The fact that a bunch of guys drank a bunch of beer and none of them even thought “hey, that’s a lot of beer cans in their trash … I dont want them thinking I’m irresponsible … Why don’t we throw them in a trash bag and Joey, you dump them when you get to your home” tells me they aren’t bright enough or classy enough to hide the evidence!
Note to self, don’t let @Pizzagirl house sit - she knows how to hide evidence. 
If leaving bags of empties in your garage was their idea of covering up their drinking, they’re not very good at it. At least they cleaned up.
it doesn’t take a lot of brain cells to figure out how to hide the evidence. Which is my point.
Perhaps he didn’t think it was necessary to hide anything because he didn’t do anything wrong. He took care of dog as promised. He cleaned up after his friends. House was in perfect condition when OP came home.
I think some people just look for things to be aggrieved about.
Except the used towels.
Well there is also the issue of liability. If one of those partiers was underage and got into an accident, the homeowners might be liable (?). I’m only a lawyer on the internet, so I have no idea if this is actually true or not.
^^Post #59 mentioned that, too.
Perhaps it’s time to close this thread.
I’m kind of surprised how many posters seem to make apologies or excuses for this 21 year old’s behavior. Then we wonder why young adults don’t act more maturely these days? Perhaps, the OP hired the wrong 21 year old but I think we should expect more from people that age.
What the house sitter did lacks respect and basic common sense and courtesy. Losing the key, disconnecting the tv and not reconnecting, having many friends over (enough for the neighbors to make note of it and to drink all those beers - I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more evidence removed and that trash bag was overlooked).
“Except the used towels.”
So where did all your kids leave their towels when they lived at home or were home on break? My kid left his on the bedroom floor or floor of closet where the laundry basket was when it wasn’t still filled with clean clothes because he couldn’t be bothered to put clean clothes away.
I cannot believe people making a big deal over a couple of used towels on a closet floor.
Most elementary school kids I knew growing up in my old neighborhood…even most of the slobby ones would be wary of tossing dirty towels or other items of clothing in corners of closets or on the floor in their rooms. We were expected to put dirty towels in a designated place for dirty laundry items like a hamper or in some cases…doing laundry was the assigned chore for that particular classmate in his/her family. Tossing laundry on the floor/closet would usually result in punishments like a grounding for a week or few at the very least. And those of us inclined to be rebellious and flout such rules accepted we’d be “taking our lumps” by being punished with groundings, being sternly lectured to, perform extra chores, scolded, etc.
And that’s not bringing up the case of one elementary school classmate whose 20 year retired Marine/Vietnam Vet/former drill sergeant father expected him even at the age of 7-8 to keep an exceedingly orderly and immaculately clean room as one would expect from a military recruit or FSA/military college cadet. And there were severe consequences if anything was out of place or there was any dust on the surfaces.
Also, the one cousin who was inclined to leave dirty clothes and towels laying on the floors well into his 20s found out the hard way that doing so in a condo unit owned by a grandmother resulted in his eviction and his parents being notified as his behavior was considered more like that of an immature inconsiderate child, not that of a mature adult.
Also, some enterprising kids/teens/young adults in bottle deposit states like NY or MA would view leaving 70+ bottles/cans in someone’s trash as stupidly leaving one’s own deposit money or if the beer/soda/water was purchased by others “free money” on the table. Those nickels or in the case of Michigan, dimes do add up and serve as a supplement to whatever fee one was earning while housesitting.
Perhaps you are charitably conflating guileless-transparency with oblivious-stupidity.
He’s 21 and of legal draining age. Perhaps he has just gotten out of the habit of “hiding” the remnants of his drinking. And he did bag the cans/bottles and put them in the trash. Young people just do not think the way we do. It probably never occurred to him that OP would go through her trash. Naive? Perhaps, but it is just the way their brains work right now.
I don’t think that’s true across the board. Rather, this is highly dependent on the individual concerned and the behavioral expectations set by parents/other adults during their formative years.
It just happens this particular 21 year old OP employed happened to have grown up with far lower behavioral expectations than I or most other 21 or even 17-20 year olds I’ve known and encountered.
Similarly, I often see the sentiment expressed on other threads that teens/young adults are naturally going to misbehave or act out as if it was a universal given. Something I find odd considering this wouldn’t be considered normal in many other societies I know of…and not only Asian ones, either. What’s normal for given behavior at given ages can differ greatly depending on the expectations parents, society, and peer groups set for what’s “appropriate behavior”.
In General Schwarzkopf biography, there was an incident sometime in the '80s where German schoolbus drivers were complaining about the unruly rowdy behavior of American schoolchildren of US military personnel while he was the senior military commander of a base in what was West Germany.
The main issue was that this level of unruly rowdy behavior almost never happened with German school children they drove as that wasn’t the behavior which would be accepted as “normal” by most German parents and society as a whole. Schwarzkopf ended up facilitating the resolution of the issue by having the buses with the American children diverted to an MP post where the MPs sternly lectured them on how their behavior failed to met expectations and notifying the parents to provide better guidance so their children would be better behaved on the schoolbuses in the future. Afterwards, there was no further incidents of unruly rowdy behavior and the German bus drivers expressed their gratitude over the resolution of the issue.
@Cobrat - well here’s my thoughts on the above post. I would much rather have a child that “colors outside the lines” once in a while than one whose spirit and willingness to take risks has been lectured or “punished” out of them. I have no interest in raising a child that follows blindly or never challenges rules. Thats what teenagers and young adults do, and it is how they learn to set comfortable boundaries for themselves.
is the Op in Germany? I must have missed that.
Otherwise, talking about how school children behave in Germany would have no relevance to the 21 yr old house-sitter Op is discussing.
Smart fridge needed.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/259770/bud-light-launches-smart-fridge-to-track-beer-supp.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=86763
"where did all your kids leave their towels when they lived at home or were home on break? My kid left his on the bedroom floor or floor of closet where the laundry basket was when it wasn’t still filled with clean clothes because he couldn’t be bothered to put clean clothes away.
I cannot believe people making a big deal over a couple of used towels on a closet floor."
GUEST IN SOMEONE’S HOME is different from being in one’s own home. If you’re happy picking up your kid’s towels more power to you but did you raise them to do that in other people’s houses?
Hopefully not, but I certainly wouldn’t get my panties all in a twist if I found some kid who was staying in my house towel on the floor.
How do you all do react when something really awful has happened if such minor things sends you into a tizzy.
I think everyone is making a mountain out of a molehill. Get a grip.