In that case, you were just being polite for the sake of being polite and hoping, expecting the friend to say he will take the sofabed ? You had to make your choices known if you wanted the bet. You offered, he accepted, case closed.

If that were the case, then why would he ask you what you wanted? He would have just said "let's toss a coin".

OP, you provided your friend with a free place to stay and yet he was churlish enough not to be satisfied with the sofa and took your bed.

Agreed, Power of the Purse and all. A FT friend of mine crashed in my hotel recently, it had a King bed and a pull out couch. I being me just told him "I paid, I get the bed" and he was cool with it. I think the people who said to be assertive are correct so that's something you can remember going forward.

All these responses are way, way off...The correct answer is to charge him for half of the room cost, and tell him he would sleep on the sofa bed, lol...

I agree with this.

Oh for heaven's sake! The friend asked. If he was being manipulative, then you could have called him on it by saying you wanted the bed. If he was being polite, you still could have gotten what you wanted by saying you wanted the bed. In any event, you are mad because he couldn't read your mind. This is where marriages and friendships go bad. People expect others to read their minds so they don't have to ask for what they want.

I have seen situations where neither person got what they wanted and in fact both got what they didn't want because neither would say what they really wanted.

The other way we go wrong is when we impute motives to others. We have no idea why the friend asked. We can assume he was being manipulative and drop him as a friend or mistrust him. Or we can assume we was being polite and continue a friendship. Or we can say we just don't know and continue and be a bit wary maybe. Me, I prefer to assume the best until the evidence accumulates and I know.

Reading this thread, I am so glad that I don't have friends like some of you. Being nice to a friend for one night in your life will not destroy your life....sheesh. Everyone can have money, but not everyone can have class.

+1
Unfortunately, money status, number of points or miles are assumed to have class....in the minds of many who have it.

Since I haven't been collage age in a long time I would assume my friend would book their own room or they ain't coming along ;)

Neither. Ask for a rollaway. FAR more comfortable, unless you are over 6' 2" tall. I've used one when traveling with my family of 5. Usually it's supposed to be for one of the kids, but they inevitably crawl into bed with me and my wife, so I grab the rollaway and sleep soundly there.

Where on Earth does that come from?

I personally think all the people going on about how the person paying for the room should get the least comfortable bed out of "politeness" are being beyond ridiculous. It works both ways, if it's impolite to not take the sofa then it's impolite for the other person to accept the bed.

Unless there's a reason why I shouldn't (e.g. they have back/medical problems or any other extenuating circumstances), if I pay for the bed then I get the bed. (And I have no money and few points/miles...)

I take it if any of you have a guest over at your house you move out of your bedroom and give the guest your bed while you sleep in the spare room/on the sofa?

Looks like you are agreeing !
BTW, we have regularly given up our master bedroom to guests. We do not ask them nor offer it...we just tell them where they are sleeping. If our guests are worth inviting to our home, they definitely worth the best bed room. Such is the culture in other parts of the world.

Nice trick if you're using a free night certificate (or even points).

Nobody said anything about lives being destroyed, but I'm confused... I thought the OP was "being nice" by letting his friend stay in his room for free. Are you suggesting that he has to give up his bed, too? :confused:

Perhaps it's a cultural thing (as HMPS says), but I'd be very happy to be offered even a sofa bed for free, especially in a pricey city and/or hotel.

I think your friend was being only polite.

Of course secretly hoping you choose the sofa :D

I've done that frequently.

Indeed. ^

YES. And as the friend, I would have insisted that I take the sofabed. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO GRACE???

Both parties show a lack of it.

did he offer to split the room but you offered to buy it with points instead? If so than I think your friend is entitled to flip for the bed as you volunteered to cover the whole cost. If your friend made no mention of picking up their half of the room or at least buy you a couple of beers then they were out of line in assuming they had a say in the matter.

Now, is it worth making it awkward as soon as your trip begins? That's another story...

Only if the guests are my parents :D


Culture may be one thing, but the reason we have a guest room is for guests, not for us when we have guests! I wouldn't be comfortable sleeping in someone else's master bedroom anyway but if they had already set it up then I suppose it would be even more impolite to refuse.

Sometimes I will actually book a hotel for my "guests", after I caught some nosy aunts and uncles looking through my tax records while they thought I was sleeping...

Unless there is some really good reason not to, I don't understand why you wouldn't just share the KING size bed. King's are enormous.

Well said mikew99. I recently "hotelsurfed" a fellow FTer's Hyatt hotel suite in 2 separate cities for a total of 2 weeks. Since I wasn't paying, and he was extending me the favour, I automatically assumed that I'd be taking the couch. Anything else would've been rude!

Seriously? Without question! A guest is a guest. If I am welcoming someone into my home, or treating them to a hotel room, or anything else, then they get the best and I make do.

I am the one in control of the situation, so I can make sure that what's left over for me is adequate for my basic needs, and after all it's only temporary.

A night on a sofa isn't going to kill me, and I feel much better having been a good host than having managed to maximize my own advantage at the expense of my friend.

+1
Very well said.
as I have said previously, one has to be exposed at an early age to think of the guest as THE GUEST, that s/he deserves the best available option. It is unto them to decide whether to accept or not, again based on the culture s/he were brought up.

