You need a bit more support from the BO because it is more than a communication issue. The BO is getting complaints from other boarders about the condition of the boarder’s stall. You can lose customers by running slipshod operations. You can lose customers by not enforcing the rules uniformly. It also costs time and money to have the BM chase down non-compliant boarders.
The BO should revise the contract for anyone with a self-care situation that states if the boarder does not provide the care, then the barn will charge $X for the service. I would make it clear that if work is delegated to a third party, the boarder is still responsible for paying for the missed care.
Now as a BO, I would never fool around with self-care because I have seen it not work out very well. For every one person who is a responsible caretaker, I know five more that will not do the most basic care of his/her horse. There always is an excuse for the neglect. Well, I only offer pasture board where I provide the feed, hay, water and daily once over. It gets done. The horse has to come first.
You represent the barn, the HO is responsible to manage her obligations to her contract. It’s not your place to manage her lessee’s performance against the subcontract. As long as you are confident that your communications have a professional tone, I would not change a thing or bend over backwards to fluff up this boarder. All you can change is how you feel and react to her hissy fits.
Remind yourself that you did not provoke or cause her unprofessional behavior. Stop caring about it.
That doesn’t mean you have to ignore it and just keep taking the body blows. I’d respond each time with a dispassionate explanation of your expectations: “An angry response is not appropriate here. As the manager, it’s my job to let horse owners know when there’s a problem, so that you can take whatever steps are needed. From your message, it seems you are upset with your lessee for not holding up her agreement with you. I encourage you to take it up with her.”
I have been really surprised to board at barns that allow people to clean their own stalls, for the issues brought up here. Everyone has a different idea of “clean”, and you run the risk of one Pigpen stinking up and bringing flies into the barn.
A tween or teen is a young boarder- by the time you’re 20-something you’re a young adult and old enough to start acting like it.
The lessor has a boarding contract- regardless of their subcontracted leasee, HO is still on the hook for the board contract SHE signed. Hold her to the terms. It’s not your problem that she doesn’t pull her own weight. If she has a beef with it she can go to her leasee to confirm schedules.
Same as if she wasn’t paying her board or was late with it- it isn’t the BO or BM’s problem if the HO shares her horse with someone who doesn’t pay up on time- the agreement is with HO who owes the board regardless of whatever side deals she has others involved in.
If she is responding to your texts by text, is it possible that YOU are misinterpreting her response as being angry/explosive, when she is also just being brisk/efficient?
I agree that your best solution is to have a contractual penalty for not cleaning stalls or if she was then required to change her board package to include the stall.
you can’t yell at someone via text unless youre sending in all caps. How often do you see the boarder vs seeing the lessee? Is the boarder unable to come out as frequently to clean the stall vs the lessee? One way to rectify the situation is ask the owner for a copy of her lease agreement with the lessee (if there is one) which then could give you the authority to speak directly to the lessee about cleaning the stall.
While I agree (to a point) with other posters who said it’s between the lessor and the lessee to iron it out, since you now have knowledge that the lessee is supposed to bear some of this responsibility, I see no reason why you can’t say something to the lessee about cleaning the stall. i.e. Please one of you need to clean poor Dobbins stall.
That is what I had been thinking.
First, don’t blame it on the age of the people involved.
Young or old, all kinds of people don’t do things the way we want or have promised/contracted to do.
BM is the one in charge that stalls be cleaned.
OP as the BM needs to see to this situation and get that boarder’s attention that there is a problem and needs to be fixed, now.
Since this involves a third party that is not under contract with the barn, but with the boarder, the boarder needs to be reminded that person is under her direction.
No matter how the boarder makes it happen, that stall needs to be cleaned properly as per contract, end of story.
I agree that the contracts need a penalty clause for not cleaning stalls and enforced.
These problems are part of managing.
They crop up and are resolved and others then show up.
Is part of managing anything, why things need managing.
Coming here to talk it over is a good way to think thru those problems.
All those ideas out there, some of it may fit the situation.
The boarder is young, so there is a lack of maturity as a factor here. Also, if she’s going to work and school, she could be overwhelmed and receiving these texts on top of it lead to a somewhat streesed or angry response. I’m not saying it’s right, but I’ve been in university and working at the same time, and I was stretched thin! But I just marked on the calendar which days I needed my stall cleaned (usually a handful of times I couldn’t make it out there each month), and BO charged me a little bit extra. We had a system and it worked.
In this case, you could speak to her in person or try the voicemail method. Some texting apps such as Whatsapp allow voice messages to be sent in place of text, not sure what you’re using, but I use this option if I cannot type and noticed it is popular with others too.
But don’t take it personally, just carry on about your business. If it is recurring a lot that you have to remind her to clean the stall, it’s time for a sit down with the BO to determine if this boarder is a good fit for this stable. Both partied need to hold up their contractual obligations. If one party isn’t, that’s a problem. If the boarder stays, you may have to take a solid stance on if it is not cleaned as agreed to, it will be cleaned by barn staff and boarder will be charged accordingly. The end. But I don’t know if it’s worth it. That’s for you and BO to determine.
It sounds to me as if there’s at least partial fault on both sides. I absolutely disagree with her responding so inappropriately with anger, no excuse for that. And obviously, she’s entirely responsible for her horse and stall, if her leaser doesn’t do her duties.
On the other hand, you admit to being blunt and that you feel that taking the time to be polite is fluffing it up and a waste of time. (Seriously? Is it truly that difficult?) So you quite possibly you do come across as rude or harsh, which is likely uncalled for. Most of us would probably recognize that you don’t mean to be rude and would be able to brush it off, but clearly, this girl explodes instead.
