

She didn't bother helping at bathtime, expected 5 star service re brews and food and made we feel we owed this to her as she babysat one eve for a couple of hours I e watched our tv,used our internet and drank our wine with her friend round, no childcare involved. We put dcs down before we went out. She spent no quality time with dd the whole weekend despite being her Godmother and not having seen her for 5 months. Just used our place a a base whilst she went off and did her own thing in the day, f**king rude imo.

Sorry rant over.

Miggsie · 29/04/2010 12:35

DD's friends are generally very well behaved wth glaring exceptions:

One child told me she did not like my sausages, she didn't like my plates and she certainly wasn't eating that! (that being pasta with tomato sauce). Despite her mum telling me she would eat sausages and pasta with tomato. Also, my juice was horrible, and so were the biscuits. And my yoghurt was boring. And why no choclate ice cream?
(Not invited ever again).

Worst one was last week when another friend told me the food was horrid and she hated bacon,and as I had put the bacon near the past she wasn't eating any of it and left the table while my DD ate hers. I apologised to her dad when he came to collect her as I genuinely thought she ate bacon. "She does eat bacon" replied her dad, mystified. I again apologised as she hadn't really eaten but perhaps she was just not hungry.
I discovered the reason for her lack of hungriness some days later when I opened the box containing DD's special Easter treat Egg from Grandad. The entire egg had gone, and I later found a small bit stuffed down the back of my sofa. DD in floods of tears, and I'm just with her friend.

pagwatch · 29/04/2010 12:37

are we not talking about adults?

Miggsie · 29/04/2010 12:38

Oh, and once my lodgers mate came round, saw we had some Creme eggs in a bowl and ate one, whole, without removing the wrapper. He then picked up my box of Thornton's chocs and ate 6...without asking.

I turned to him and said "you apolgise now and never do that again or you can get out of my house now and never come back".

Ah, the grovelling...I had him putting up my shelves and everything for years afterwards. He even proposed to me in the end.

Original poster
LadyBiscuit · 29/04/2010 12:41

I am talking about adults pag. But I also think that a child who believes they have first dibs on all toys when another child comes to play isn't responsible for those ill manners, their parents are

OP posts:
GetOrfMoiLand · 29/04/2010 12:44

Does anyone else just want to go round to Expat's house with wine and chocolates and just sit there and talk?

I love the way she puts things.

GrumpyOldHorsewoman · 29/04/2010 12:47

I was considering starting a thread about poor child manners the other day.

DD2 is friends with a girl whose parents are lovely and I get on really well with them. The girl can be lovely too, but she can also be quite rude. She will come into my house, turn over the TV and hang onto the remote control, refusing to hand it over. She has even shoved my DD and told her off in front of me because DD kept asking her to play outside and she didn't want to. She wanted to come for dinner a little while ago and requested something specific, which I made and then she never ate any of it, saying she only liked her mum's food. It makes me feel like I don't want to have other people's children in my house any more.

pagwatch · 29/04/2010 13:03

Oh LadyBiscuit, we should form some kind of Old Guffers club - I agree with you again.

GetOrfMoiLand · 29/04/2010 13:12

I think I am just a miserable old cow regarding things like these.

I used to have tp really bite my toiungue when dd's friend came round and started shouting the odds. I never gave alternate food though, if they didn't like what they were offered, started shrieking 'this is disguuuuuuuusting', I just shrugged. they weren't going to starve.

My nieces are really badly behaved and I hate it, they run round screaming, chase the cats, demand DVD be put on, demand obscure flavoured juice and other unavailable foodstuffs like some bloody spanish infanta, swear and just act like the centre of the world. Their parents just sit there and do nothing. last time they came round the eldest daughter (7) pulled her jeans down and mooned at me, and said that my hair was disgusting. Don't want them to come around again.

Original poster
LadyBiscuit · 29/04/2010 13:18

GOML - you should join the Old Guffers club too. I think we should write a book 'How to Raise Children that Other Parents Will Like'

Although I distinctly remember my mother being a lot keener on some of my friends than others - the ones that I thought were smarmy and dull largely

Oh god I'm raising my children to be loved by parents, despised by other kids

OP posts:
oldspice · 29/04/2010 13:26

I'm loving this thread because I see rude people all the time and am genuinely stunned how people get away with being so impolite

Recently, my DD1 came home very happy because her tennis coach said she's the only child he has in his team of 20 that says 'please' and 'thank you'.

My mum drummed into us that good manners keep good friends. Needless to say, I have a great bunch of mates.

Swipe left for the next trending thread