Guest rooms exist. I have never heard of giving the master bedroom.

You need more exposure to more cultures ! :)

Yes, this is a cultural difference, the "guest room" is a western culture thing, many cultures around the world don't have that extra room (mostly because of space limitations). That being said, that guy was just a friend traveling to the same city as the OP, not a cherished invited guest to the OP's home.

davie355 is entirely in the right. He "paid" for the room, he gets the best bed. The friend who received the "free" room should have just taken the sofa bed without putting davie355 in the awkward position of having to claim the better bed.

Davie355 is quite wrong. He should not have been PC polite if he wanted the bed. He just wanted to " give" the bed to the friend expecting fully that he will do the decent thing ! Just backfired.

There is no way I am giving my master bedroom for a guest, except in the case of parents/grandparents if need be. If I have guest over, however, I make sure that I am a good and and hospitable host, making sure the guest is comfortable, has a nice bed, and good stay.

In the case of this thread: The paying party gets the first say of who gets the bed/sofa bed. If the paying party wants the bed, that person should get the first dibs. If I am a guest of this situation, I would not assume anything otherwise than a sofa bed. Otherwise, the other party can just pay for the own bed/room and there would be no issue like this thread.

Davie was wrong. He would have been fine laying (sic) claim to the bed. He should have mentioned it first, but his friend (right or wrong, good intentions or not) brought the subject up before he did. Cest la vie. At that point, Davie WAS NOT HONEST. He clearly wanted and expected to get the bed, but that is not what he said. He said he didn't care and then got upset. Nobody to blame but himself. Either be generous or be honest about what you want/feel you deserve. Don't get wrapped when you say it doesn't matter when it clearly does.

^

While I totally agree this is the proper way to treat a guest, I do not see the "host-guest relationship" in this hotel room sharing situation.

^ Hmmmm, being honest and upfront. What a concept! ;)

Exactly. Offering something to appear generous and then holding a grudge if the person accepts sounds like a pretty crappy thing to do, IMHO.

I think inviting someone to your home to stay is different than traveling with someone on a trip. In my home, I have given up my bedroom, but on a trip where I'm using my hotel points, I will take the king bed if that friend isn't contributing anything else. Perhaps your friend really doesn't understand our hobby and looks at that room as totally free. So he concludes that it cost you nothing, and that you are on an equal footing. We all know it takes time and effort to accumulate points and miles, but how many of our friends get that! I know mine don't!!

I think we are being hard on OP (and from a hindsight 20/20 point of view), in many way he acted as the "average normal" person would do, offered to accommodate his friend, expecting that the friend would know and follow social norms given the situation. He was hoping that even when he reversed the question, hoping until the end that his friend will "get it", but the friend didn't. Offering the bed to the friend in this context is not appropriate, as it results in the friend essentially taking advantage of the situation (and making himself look ungrateful) and hurting the OP's feelings.

The OP cannot be faulted for failing predict that the friend will ask for the bed, as this would actually be a low likelihood scenario (very few people will actually do this in such a situation), so the OP (unconsciously and correctly) acted based on the most likely scenario, and he didn't mentioned anything from the start (as in saying "you are welcome to share the room, if you don't mind taking the sofabed") because even such statement invokes some minor social discomfort. In retrospect, this would have been better to have said that than what happened, however, the OP unconsciously played the odds that such a low probability event (maybe 20%?) won't occur (even though, in this case, unfortunately, it did). In other words, the OP acted properly based on the information he had at the time.

So, based on this experience, now the OP has learned that he needs to be more clear up front with this particular friend in the future, if not with all people in similar situations (or at least those that are not very sensitive to the nuances of social conventions/interactions, or have a tendency to overstep boundaries and take advantage of situations).

I agree but you're conflating offers of generosity with idiomatic expressions and general customs that resemble these offers.

If you tell a friend to "make himself at home" while you're away, you would not really expect to come back to a trashed living room and an empty fridge.

It interested you enough to read it AND post a reply.

Who gets the sofa bed? I think the person paying the bill calls the shots.

A lot of this depends on the culture. In certain Asian cultures, the host is expected to offer anything and everything, and the guest is equally obligated to refuse. If OP and his friend were Indian, it might have gone like this:

"You can have the big bed."
"No, you can take it."
"You are my guest, please take it."
"No, but you paid for the room."
"Please, I insist."
"No, you must take it." (heads over to sofa bad)
(Pushes his friend off sofa bed and sits on it.)
This would go on for several minutes until one of them gave in and took the big bed.

In western cultures, which are more direct and to-the-point, this usually doesn't happen. In American culture, I would say that it would be polite to ask once, which OP's friend did. However, pushing the issue further would be rude.

You forgot the part where whoever got stuck with the sofabed then badmouths the other to all friends and relatives! :p

See, that's the problem with human relationships, you try to help someone and you may end up getting in trouble, being taken advantage off, or the other person being ungrateful...Just let them go get and pay for their own room, and everyone is happy...

Same thing happened to me in Las Vegas when i had a comped suite my friend was pissed off i wanted him to sleep on the couch lol