? Cleaner helping self to a tipple. What would you do ?

[Popsythe1st]

Dh commented last night ' when did you hit that gin? ' I hadn't. Treated myself to a bottle of Sipsmith and had a small measure last weekend. There is now a good 2 inches off the level. Thinking about it , a bottle of whiskey left from Christmas has virtually been finished off. The only person it could be is the cleaner and funny how we noticed it the day she has been. What would you do?

Bit of a drip feed!

My parents were convinced I hated the smell of smoke whilst I was smoking 10 a day

Heh that was me as well

Sounds like you need to hide the drink OP. Say in the boot of the car? If you like her and want to keep her then it going missing will be enough of a message. Or tell her you would prefer she didn't drink alcohol while she's working.

Not a dripfeed, it's an update

I'm sure she must have realised she had been rumbled. We also took the Baileys out of the fridge when we realised it was nearly empty. Funny thing though, she didn't take her money this week.??

I wondered whether she was siphoning it off into another bottle rather than drinking it on the job.

What will you do now?

And why were people so keen to blame her son? OK, so he's 14, but an awful lot of 14 year olds really wouldn't want to drink alcohol, particularly not the sort their parents would drink.

Maybe she hasn't taken her wages because she now realizes that you've worked out that she's been stealing your alcohol?

Imperial - because it was simply much more likely to be the 14 year old than a cleaner - who must realise that at some point her theft would be noticed. However I apologise to the op for jumping the gun.

Also, when I was a whipper snapper (around 14/15) my friends and I used to sneak into our juice bottles some gin/vodka whatever and take it into school and share it... seems absolutely crazy now, especially as we went to a naice, all girls, grammar school.

We also did this, stole parents gin! My mum was convinced our dad was an alcoholic and used to steal booze, I wonder if it was just us.. never looked at it like that before now.

That's sad OP, what are you going to do?

If she is a genuine woman who you would wish to help then why not confront her gently and offer support? She has left this the money out of guilt and shame likely.
If she is a good cleaner then maybe you can move forward and she could stay on? Ob if you feel she is a downright thief then she must be sacked.

MN is a funny old place at times.

People on here were piling onto the 'late for Jobcentre meeting' thread to tell the OP it was her own fault, she should have been on time yesterday, when she was three minutes late because her bus was delayed.

I've seen people flamed for making driving errors, keeping a fiver they found on the pavement and buying a dog.

Yet this woman is stealing from her employer and drinking on the job, and presumably driving home, and somehow it's the OP's responsibility to turn counsellor and help her through her issues, while continuing to pay her?

Is that middle class guilt talking?

I'm afraid I'd tell her what I had noticed, give her a chance to apologise/explain and tell her if it happened again I'd be looking for another cleaner.