While as ever, the majority of wwwoofers are wonderful and pose no danger, please be aware that ex-wwoofs can go bad!
Yesterday, I had a wwoofer from last year who I asked to leave as he was demanding money from me turn up...he was/is a very keen bee man having made a film about bees and cycled all round Europe making a film about wild bees. He had been wwoofing 'at a place near me', and came here as I keep bees. Before he came here and after his last wwoof place, he was somewhere else and made two beehives as a 'gift' for me and my bees. One hive, a skep was a complete disaster and went mouldy, due to terrible design, I sent it to the compost heap and told him all about it..a positive experience for him I would have hoped, as it just didn't work. The other was a hollowed out tree, with a plastic viewing window. I said at the time that I was worried about the wood going mouldy and also I wouldn't use plastic near bees and would replace it with safety glass. This 'gift' was meant to be an outdoor structure..anyway heels of the hunt was that he turned up with a friend yesterday to collect the tree hive. He became very agitated and very aggressive when I told him (again) that the skep was on the compost heap and although intact, the tree hive was mouldy. I do understand that people may not understand the effects of a high humidity country, and, as someone who 'cares' about bees I thought he would understand that his 'structures' had not stood the test of Irish weather nor would be suitable for bees.
The result of this was that he stood roaring effing and blinding and calling me all the c*nts under the sun outside my front door and then my back door (which I'd locked with me inside). I had my doors locked and stayed inside until he left. It was horrendous and there was no time to call a garda. He is no longer on the wwoof site I believe.
I don't know what to do for the coming wwoof season. Whilst I don't depend on wwoofers here, I feel it is a wonderful place and opportunity for people to come here and it is lovely for the area having new people around...
I do know that the vast majority of the troublesome wwoofers I have had have all been male and when things go wrong they go very wrong. Should I therefore limit my wwoofers to 'women only'? This would be for the safety of other wwoofers too.
It would be interesting to know about other hosts experiences. I really don't know if I can face another wwoof season of trouble and strife, with 'aggressive and angry young men'....
sorry to read you had that awful experience, maybe you would be better with female woofers, you can only find out by trial and error i suppose, although having said that we had one Wwoofer who took a small item of ours and left early, owing us some money, as supposedly the 'bank card wouldn't work'. i chalked it up to the learning curve, and am going to probably increase my lower age limit...to try and get more mature woofers....dont give up on Wwoofers all I can say is that all ours ,except one, so far
have been brilliant.....
Ah, thank you. Wasn't nice at all.
I thought I'd finally cracked it as I now ask for references from wwoofers. I've been hosting for the last nearly 8 years, and generally wwoofers are wonderful and a joy to have around - male and female. And yes, female wwoofers only may be for 'the best' but to be honest I don't want to be part of something where half of the potential candidates are ruled out by the behaviour of some males. This chap was 'more mature', and funny enough it has been mainly the older males I have had trouble with..perhaps they don't like taking direction from women...who knows, but things have on more than on occasion came close to being very dangerous aggression wise, so perhaps for the time being I won't take lads as they can be dangerous..a very sad state of affairs, but personal has to come first before 'ideal world stuff'
What a bother that was. If I lived alone I don't think I would take males but I have husband and son with me. I have found that males an females bring different skills. Fingers crossed for us all this year.
Funny enough, my neighbour takes wwoofers and has had trouble with lads when she was there herself, and they changed when her partner appeared..weird..especially since people are such a huge part of organic/sustainable living. As well I am a brown belt in karate, but that doesn't help with much! I do think over the years there has been an attitude change from folks who want to wwoof with many of them thinking they are coming hostelling or to a summer camp..I despair I really really do!
I agree with Ballyrisode, don't give up, 99.9% of Wwoofers are great! I'm not sure that you'd be allowed to say you only take female Wwoofers, the Wwoof office can tell you that, but nothing to say you have to invite the males when they contact you. Another thing you may like to try if you don't already is ask them to skype with you so that you can get an idea of the type of person they are, take away some of the possible conflicts that arise just from being a different type of person. You don't have to commit to them during a skype, tell them that you have a few under consideration and will let them know by email shortly. We do this with house-sitters and it works well. Hope you have a lot of good ones this year to help ease away the memory of the bee man! (We had one with a toilet roll saga, it's become a joke now but I was a bit steamed up about it for a while)
Now I want to know the "toilet roll saga".
