Still a junior who can't create a thread, so I thought this thread was the best platform to vent/ask a question. Is it reasonable for me to be annoyed in the following scenario:
I am subleasing a house in Denver for the summer from a newlywed couple3 bedroom home all to myself. I don't know these people at all, but they are friends of a friend of a friend. As a part of the sublease, my sublessors stipulated 3 things: (1) they were considering renting out one of the bedrooms on airBnB (2) for one weekend this summer, they had family staying in town, so I would have to vacate for that weekend and (3) they said the following verbatim (and this part is key): "since we won't be here for the summer, we will need you to cut the grass. It's not that hard it only takes about 15 or 20 minutes. You will probably only need to cut it once this summer."
Those conditions all seemed reasonable to me, so I gladly accepted. A week into the sublease they told me that they weren't going to rent out any of the other bedrooms on airbnb because it was too much of a hassle. That took care of condition #1. Soon thereafter, they informed me that week 4 would be the week that I would need to vacate. I set up a camping trip that weekend, and everything worked out great. That took care of condition #2. When I returned from camping on Sunday, I decided week #4 would be a good week to mow the lawn since it was getting high. I mowed the lawn and everything was hunky-dory (even if it was a 90 min job, not a 15 min job). That took care of condition #3.
Let's fast forward to week #8. I receive a text message on Wednesday saying: "Hey! Sorry for the late notice but my parents are coming into town and sleeping over on Thursday and Friday. Don't worry about doing anything, they will sleep in the room upstairs." I was a little bit annoyed that I had to share the house with these parents last minute. I would have definitely appreciated more than a 1 day heads-up, but it wasn't a big deal since I didn't have any plans to have people over those nights. I had also accepted the sublease knowing there was a possibility that I would be sharing the house with airbnb-ers, so I never had much expectation of privacy. Still, I didn't want these parents to come home to a messy house so I made it a point to make sure to clean up. I'm interning at a big law firm and had to work late Wednesday and didn't' have time to clean at all. Instead, I woke up at 5 AM Thursday morning and spent 3 hours cleaning the house, and making it appear immaculatewashing all of the dishes, vaccuuming, sweeping, cleaning the floors, scrubbing the countertops...the works.
Regretfully, I had no time to mow the lawn. I had been meaning to mow it since it had been 4 weeks since I last mowed it, and the grass was getting tall. I pushed it off for 3 reasons: (1) my sublessors only mentioned mowing the lawn once, and I figured anything outside of that would just be me going above and beyond; (2) I had been busy with work the last two weeks and had been traveling for the weekends; and finally, (3) I figured there was no rush to do it since my sublessors were not returning for another 2 weeks.
On that Thursday afternoon while I was at work, the parents went to the house and settled in. A few hours later, I receive a passive aggressive voicemail from the sublessor saying, "we agreed that you would take care of the house. My parents came in town, and I get a phone call saying that the grass is out of control and weeds are overtaking the backyard! Not cool man! Please take care of that now."
This frustrated me a lot. I was very cordial in my response, basically apologizing for not getting around to it for the second time, and promised to mow the lawn ASAP. Nevertheless, I was really annoyed. First, my sublessors never mentioned picking weeds this summer. Second they gave me no time to prepare the house for visitors. Third, I have been a great a tenant for the entire tenancy and worked damn hard to make the house cleaner than it was when I actually moved in; it was annoying to have the parents not notice any of that and just rat me out for the backyard that is (a) not actually that bad and (b) fenced off and not visible to the public.
Would anyone else be annoyed in these circumstances or would you side with the sublessors and think leaving an angry voicemail would be appropriate?
Thanks in advance for either validating or invalidating my frustration, GAF!