TRUE STORIES FROM A BED & BREAKFAST HOST. I grew up in a B&B since the age of 4, after 20 plus years of having a constant stream of strangers come through the front door. You pick up a story or two....
Oops! Ang larawang ito ay hindi sumusunod sa aming mga alituntunin sa nilalaman. Upang magpatuloy sa pag-publish, subukan itong alisin o mag-upload ng bago.
Over the years, I have gathered a rather eclectic assortment of items that have been left behind by guests. I always contact the guests to try and return their belongings, however, 15 plus years ago it wasn't as easy as it is today, and not everyone gets back to you, even if you try contacting them in multiple ways!
The one item that will always stand out in my mind was a Louis Vuitton handbag that was left behind by an intern who had been working at the prestigious Louis Vuitton shop in London many years ago. The bag - still wrapped in its branded dust jacket, sits on my shelf. Friends have offered to buy it off me or advised to take it to a vintage/designer shop to sell it but I've always felt that it is part of the history of my B&B and so I have kept it, and who knows, perhaps someone reading this may be its rightful owner...
Other items include sex toys, socks, underwear, umbrellas, jackets, shoes... the list is ever increasing! More recently chargers, books and medicine are the most common items that I find after a guest has departed.
While we are on the subject, there are also items that guests take with them when they leave. In the 90s it was towels - every month I would do a count and I would always be one or two towels short, which left me with un-matching sets – this being the thing that annoyed me the most! In the end, I had to switch to using one colour instead of different colours for each room.
Adaptors and Guide Books would also 'walk' out the front door, so I started to ask for a £5 deposit to make sure I got them back... and I sure did.
By far the weirdest craze (the late 90s) was my cleaning materials would disappear! Yes, guests would help themselves to my bathroom cleaner/floor cleaner. It was the time we had Mad Cow Disease and I can only assume that they took these bottles so that they could spray their shoes before leaving the UK.
But probably the most surprising was when a guest took a DVD player from one of my rooms. I hadn't realised it had gone until I trudged upstairs one day to show a father and daughter how to work the machine and suddenly realised it wasn't there! Sometimes when you clean a room daily you can overlook these things. It was a lesson learned and now I make sure to check every detail between changeovers!
