16 People Whose Hospitality Included Making Houseguests Follow Bizarre Rules

Many of us have been to someone’s house and observed some really strange house rules, enough that we wanted to leave and never come back. These Redditors came across some bizarre situations as house guests, and while some are still scratching their heads about it, others just laughed and shrugged it off. Either way, this kind of hospitality is something we can all do without.

• No beverages with or before dinner. Everyone had to have cleared their plates before any beverage was served. Salty dry food served with no water is bloody torture when you are a kid. ZaMiLoD / Reddit
• When I was about 10, I ate dinner at a friend’s house. She gulped her milk at the table. As a punishment, she had to finish her dinner in the bath tub.
  I was left alone at the dinner table with her parents, scared to take a sip of my drink. So the rule was, no gulping milk. She had a ton of horrible rules. I didn’t go over there often. melonhanger / Reddit
• I stayed the night at a friend’s house once and her parents had a rule that you could only have three meals a day; breakfast, lunch, dinner. They did not allow their kids, or others staying at their house, to have any snacks. I was 8 or 9 at the time.
  I remember it was around 3 or 4 pm and dinner wasn’t going to be till 6 or 7 pm, so I asked my friend if we could have a snack. Her mom freaked out and started lecturing me how snacks are horrible and never allowed and that I’d have to wait till dinner. Super weird rule. I never went there again. monster_shady / Reddit
• HAD to have milk with dinner. I told them I didn’t want any, and they said you need to say, “I don’t care for any milk.” They still gave me milk anyway with a bunch of ice cubes in it. They were not allowed to have water with dinner. Like why? soulsista12 / Reddit

• I was watching movies with a friend at her house and she put on the subtitles for me. Part way through the movie, her mom came into the room and started yelling about the subtitles and demanded we turn them off. Once we turned them off, she left the room. I still don’t understand why she was so mad. lgt15 / Reddit
• I went to one of my friends house for dinner in elementary school. They were serving spaghetti and everyone had to take off their shirt. To include the Mom and teenage daughter. It was pretty awkward. startackle / Reddit
• I had a friend in high school whose parents had an all-white living room that they kept immaculately clean. They even kept plastic covers over the couch and chairs as if it were 1960.
  Anyway, their stairs were literally two steps from the entry hall, but those two steps were through the living room which nobody was allowed to walk in except my friend’s parents and their adult guests. So to get upstairs to her room, we had to circle through her entire house to come around to the stairs from the other side.
  Her stepdad was a temperamental man, so they were all too afraid to dare challenge the rule. It wasn’t terribly inconvenient, but it was weird, especially when her mom was watching TV, and we had to walk past her and that meant we had to stop for an awkward chat. Really, that was the worst of it. DeniseDeNephew / Reddit
• My aunt had decorative hand towels in the bathroom arranged in a way to make Martha Stewart jealous. After washing my hands, I tried to use them and got stabbed by pins. She had booby trapped them, so nobody would ever attempt to use them twice and mess up her towels. I have no idea how they dried their hands. DarrenEdwards / Reddit

• My Aunt has a rule that we could only take baths, no showers, and no more than two inches of water in the tub. My cousin and I had to bathe together until finally my parents intervened when I was 10 and offered to give them money so I could enjoy my two inches of water alone. I get being frugal, but I hated staying there. NorthpawsAreRight / Reddit
• When we’d go to play cards at the neighbor’s, we had to leave our Verizon cellphones outside the house, because she got headaches, coughing fits from the emanations. Yet, she and her spouse would whip out their iPhones to look up stuff on the internet, take calls, etc. right in front of us, as we played. Apparently iPhones and AT&T emanations are ok, but not Verizon’s. songsearch / Reddit
• My grandpa has never let anyone say the words “butt” or “bum” or even “tuchus” in his home. They were too crass for his delicate ears. If you absolutely had to refer to the bubbly region on the bottom of your back, you had to call it your “seater” or face the consequences. It made my 6-year-old self giggle like an idiot. Unknown author / Reddit
• My former friend’s mom had a weird sort of unspoken rule. My friend’s parents were divorced, and she lived with her dad, even though her mother only lived 30 minutes away. She wanted a sleepover for her birthday, and her mom’s place was much bigger, so that’s where we went. Her mother would literally stand guard over us as we ate, and wiped up any and all stray crumbs on the table the moment they dropped.
  I should mention we were teenagers, and we weren’t eating like slobs; it was just normal eating/passing food. It was especially weird because my friend’s normal residence was a mess, but here her mother was diving at any errant crumbs. She didn’t even eat with us, just stood watch with a towel in hand, mildly annoyed. We figured out quick to eat with utmost precision. It was an awkward couple of meals. This_Isnt_Progress / Reddit

• My cousin made everyone bring their own dishes and silverware to a party because she didn’t want to do dishes/get stuck with the cleanup. When I asked why she didn’t just buy disposable plates/utensils, she got mad and said it was a classy event. txplf23 / Reddit
• My aunt would tell us that we weren’t allowed to use conditioner, only shampoo, when showering at their house because conditioner was bad for the pipes. She would remind us of this every time we would shower. crazyladyscientist / Reddit
• [Edited] I was staying with a friend for a while. It was a 5-bedroom house with 5 bathrooms. Great, right? Wrong.
  The only bathroom allowed to be used was the one inside the master bedroom. It was also his mother’s room, and she would proceed to get angry and scream any time someone needed to use it. There were 7 people in the home at the time.
  She also had benches around the house, but they weren’t allowed to be sat on. I still hear that woman screaming when I think about sitting on a bench. E_r23 / Reddit
• [Edited] My grandparents have always had a cat. All well and good, cats are nice, and I have nothing against them. The problem was that the cat they had, when my siblings and I were young, was a rescue and super shy.
  Apparently, the logical solution to this was that we had to spend chunks of time being as quiet as possible, so as not to disturb it. We were even given homemade ’medals’ for being particularly quiet around the house.
  As a child, this was pretty torturous a lot of the time, but I never really realized how strange it was until later. My grandparents are great in general, just a little weird about their cats. lizardld / Reddit

If you thought this was strange, do checkout these really strange interview experiences people had, that made them make a somewhat firm decision about the job.