Cleaner on phone all the time

Some people need that type of input to be able to do tasks such as cleaning.

I personally hate trying to work in the house when my cleaner is there - I organise to work elsewhere!

She does well then to hold the phone whilst hovering 😜

Then what has the fact she charges £19ph got to do with anything?

I think it’s just a case of get another cleaner if it’s annoying you.

Upstairs, downstairs eh, OP?

I think a frustration with the chatting if it’s disturbing you is valid and you could ask that she not chat while downstairs (or whatever floor you work on). But not simply because she’s talking while cleaning. It’s not the sort of job where talking will necessarily distract from the quality of her work.

There are lots of jobs where people talk all the time. I’ve worked in factories and behind the scenes in shops where we spent the whole time chatting. It wasn’t on the phone because people were right in front of us, but we chatted, pretty much non stop, for 8 hours about things that weren’t anything to do with work. The same can be true in plenty of manual labour jobs. I have a friend who’s a gardener who often phones me while she’s working. I’ve seen dog walkers clearly chatting on the phone. (Also lots of nannies, though I think that’s not reasonable as frequently clearly a distraction from their charges).

Talking on the telephone. I presume with a ear piece so she still has 2 hands to clean

If shes good and you trust her i wouldnt say anything to her

I had a cleaner awhile back when i was a carer and sick myself and she would come in, i would make her a Tea and she would sit and have a quick lunch as she was going from job to job and sometimes she would even bring her baby with her

If you trust someone, they are worth their weight in gold and you should look after them

So I presume the cleaner comes once a week?

How often does she happen to be in the kitchen when you come home it fir tea or lunch? You’ve a house that has lots of rooms. She speaks quietly as you’ve said. You can’t be interacting with her that often in a working day to find that difficult.

How much of a disturbance can it actually be?

If you’re happy with her work, I’d leave her to chat.

Is she having a 2 way convo or maybe learning a language? Annoying either way tbh and I would want to ask if she could stop while you are out of your office.

It's not affecting her work so why are you so bothered by it? It sounds like you're more than a bit controlling. She's doing no harm, she's doing her job well enough so this is a you problem.

It isn't wrong to ask her to not talk on a phone in the kitchen, if it would help you enjoy your home.

Just don't dress it as a matter of principle, state it as your preference.

Thank you for that. I do appreciate it. I will say though that it would be prudent not to confuse the interest you've had with there being a plentiful supply...the best cleaners and cleaning companies are the ones who have a waiting list and rarely, if ever, advertise. I know it's a terribly arrogant to say so, but I interview my clients when a new enquiry comes in, not that I take on much new work as I am always fully booked. Agencies are another category altogether - historically they will fall over themselves to offer to fill the hours you need, but frequently never have enough cleaners on their books to do so. They will take the booking then search for a cleaner...I suppose it's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, as they say. This said, I am incredibly biased about agencies, as I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would go to all the bother of registering as self-employed and doing all their own tax returns (or at the least hiring an accountant), but not wanting to find & manage their own clients...that's is the easiest part of all. Unless, of course, they haven't done everything by the book.

Anyway, I don't have an issue with using the phone when I'm working as I said before, but i don't think it sets the correct tone to do so when clients are at home, thus I avoid.

Jeez I can clean and talk. I can even drive and talk. It’s a mindless job that doesn’t need intellectual thought. Let her chat away.
If it means you can concentrate because you can hear her then that’s different.

The fact that you made reference to her not speaking English made me wonder if it was London-centric, because I know from my vast work experience in this sector that outside of London the typical demographic for a domestic cleaner is white-British female.

There is no shortage of people wanting to do the job in London, but outside of it it's a different story. Rates for cleaning are a lot higher outside of inner-London, and customers are plentiful. This has everything to do with your OP, because if you're in an area where there's plenty of work then you have to be careful what you say, because like it or not, people who do this job will exercise their right to dispense with a customer if they choose to.

The £19ph is also relevant, seeing how you brought it up in your OP, but are later saying the lady comes from an agency. If she's being paid £19ph to turn up via an agency, where nothing but insurance is provided (as in, you give her all that she needs to clean with, and she isn't responsible for washing cloths & maintaining equipment etc.) then £19ph is a fair price, in fact bordering on the generous for agency rates.

If it's £19ph including agency fee, then for someone self-employed they'd need to be taking approximately £15.70 per hour just to be paid the same as minimum wage on a payroll, when other factors are added in, such as holiday pay. She will also not be paid for travel time as a self-employed worker from an agency. Therefore, if she's being paid a low hourly rate, I would certainly beg that you factor in some kindness when mentioning you don't like her being on the phone for the five hours she is.

And before you pull me up for saying self-employed, I am taking this from your use of the specific work "agency", which has a very specific meaning in the cleaning industry, and one which cannot be applied to either a cleaner who is self-employed & who finds their own customers, or a cleaner who is either employed or self-employed and works for a cleaning company.

No one working for an agency is going to be an employee, as that's not how cleaning agencies work.

Kindly, I have answered your question to me, would you now go back and answer mine? I asked if she did any cleaning work that was noisy, such as vacuuming, and if she was still talking on her phone whilst doing that.

YANBU. It would drive me mad. It’s totally unacceptable to be on the phone all the time. Get a different cleaner.

Oh get a grip. Cleaning is a really boring job and talking while she does it is completely fine. People rarely do manual jobs in silence.

Is this in London or somewhere nearby? And is the £19ph what you pay the cleaner, or is that including agency fees?

If it was the office cleaner where you worked that might apply but why would anyone accept something that annoys them in their own home that they are paying their own money for?

It's obvious from the very fact that the OP has started a thread that it does matter to her, she's not saying it has to matter to everyone else, she's allowed to be different

I think I'll try an agency this time.

Good luck with that. There's plenty of work around, so I will never understand why any self-employed cleaner would need to sign up to an agency to have them find it for them. In other words, if you (that is you personally) go to an agency as a customer, it will be interesting to know as to what you get that's different from what you got when hiring directly.

YABU. If the job is getting done it really doesn't matter.

Has she got some sort of ear-piece/headset then? Because I presume she can’t be cleaning one-handed whilst holding the phone in the other?
Constant chat on someone else’s phone in my own house would annoy me and I’d have to have a word with her.

Get a different cleaner. I haven't got a cleaner at the moment. Have had them in the past. Good non annoying cleaners are few and far between. I think I'll try an agency this time. On the phone all the time is totally unacceptable. I had one once who brought her irritating 3 year old occasionally who I had to entertain. I would rather have cleaned. And she wasn't even a very good cleaner.