A Persnickety Home-owner

I have heard it said over the years that it’s never wise to conduct business with a friend, and I found this to be a fact when it came to my friend Dickie! When he asked me to rent his house at Friendship through my Villa Rentals agency I was hesitant, mainly because his house was always rented to his friends during the busy season, and those particular rentals would not be going through me. I was also hesitant because Dickie was VERY set in his ways, and I feared he  would try to dictate how my clients were to spend their time on Bequia if they rented his house!

A day at Dickie’s house typically started with the cook making breakfast, which always began with grapefruit halves sprinkled with sugar. Lunch was served at the exact same time every day, and a dip in the sea beforehand was pretty much mandatory. The guests ate out every night at the same restaurants Dickie and his wife Teresa usually frequented (Sundays at Gingerbread, Mondays at Mac’s Pizzeria etcetera), and I wondered if there was a dining-out schedule tacked up somewhere in the house!

The dwelling itself was quite simple, with two large bedrooms with equally large bathrooms upstairs, and a small living room with an equally small kitchen downstairs. The main attraction was the big porch overlooking the garden, with a path leading right down to the sea. Very few rental properties offered direct access to the water, but Dickie’s garden gate opened onto Friendship Beach.  This beach access was something clients always seemed to want, but as the house would only be available through me during the off-season I figured rentals for my friend Dickie would be pretty much non-existent.

I figured wrong. Not long after I added the house to my rental selection a man from Austria showed interest in taking it for two weeks during the month of November.  He wanted a quiet place near the sea for himself, his wife and his grown daughter, and the price was within the range he was willing to pay. Mr. Dietz was the gentleman’s name, and after Dickie confirmed that the house was available for the requested dates I went ahead and took the man’s deposit.

The day after the Dietz family arrived, they came to dine at the Pizzeria looking decidedly unhappy. They had requested a QUIET vacation rental, not one with a cook, maid, gardener and house manager breathing down their necks. They wanted to prepare their own meals according to their own schedule, so I called the house manager and told him that the cook’s services would not be needed, and that the maid and gardener should arrive later in the day. His reply was, “dat ain’t gwine happen!”, and I had a sinking feeling he was probably right.  The next morning there was a fax from Dickie informing me that the “Diet” family had to eat the cook’s food, and that they could not dictate arrival and departure times of his staff. Sigh. This was going to be messy.

Messy indeed! That same morning the Dietz family had the audacity to move the toaster onto the front porch, and were in the process of making their own breakfast when the cook arrived. She took one look at the toaster being used by the renters and went totally ape-shit. That was HER job, and they had to have the grapefruit before the toast. The gardener arrived at the same time and started hacking away with his cutlass, and the maid wasn’t too far behind him. When the house manager arrived to see what was what (he had obviously anticipated confusion), Mr. Dietz lost his temper and, waving his bread knife at the cluster of house staff, shouted at them to go away.

I was at work when I received the call. Mr. Dietz had been picked up by the police for threatening the house manager with the little bread and butter knife, and was being held at the station. Mrs. Dietz, who spoke little English, arrived at the Pizzeria with a very angry daughter in tow, begging me to DO something. A fax from Dickie came through, telling me to get the bloody “Diets” out of his house immediately, the cook had called him in Montreal to say that the man had shouted at her,  and that he had threatened to kill them all with a knife. Dickie was also pissed off that the toaster had been taken onto the porch.  Sheesh!

Thanks to Nina Clarke and her lovely villas at Tony Gibbons Beach I  was able to move the Dietz family to a quiet property with beach access. Luckily it was off-season, and Nina graciously agreed to lower her rental price to accommodate them. I warned Nina’s maid to stay out of sight, and as she had already heard about “de mon wit de knife” she was more than happy to heed the warning!

It’s true what they say, conducting business with friends can be difficult, especially if they are persnickety!