More muscles to frown than to smile? Maybe, but happy guests are so much easier to deal with...!

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Janet's policy was to take as much money out of her business as possible and put little or nothing back in. Profit may be as pure a motive as there is, but in a service business, it's wise to heed the old adage about spending money to make money. It costs a little more to give guests a truly special experience, but the effort is repaid by the happiness they express by coming back again and again, which in turn boosts the bottom line.

The sort of people who pick a B&B over a hotel are not themselves penny-pinchers. What they abhor above all about even the best of hotels is not their high price but their cold, clinical impersonality, the feeling that you are paying good money to be treated like just another animal in the barn (however plush that barn may be).

Pasadena has some pretty good hotels, as hotels go, the best of them being what is now the Langham Huntington (which is actually in San Marino). But even that, with its imposing architecture and gardens and its bountiful fresh floral displays at every turn, has a sort of hallowed, formal air that is not really welcoming. There is, no doubt, something special about a hotel that can charge $350 a night for a room only a little bigger than the bed in the middle of it, but some of that "special-ness" may come from gratitude that you can afford to spend so much for so little.

A really good B&B, in contrast, offers a friendly welcome, a home away from home that is perhaps a little better than home because it's always tidy and well cared for. Paint splotches on the walls, a sign of hasty making do rather than getting the job done right, do not signal care and attention to detail, any more than do dead flowers on the tables in the dining room!

Quiet, classy comfort that does not intimidate...that's the aim. And in the background, ready to step forward when needed, are innkeepers and staff who have real smiles on their faces and behave is if they are actually happy to have you there.

Janet created something imaginative when she turned a run-down old house on Magnolia Street in South Pasadena into a bed and breakfast inn with an artistic theme and rooms dedicated to Van Gogh, Monet, Constable and (surprise!) Norman Rockwell. But at some point, she must have decided that high standards were an unnecessary expense, and even as it doubled its size to fill the fomer duplex next door, the inn's shine began to dull and its age began to show through multiplying cracks.

Different innkeepers through the years added their own special touches such as edible blossoms on the edge of breakfast plates for added color and style and decanters of port wine plus high-end chocolates in every room. But by the time we got there, the dining room tablecloths were faded and unhemmed, the morning coffee tasted like ground acorns, and the wine in chipped decanters was closer to unleaded gasoline in both taste and price than the pride of Portugal (or Napa Valley)!

I have digressed again into what might seem to some to be a litany of complaints, but what I am trying to do here is set the scene for what I hope will down the road become a mostly positive chronicle of life in a business that should be as much a pleasure for those who provide this special brand of service as for the people who receive it. In our year and a half at the Artists Inn, Jenny and I received almost daily confirmation that we were doing things right, in compliments, tips and other gifts from guests (never expected, but also never refused) and reservations from people asking over the phone, "Will you be there? We won't come if you're not!"

When we first arrived, Janet told us that it was up to us who took over for us at the Inn when we needed to take a break, and at first we went along with contacting a couple who had been regular stand-ins for years when Dennis and Jody went on vacation.

I had started to build up mid-week bookings from local companies with employees coming in from out of town, because B&Bs do best on weekends, naturally, and that's not enough to sustain a 10-room operation for the other 50 roomnights week that can sometimes remain unsold. We were making real progress in that area, primarily by ignoring Janet's "no discounts!!!" policy and offering deals that made us competitive with local hotels. I also installed (and paid for) wireless Internet access, because not having it in 2004 AD was a ridiculous oversight. To give her her due, Janet reimbursed me a couple of months later...

We ditched old-timers Pat and Rich in a hurry when one of our regular business guests told us on our return that he'd been told that NO, he could not have his breakfast as usual at 7:15am instead of 8:00 because "We don't do that." Then came complaints about the innkeepers hurling abuse at each other across the kitchen at breakfast-time, with every word carrying into the dining room and ruining everyone's good morning mood. The coffee, too, was undrinkable, we were told, probably because grinding beans fresh every morning also came under the "We don't do that" heading.

We had to decide whether to follow Dennis and Jody's lead and force guests to suffer Pat and Rich because they made us look good in comparison, or to say instead that our surrogates were a reflection of our commitment to the Inn and should therefore maintain our standards in our absence. We chose the latter, until after several months Janet responded to repeated entreaties from the Bickersons and insisted that they be reinstated. That decision alone revealed everything we needed to know about the owner's attitude to the guests who put fat profits in her pocket!

Neither Jenny nor I could figure out why anyone would deliberately choose NOT to be nice to guests. Forget the old cliche about it taking more muscles to frown than to smile - being friendly and welcoming gets immediate feedback most of the time, and we'd always get a special kick out of seeing an uptight, travel-weary guest relax and warm to us before our very eyes.
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