I had one young man who argued with me over everything, how I planted my potatoes, what size a courgette should be cut at, when Midsummer is...everything. But he never opened his mouth when my husband and son were around, he was just culturally trained to be arrogant around women. But he was a great worker, did everything he was asked and more and I would take him again if he asked. Have you considered taking a male/female couple, they would balance each other out well.
i am with Tracey...can you tell us more? lol sounds intriguing !!
sorry, haven't been on the computer for a while. Ah the toilet roll saga......one couple who used 12 rolls in 17 days. When they arrive we always talk them through septic tank living. They asked for more loo rolls after about a week with us,and I said they had gone quickly, should have been enough to last, please be careful how much you use, thinking maybe they were blowing their noses on it. (When did children stop being taught how to use a handkerchief?!?!!?)I hadn't noticed then that they were also going missing from all the bathrooms, I keep spares in them of course! (We have 3 toilets that Wwoofers have access to). Then began the smell in our office, yuck! Tracked it to the down pipe, investigated their bathroom, which had fluffy bits of loo paper peeking out of the bowl....it was jammed up so far that it couldn't even navigate the u bend! Husband opened up the drains, totally clogged right through. What really annoyed me is that when we showed them and tried to talk about it, he said nothing, then disappeared leaving her to it, she could not see what was wrong, and eventually just said, "so, I use a little bit of paper, it's no big deal". Ggrrrr!! Only time I've ever lost patience with a Wwoofer. Fortunately they were at the end of their time with us. Unfortunately all new Wwoofers now get a bit of a lecture about toilets, and blowing noses too! Hey ho!
I wrote a notice and put it in the bathrooms, as we have septic system too, and I bought nappy sacks and a bin....(really cheap),for disposal off 'personal items' ...so far so good, but bet you now i have written this we will get a 'clogger'.
I had that with toilet rolls..11 toilet rolls in 5 days...the couple were in their camper van staying here and were using them to wipe the condensation off the inside of their camper van windows every morning..I gave them a cloth.
Also I have found couples to be quite troublesome, with the male doing the work and the female doing very little..not always, but most of the time. I also have had couples who argued with each other all the time..guess I must be crap at selecting my wwoofs!
Dear Miss Thomas,
I am truly heartbroken to read that you had to endure such rude and disrespectful behaviour by a WWOOFer. I am ashamed and angered as well that WWOOFers like him make it difficult for other young men like myself who mean well. Keep strong and I agree with you requiring a reference after such an ordeal. Do you interview potential WWOOFers via Skype? Maybe as others have suggested it does 'weed out' potential incompatible and arrogant WWOOFers. Kind regards to you Madam.
Hi Eileen,
What a horrible experience, really disturbing behavior
People like that should be named and shamed and put on a wwoofers' black list, and possibly reported to the Gardai as well as threatening behavior is a criminal offence. No-one should have to put up with that sort of aggression and intimidation.
Unfortunately, if people like that aren't challenged it just encourages them to behave even worse.
Andy Wilson
Andy, I'm sure you will be pleased to know the WWOOF Ireland team followed up this case, as we do in all cases of bad behaviour.
The "wwoofer"was identified and his name has gone on a watch list. He will not be accepted as a member of wwoof under any circumstances.
We advise hosts to inform the gards should it be necessary.
Neither verbal nor physical aggressive behavior is acceptable.
Eileen I am glad to hear that you are OK and that you were not injured, and feel sad and concerned about your experience.
Although we have had a lot of very good wwoofers over the past 17 years, we have also noticed that there is definitely a different attitude in the people that we host. We have wrote down an extended document with all of the information that the wwoofers need to know as what is expected of them and what type of work they will be required to do. It has definitely helped us to weed out the lazy people. We do not get many responses, but the few that we do get are usually genuine ones, of people that are truly interested in our project and are willing to work as it is set out on our information. However on occasion there have been a few that agreed to everything and when they came, hadn't the faintest idea of what they had agreed to. So we have now learned to ask questions with regard to what we wrote as to check if they have read it. The most reoccurring problem is that of organizing their travels and wanting to use the laptop and internet connection. We are in an area where the internet is quite poor. On the information we give, we clearly state that the computer/laptop and internet is for our personal and business use only. The internet is through the Personal Hotspot of my phone, which means that with poor internet coverage, any extra connection to the Hotspot slows down the connection or even freezes it. You can understand how frustrating it is to try and do any work under this condition.
It also means that if I was to allow the wwoofers to use the HotSpot whenever it suits them I would have to leave my phone at home, and I use my phone for business, so there is no way I can do that. We are not obliged to provide internet service.Yet despite explaining this on the information we have written, the wwoofers show up with an expectation that we let them use our personal laptop and internet. On the information we also told them where in the local area they could find Wi-Fi, but for some it was too much of a bother to go there by bicycle.