It might help to make an attempt to meet her in the middle – put a tiny bit of effort into your texts. Either write it the way you’d phrase it if she would standing in front of you, or if that’s too much work, do a voice-to-text or record a voice message as someone else mentioned. Given that this situation bothered you enough to post it here, perhaps putting in the effort to fluff it up is worth it to lower the conflict level for your own sake. That old expression of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different response comes to mind – if you change your approach to her, she should be willing to also respond politely. Have a conversation with her and explain that you don’t mean to come across the way she seems to take it and that you will try to be kinder in your texts, but also tell her that you would appreciate being treated politely as well, without the unnecessary anger.
While you’re not responsible for how she reacts, recognizing that your blunt style is a factor wouldn’t hurt. It takes two to tango, and it would be less stressful for you and make her easier to deal with if you put in the fraction of a second additional that it may take to type out the pleases and thank yous. This is the social contract that all of us abide by unconsciously; give respect and get respect. When both sides fail on that point, unnecessary drama ensues. JMHO.
Personally - the solution seems simple, but I could be a d*ck. I’d say -
"Hi there! I know we’eve spoken about this before, but I wanted to circle back around with you on this because it’s important :insert smily face:. When you moved in to the barn/ bought your horse/ whatever, you agreed to this stall being cleaned on a certain schedule. It doesn’t seem like you our the gal leasing your horse is able to keep that schedule, which I can totally understand as you’re a student and school schedules can be really tough and unpredictable. I’d like to discuss some options I thought of:
A- you may keep your stall, and I will charge you when I have to clean it to maintain the standards that we’ve set for cleanliness of the facilities. This is for everyone’s benefit and will not change. If you’re able to clean it, awesome! But I will clean it if the stall isn’t maintained every 48 hours as agreed, and the costs will be added to your monthly bill accordingly.
B- you may relinquish your stall (and if this is a possibility for your facility, they can stay on as a pasture boarder, or leave if that isn’t offered.)
Please let me know how you’d like to move forward! We enjoy having you here and I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out."
This behavior is unacceptable. I would talk to her in person and say " I’ve noticed that when I communicate by texts you seem to dislike it. What is the best way to communicate with you if there is something going on? Is there something I can do here to make it easier to communicate? How would you like me to notify you if a stall door has been left open?" Then, listen to her answer and hold her to it. Put the ball in her court and make her responsible for it. If she continues to be childish, tell her that you don’t think that it is fair to be addressed in that manner when you are just trying to do your job. Like, welcome to adulthood you miserable snowflake.
The BO doesn’t have your back and she/he should. Have the people complaining about the smelly stall go to the BO instead of you. If enough people complain to her(him?), she’ll do something about it.
You’re being put in an impossible spot by the BO, so it’s time to put this back on the BO. “Hi BO. Boarder A is in repeated violation of her boarding contract. I have communicated with her about it, but the problem persists. I recommend we (fill in the blank – require her to convert to straight pasture board, give 30 days notice, whatever you see as the solution). What are your thoughts?”
If the BO shoots you down, stay in the conversation until you have clear guidance about how the BO wants you to proceed in this situation where the client is in violation of the contract. Clean the stall quietly? Don’t clean the stall? (In this case, I would send all complaints about the stall directly to the BO.) Continue communicating with the HO about it? Stop communicating about it? Get marching orders – and then decide whether you can live with them or need to find a different job.
The communication issue is really secondary. If you really think it’s all about tone, I’d try calling and leaving voicemails to see if you get a different response. It’s an interesting experiment. If it doesn’t change the response, now you know that and can go back to texting, since that’s your preference and it’s getting the same outcome. At this point in the game, with an ongoing problem, I’m not sure what “fluffing up” the message is going to do. “Dobbin’s stall has not been cleaned in two days. (Insert action that will take place, if applicable.)” is plenty at this point. Both parties know what’s up; no need to play games. A first offense, sure, I’d start with, “Is everything okay? I noticed that Dobbin’s stall hasn’t been cleaned in two days.” Actually, for a first offense I would probably start with a phone call, because I would probably be genuine concerned that something was wrong.
That’s a tough spot being called the manager but having no authority to really manage the barn with a BO who really doesn’t seem interested in enforcing the terms or the contract. was the leaser here required sign anything with the barn requiring them to comply with the self care terms or is it an informal agreement between the horse owner and her leaser. If so, good luck with that. Do you even have a number for the leaser?
I don’t buy HO here being so overwhelmed she doesn’t care about a stinking stall for her horse to stand in and being rude to the person pointing out her horse was standing in a filthy stall she contractually agreed to clean. If something was going on to prevent her from cleaning and being sure leaser is cleaning, she should simply have explained and promised to take care of it.
So true. Even when I did full-care, it was insane how long boarders would go without getting the farrier out (I didn’t do that part, but did say if they scheduled with my appts, I’d catch and hold for free and it was in my contract that way). The recent bad-behaving-boarder threads has made me change some recent plans I had made…
Not totally true :lol: I personally use ye olde exclamation point for yelling, not caps, and if I need emphasis, I include the word inside asterisks. In FB messenger, this actually makes the word bolded. Don’t know what OP is using. I prefer FB messenger because it shows delivered versus read, and if the person has read the text and has been active, but not responding.
“It is not my responsibility to muck Dobbin’s stall! It’s Laura’s, she’s the lessor. You need to ask her, I’m too busy to get out this week; I have a busy week trying to finish this semester out, you know. That’s the whoooooole point of leasing him!”
I personally wouldn’t send something like this, ever, but you get the point.
