I let guests stay in my empty house (what to think??)

watergirl

Thu, May 02 2024, 7:53 am

ora_43 wrote:

Who is going to go to see to the baby at night without getting dressed and covering their hair?

Who is going to lift their shirt to nurse the baby?

Who is going to use the second bedroom to get changed, to avoid waking up someone sleeping in the main bedroom?

It's not about whether they were likely to do this or that specific act there. The point is, there was a lot of potential for them to be doing something private in there, for perfectly innocent reasons.

I agree with you here, but you took my quote out of context. I was responding strictly to somebody who said that a couple could be intimate in the room with the camera.

amother

Lotus

Thu, May 02 2024, 8:11 am

I think you are absolutely obnoxious to consider leaving cameras on in the house while guests were there. Even if nothing unseemly is going on maybe she did not want to treat you to her husband in his boxers in the morning, or her in her askew turban and silly nightgown with the monkey in the front.
Outside cameras were likely a mistake.
The only bone to pick with them is that they forgot to reactivate them.

amother

Clear

Thu, May 02 2024, 9:23 am

amother Lotus wrote:

I think your first sentence is absolutely obnoxious. OP should have let the neighbor know that there are cameras and certain ones must not be turned off. If the guests didn't want to come because of that, zehu. Going forward, I'm sure she'll never forget to make that clear before hosting strangers again. But to call her obnoxious? I'm going to respond with the top IMAMOTHER responses - speak to a therapist because you are clearly projecting and have your own issues to deal with.

amother

Firebrick

Thu, May 02 2024, 9:53 am

Posting anonymously to protect my guests’ privacy:

We let neighbors use our house to host their kids over YT. We also allowed other neighbors to use the house for Shabbos HaGadol.
We came home last night to find lights on and our door wide open. Baruch Hashem everything was fine. We do leave our doors unlocked a lot during the daytime, and live in a very safe area. It was probably just a few hours. But it felt uncomfortable and unsafe to come home to that.

And then I found a dirty crockpot soaking in the sink that must have been from Shabbos HaGadol.

I was honestly pretty upset about all this, because as I told my husband, It wasn’t easy for me to agree to do this chesed, I was really maavir on my middos, and this is the second time in a row where we lent out our house and had a less than stellar experience.

But my husband made an excellent point. He reminded me that everything that happens to us is meant to happen to us and nobody can harm us if Hashem doesn’t want us to be harmed. We could just easily have accidentally left something out or had a leak or a fridge problem and come back to something like this even without any guests. So we should not take this as a reason not to do chesed in the future.

It didn’t make the feeling any better it didn’t make it OK what they did but it made me feel better about the whole situation

amother

Moccasin

Thu, May 02 2024, 10:01 am

amother Lotus wrote:

The guests disconnected cameras in rooms & house floors that they were not supposed to be at, that is obnoxious!!! Don't go or touch what you're not supposed to.

amother

Watermelon

Thu, May 02 2024, 10:26 am

amother Lotus wrote:

I should really start a spin-off. Is it obnoxious that I have cameras on my busy street and by my door? I can see couples arguing as they pass. I see people waiting for the bus half asleep. I see drivers honking like maniacs. All not the best behavior. We live in a day and age that people use cameras all the time all over (every local clothing store has as well maybe boycott them because now you can only try on in the dressing room what an inconvenience!) you can’t make a fuss about it. Every airbnb we were at had.
The guest could have asked to close them but if they have nothing to hide they should be ok with it. It’s not their house after all.

ora_43

Sun, May 05 2024, 4:49 am

amother Watermelon wrote:

Is it obnoxious that I have cameras on my busy street and by my door?

No, because people realize that when they are on the street, someone might be looking at them. If there's a house with windows facing the street, there might be someone you can't see looking out the windows. That was true even before cameras.

Keeping the footage or sharing it with others would be obnoxious. But just 'watching' isn't.

Inside a home, OTOH, people reasonably expect that they aren't being watched.

Quote:

The guest could have asked to close them but if they have nothing to hide they should be ok with it. It’s not their house after all.

Sorry but I hate this logic. It is entirely reasonable to expect privacy in all areas of life where it applies even if you have nothing to hide.

If you tell guests in advance that you have cameras and they agree to that, OK. But people have every right to decide for themselves whether they're comfortable being on camera. (I was going to say "even as guests" but maybe it should be "especially as guests.")

amother

Buttercup

Sun, May 05 2024, 5:25 am

amother Watermelon wrote:

Not comparable. Though filming people in public is way too normalized in other contexts too. The fact that everyone is one bad interaction from being the Internet's next Karen video is not good.

amother

Apricot

Sun, May 05 2024, 7:44 am

amother Watermelon wrote:

Outside there is no assumption of privacy. You are visible to the world.

In a store, why would you get undressed outside of the dressing room? Sorry it's inconvenient to use a dressing room, but I can't understand why you would undressnin public when the store has dressing rooms.

Airbnb has a policy that no cameras are allowed indoors, even if they are disabled or unplugged.

Someone staying inside a house by themselves has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Bathrooms should have an expectation of privacy. Public spaces do not.