Hi,

First at all as a host you must check if the volunteer is registered (more instructions on the end). This will bring you some extra safety in case a serious situation happens.

Before the problems scale up you may ask the WWOOFer to leave. You must be nice and explain that you are not feeling comfortable otherwise you will have a angry WWOOFer on your house. It isn't an easy task, but fortunately most of the WWOOFers are great people.

If it is a serious situation, don't forget to report to the coordinator in your country.

Two easy steps to check the WWOOFers registration:
1- login
2- search for him/her at the WWOOFERS tab

Wish you nice WWOOFers,

I had an experience of one WWOOFer making other WWOOFers feel tense and uncomfortable and after a while I felt the same way. At first, X presented a positive and spectacularly extrovert personality, which, for a while, camouflaged all the negative psychological baggage inside.

But the baggage started to distort X's perceptions and change X's behaviour towards other WWOOFers and me; slowly X became more negative - critical, dismissive, derisive, scornful and contemptuous. As soon as I realised that things were not going to improve and that I didn't want to sit through another meal with X at the table, I asked X to leave, even though there were only two days before the agreed departure date. X left promptly and without any fuss. This was the first time I had asked a WWOOFer to leave. I felt sad but relieved.

Should hosts generally tell WWOOF Portugal when they ask WWOOFers to leave?

As a host, I would be very thankful to know if a WWOOFer has been asked to leave by another farm, before accepting that WWOOFer onto mine. I would wish to contact the other host to find out more.

Regarding WWOOFer X above, I would recommend X to any farm, as long as they are prepared for what I discern to be an inevitable repeating pattern of behaviour, and I would advise them therefore to accept X for a maximum of 2 weeks. Then there should be no problem, and the host would get plenty of work done because X has lots of energy and works quickly and accurately.

In general I wish that hosts could more easily contact each other through WWOOF.pt

I think this highlights one of the flaws in the idea of wwoofing. When you, as a host, take on a wwoofer, you are essentially bypassing all of the costly and complicated regulations that make employing people in a standard way unattractive. If you employ someone within a legal structure then there is provision for dealing with something like this - for your benefit and for the benefit of the individual who, incidentally, you seem to be fairly unsympathetic with despite that fact that he/she has come to work for your benefit. Wwoofing nearly always benefits the host more than it does the wwoofer. Unfortunately, more often than not, it attracts people who want cheap labour without having to go through the loops of actually employing someone - not all people obviously, but many.

Beggars can't be choosers, I would suggest that if these sorts of situations worry you then you employ people within societies framework as opposed to requesting a framework within wwoofing where you can set up some sort of secret communication system that would be open to blacklisting people who hosts simply don't like.

[quote="Aakildevej"]
We had a 2 woofers last year who weren't happy at all. One was really depressed and angry. One was psychotic and paranoid and scared us so much we considered calling the police to get rid of him. ( showed up he didn't have a profile and misused another wwoofers list)
Any good advice on how to avoid this?

[/quote]

Ask the person for his horoscop and check how much you fit together before you welcome the wwoofer to your proyect.