Q. How can I stop my houseguests treating my flat
like a free Internet café? Even guests who stay only one night irritate the life out of me by their burning and antisocial desire to check their email, usually for an hour at a time. This habit is so widespread that even unemployed and retired guests obsessively seek to boot up their laptops or use my computer. I work from home and we have only one phone line, so this means that! can't work at the same time. Guests have even commented adversely on my lack of a dedicated phone line and fast broadband service. Things reached a head with our last houseguest, who remotely accessed his UK email account so often that he ran up phone charges of more than MO. How can! politely deny them email access or, if that fails, charge them for the telephone time?
Name withheld, Hong Kong
A. Next time someone is coming to stay, advise them in advance, 'For various boring reasons you won't be able to use my phone line to check your email, but I will give you the address of the nearest Internet cafe so you can go there first and then I can really enjoy your company while you are with me.' If this fails, and they insist on using your own facilities, say, 'Yes, of course. Just give me your telephone credit-card number; I'll tap in the details for you and then you can sit down and get on with it.' If they say, 'Oh, but! don't have a telephone credit card,' blink blandly and say, 'Oh, well how would you like to pay, then? I tell you what, you could always pay me directly for the mg and I can put it towards the bill when it comes in.'
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