AIBU: I don't want my cleaner to bring her child to work

[wouldwelcomeadvice]

The cleaner has brought her child (age 6) into the country in the last few days and she is not yet registered at a school. She has brought her to work, in my house, today without asking me first. The child has been coughing away. I have three children and I don't need them getting ill. The child is well behaved and has just fallen asleep on the couch. AIBU. I just don't want any more bodies in my house.

A COUGH. not a couch!

You don't let sick people in your home? Never? What about your family?

That book looks really good MarrianneM. Is the Polly Toynbee one a UK version of the same experiment then, do you know? I liked this review in it's blurb: "Every member of the cabinet should be required to read it, apologise and then act". And that was just referring to the last lot....

Yes, Celestial - I think Polly Toynbee got the idea from Barbara Ehrenreich's book. Makes enlightening reading.

At both universities I have studied with the lecturers have brought their children to lectures during half terms. I have updated my spreadsheet after reading some of the horrid comments on this thread, "they" FFS

Thanks - I like Polly Toynbee's columns a lot. Had never come across that book before.

From Barbara Ehrenreich's article in the Guardian on domestic workers:

"It is also the place where your children are raised, and what they learn pretty quickly is that some people are less worthy than others. Even better wages and working conditions won't erase the hierarchy between an employer and his or her domestic help, because the help is usually there only because the employer has 'something better' to do with her time, as one report on the growth of cleaning services puts it, not noticing the obvious implication that the cleaning person herself has nothing better to do with her time. In a merely middle-class home, the message may be reinforced by a warning to the children that that's what they'll end up doing if they don't try harder in school. Housework, as radical feminists once proposed, defines a human relationship and, when unequally divided among social groups, reinforces pre-existing inequalities. Dirt, in other words, tends to attach to the people who remove it. Or, as cleaning entrepreneur Don Aslett told me with some bitterness - and this is a successful man, chairman of the board of an industrial cleaning service and frequent television guest: 'The whole mentality out there is that if you clean, you're a scumball.' "

www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2000/aug/20/features.magazine37

Mavis I had a lecturer who bf'd throughout tutorials, sitting cross-legged on her floor. Those were the days, eh!

Marianne I really am not sure that holds good across the board. I used to clean (for money, I mean). I now have a cleaner. I do not regard her as a non-person and tbh if I ever lost my job and had to find any work I could get, cleaning would not be something I'd gib at.

Cleaning is work. It is worth money. Some people do it for themselves and spend time rather than cash doing it. Some people give others cash to do it. I know from experience that lots of people treat cleaners like scum, but it isn't a default position, you know.

My Mum was a cleaner at times when I was growing up, we also had a cleaner at other times. It just depended on her time:money ratio during each time period. When she worked full time we had a cleaner, when she was a SAHM but wanted some extra £ she did some cleaning a few mornings a week, I don't think she ever felt like dirt because of it.

My Granny used to clean houses , she was widowed and had no income, and noone to help look after the children. My Dad was the youngest and not yet at school, so he had to go with her. One house she cleaned at would not let my Dad in the house, he had to sit in the cold porch until his mother had finished. So degrading- he was just a small boy, FFS! But that was in the 1930's, I had hoped things had moved on since then. Shaking Head in disbelief.

I don't agree with the Ehrenreich view. It seems to fetishise domestic work - so its ok to get a takeaway (possibly prepared by illegal immigrants with no employment rights) but not to employ a cleaner. Makes no sense to me. I think what is a problem is when people employ cleaners on the black, with no NI, taxes, insurance etc. but that's another matter.

As for the OP, let's just pause and reflect on the fact that the child and mother had been reunited A FEW DAYS EARLIER. In the circs, it seems hard hearted to object. It isn't hard to imagine the outpourings of empathy if an MNer was forced by economic necessity to work in a different country from her kids for a long period of time....

The OP makes my spine feel icy. And depressed because people like this exist.

Shudder.

"bodies"

She should either find a new cleaner or roll up her sleeves and fucking do it herself.

Teatimes- yes I wonder if she would feel the same about, say, window cleaning, which is typically done by men. Or car valeting. Etc.

Really horrid undertones

the overreaction by some is hilarious.

Well I think everyone's being very harsh on the OP. Just imagine your dismay if there was a child on your sofa for two hours or so, doing Foreign Coughing. And this isn't from a skiing trip to Cloisters, either. This isn't a cough that the Beckham children get, or you know, other children from the Best Families. You wouldn't know where to look. Domestics might have personal lives, but they should realise that they get paid top dollar for their cushy jobs so that the likes of you and I don't have to deal with...you know.

What Penguin said.

One small child for a few hours is hardly the end of the world.
Depressing,really.

Apocalypse -

I worked in corporate for years but after a long career break and finding myself divorced and in need of a job fast to support my dc, I decided to advertise my services as a domestic cleaner.

It's been a real eye opener. I have some customers who treat me with nothing but the up most respect but there are others who believe that I'm not their equal, presume I have no brain or any other option than to clean.

I'm now retraining but still doing the cleaning along side, it's now a means to an end thank god as I don't think my self esteem could take many more years of this!

Evening all
a reminder of our guidelines which can be found here
Thanks
M Towers

I'm a little bit at the OP,

Unless your children never leave the house and never come into any contact with other children they will catch some kind of cough/cold from someone. Probably more than once.

Poor woman, trying to earn a living.

Hyacinth Bucket much? Oh no, she would do her own cleaning!

Can I add that instead of going straight from "I am not happy with the standard of her work" to sacking her. You should have a chat with her and explain what you are not happy with and give her a time scale to improve, after which you will then let her go if the standards dont get better.

She may consider her cleaning to be fine, and she can hardly improve if you dont tell her which areas you feel she needs to work on can she? she isnt bloody psychic!

And yes, she should have asked, but you are being VVU, firstly in objecting and secondly in the appalling way you worded your OP.