Recently we had some guests staying who rang on the bell inside the house to get my attention. The time was almost 11pm and I was ready for bed having just had a shower and was in my dressing gown. I answered the doorbell and was then told by my guest that one of his bedside lights was not working and could I fix it. Well I was a little surprised that anyone would bother me at that time of night for something so minor, but I was obviously wrong to assume that this was a minor inconvenience to this particular guest.

So fair enough and off we went, armed with a multitude of bulbs to fix the light. I must admit that I was not at my best as I was ready for bed and thus not my usual jovial self.

When I got to the offending bedside light I replaced the bulb and it would still not work….. Now I would have thought that faced with someone so obviously ready for their own bed we might have been able to call it quits until the morning when I could fix the light properly, but now I was asked if I could replace the light….. I replied that did they realise what the time was?

Here I fell into a trap of my own making. The bell in the hall has a message on it that states “If you require Paul please use the bell at any time” – which apparently means exactly what it says and that I am apparently happy to be woken up at any time of the day and night to aid my guests. Can’t fault the logic of my guests for pointing this out to me, but I think they missed the spirit of the message. Now I’ve been woken before by a guest who had lost his room (!) as well as a real couple of emergencies where I have spent hours of my time helping my guests with major emergencies where I have helped them get the ambulance – waiting in the street for them to arrive and helping my guests in any way possible in this capacity – but a single light bulb not working I think moves this into a total different category.

When being told what was then expected of me I had a total humour failure, and for this I did apologise to my guests, but for the life of me I still to this day find it hard to believe that anyone would be so persistent in getting a light fixed at this time of night in this particular circumstances. Most hotels would have said they would have to call the engineer who would attend to the matter in the morning – but I got them a new light and went off – unfortunately for me I was so wound up that I got very little sleep that night myself (my own fault for taking this sort of thing so personally).
What I’d love to know is – Was I wrong? Should I have acted this way or was the request from the guest within the bounds of acceptable behaviour?

What do you think?