It was midnight, and my husband and I were fast asleep in our Airbnb bedroom. Suddenly, we were jolted awake by the sound of the door bursting open. Our host, a man in his late fifties with graying hair, stormed in, furious. “You idiots, this is a fire alarm!” he screamed.
We sat up in bed, blinking in confusion. The host’s eyes darted between us and the towel-covered device on the ceiling. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he continued, his voice a mix of panic and exhaustion.
I looked at my husband, who was still trying to process what was happening. “Wait, what?” I managed to say. The host marched over to the wall and yanked off the towel, revealing a round, white fire alarm with a small blinking light.
“This is not a spy camera!” he hissed. “It’s a smoke detector, a legal requirement for rental properties. You covered it, and the system automatically alerted me to a malfunction.” I opened my mouth to explain, but the host cut me off. “You thought I was watching you sleep? Why would I want to do that?”
My husband finally found his voice. “To be fair, it was blinking, and it looked suspicious.” The host let out a sharp laugh. “It blinks because it’s working. You know what would be suspicious? If it didn’t blink!”
A painful silence settled in the room. I could feel my face burning with embarrassment. “Look, we’ve read stories about hidden cameras in Airbnbs,” I said, trying to salvage something from this disaster. “You can’t blame us for being cautious.”
The host sighed and rubbed his temples. “I get it. But let me ask you something – if I wanted to secretly film you, do you think I’d do it with something so obviously placed in plain sight?” My husband and I exchanged glances, feeling foolish.
The host threw his hands up. “Thank you!” I cleared my throat, desperate to change the subject. “Uh, so… you said the system alerted you? Does that mean –”
The host cut in, explaining that he had received a call from the security system at 2 a.m., saying there was a fire alarm failure in the property. He had to drive all the way to the Airbnb to stop us from “suffocating ourselves in our sleep.” I blinked, feeling a mix of relief and embarrassment.
Another long silence followed. I let out a weak chuckle. “Okay, so… uh, that was a big misunderstanding.” The host groaned. “Yeah. You think?” My husband finally decided to own up to our mistake. “Hey, at least now you know your system works.”
The host stared at him, then turned and grumbled all the way out the door, slamming it behind him. My husband and I sat there, staring at the smoke detector, feeling foolish.
Then my husband turned to me. “So, uh… you think we should leave a review mentioning this?” I swatted him with a pillow. “Absolutely not.” We both knew we had made a mistake, and it was time to move on.
In the end, we left our host a very apologetic review, acknowledging our mistake and thanking him for his patience. It was a valuable lesson in not jumping to conclusions and being more considerate of others. And we learned that sometimes, a blinking light is just doing its job.