All I can suggest, is that you write up a detailed information of what you expect them to do and to clearly state that you do not welcome people with aggressive behaviour. Maybe you should ask them to send you a picture of their passport before they come so if they ever misbehave you can report them to the Garda. It is sad that we welcome people in our homes, we teach them new skills, feed them great food, show our hospitality and some of them just don't appreciate what we offer. Many hosts have left due to bad behaviour from wwoofers and many others are more mistrusting. The badly behaved wwoofers are not ruining things just for themselves, but for many others too. Also we have noticed that over the past few years it seems that the wwoofers are more interested to find someone to teach them English other than really being interested in growing food. I am wondering if changing the name from "Willing Workers on Organic Farms" to "World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms" has something to do with it. If we really think about it, one is talking about the "Willingness" of people to do something they are interested in, which is what we used to get in the past. Since it has changed to "Opportunities", it is like opportunists have come to replace the willing workers.
Many of us hosts I believed have joined the wwoof movement, because we believe in team work and in sharing what we love doing, I don't recall we had ever signed up to teach a language.
It seems to me that the boundaries are a little fuzzy, could this be the reason we attract people that are not as dedicated as they were in the past?
The wwoof team seems to be doing a lot to offer safety for the wwoofers, but what is there in place for our own safety? Maybe this is something that needs to be brought to the wwoof team attention. Eileen and to all of the other hosts, I wish you all to have a safe and great experience and hope you will never again have to suffer aggressive behaviour, getting robbed, or clogged up toilets. Blessings to all.
There is a lot of talk about "aggressive and angry young men", all initiated by an unfortunate event experienced by one host. The Wwoof team had a meeting this morning and it was decided that for the sake of clarity one thing should be made clear. THE MAN INVOLVED WAS NOT A WWOOFER.
The host had accepted him into her home on the recommendation of a friend, having neglected to check his profile. The person has never been a member of WWOOF Ireland, had the host looked for his profile we would have advised her accordingly. Wwoof has become a generic term for volunteers, only genuine wwoofers have been vetted by WWOOF Ireland.
Some have suggested that we are more concerned with protecting wwoofers than hosts. As complaints manager I can confirm that the safety of our hosts is no less important to us than the safety of wwoofers.
One protection for hosts is the wwoofer's picture we require on their profile. If it is not displayed he/she is contacted by one of the team and told to put up a picture, or their profile will be taken down. We insist on personal contact details that are not shown on their profile, anyone removing their details will be barred from continuing as a wwoofer until the details are replaced. This aids transparency. We know which wwoofers have contacted which host. We can, and do advise hosts should they have been contacted by a problem wwoofer.
We reserve the right to remove anyone who fails to uphold the WWOOFER'S Commitments. Please be assured we continue to be committed to serving all our members.
The 'angry young man' I had was originally a woofer and did have a wwoof profile which I had seen prior to him coming here and had been wwoofing at 2 other places before coming here. What I had failed to do with him was to check he still had a wwoof profile and was still indeed a wwoofer. Because he had been wwoofing at a place near to me and someone i knew knew him I made a terrible assumption as he had led me to believe he was still a wwoofer. Just goes to show trust cannot be taken at face value.
Over the eight or nine years I have been hosting, there has been a definite change in the 'quality' of wwoofers, with the emphasis now seeming to be on 'improving' their English. I do think the name should go back to 'willing workers on organic farms' as it does give more of an impression that work is involved.
Like other folks here, I have also had trouble mainly with young men, (but not exclusively), who seem to find it hard to 'take orders' from women. Does that mean it's not safe to take male wwoofers..it shouldn't be, but perhaps it is time for me to review who I select. I try to be very careful and in fact this year had an application from a wonderful couple which I passed onto wwoof admin as they didn't have pictures up, this was resolved as an oversight and they came here and were wonderful. A few years ago I had 2 french lads, who when they booked with me were members, but their membership had ran out by the time they got here and when I found out I quizzed them about it and asked them to leave...a nightmare ensued and I finally got them ejected but continued to be harassed by them via text and e mail...It seems the element of trust has almost gone, and it is now a brave and scary thing to do to take wwoofers. My position as a host is now constantly under review, especially given that in my area I am now the only host from at least 5 former hosts still taking wwoofers, with the others having given up due 'troublesome' wwoofers.