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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

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

179 replies

wouldwelcomeadvice · 16/04/2012 15:32

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.

OP posts:
mathanxiety · 17/04/2012 03:49

There's a bit of a disconnect here between the description of friendly, cordial relations between the OP and all of her former cleaners and the way she describes this particular cleaner. There just doesn't seem to be the same warmth here at all. I can't see this one being invited to a family party somehow.

iscream · 17/04/2012 04:01

LoopyLoopsTootTootToots Mon 16-Apr-12 19:02:35
You don't let sick people in your home? Never? What about your family?
Unless the person lives here, they better not come over sick.

Sick persons have to stay in their room.
Son has compromised immune system. And people who come over sick anyways (hasn't happened much since high school days) really make me angry.

Alltheseboys · 17/04/2012 04:21

Potoftea - I'm glad there are sympathetic bosses like you around making it easier for women to go back to work & reduce their absence levelsHmm

WhereEaglesDare · 17/04/2012 06:22

where is op????
Probably under the sofa inspecting for dust!!!!!Grin

Nancy66 · 17/04/2012 07:22

Jesus - the bullying and unpleasantness on this thread is staggering.

Some of the comments directed at the OP are are just downright nasty.

All the wrongs you are directing at her have been totally imagined by the tediously predictable PC brigade.

Firstly - you have no idea where the cleaner comes from. You're all imagining she fled some third world war-torn hell-hole with just the rags on her back.
How do you know? She could have come from the south of France for all you know....

re. the child - you've no idea how traumatic it was or wasn't for her to leave her kid.

The OP didn't mention TB - other people did.

the 'another body' phrase is just an expression and a fairly common one, not a fascinating insight into what an evil bitch the OP must be.

Picture painted: rich, nasty white woman intimidating brown-skinned peasant who only wants the best for her family.

tholeon · 17/04/2012 07:24

You know, I would have preferred that she had asked. Then I would have said to stay at home and look after her recently reunited sick child and I would pay her for the session anyway. As a one off. Partly in sympathy at the hell of being separated from your child and partly because for various reasons I have germ paranoia. if she isn't much good that is a separate issue.

fedupofnamechanging · 17/04/2012 07:36

It doesn't matter what the OP says, some of you are determined to rip her to shreds. The fact is, it's her house. If she's paying for a cleaner, then she's entitled to to receive the service that she's paying for - a clean house!

Her child has a compromised immune system - I would be seriously pissed off, if someone deliberately brought illness into my house, under these circumstances.
Actually, I would be pissed off anyway - I don't take my dc to people's houses when they are sick, and I expect other people not to do it to me.

OP is pointing out working conditions, because some of you are behaving as if she employing slave labour. She doesn't have to provide those employment standards (and plenty of employers don't). The cleaner is presumably self employed and things like sick pay and holiday entitlement are negotiated between the service provider and the client. The OP is merely making the point that she is not taking advantage of the woman.

RevoltingPeasant · 17/04/2012 08:04

karma I think it's another poster whose DS has a compromised immune system???

Anyhow I think people inc me got a bit silly with the 'forriner' comments overleaf, but I still stand by what I said - yes, this would annoy me, but I'd hope I'd have the common decency to help this woman out as a one-off.

Nancy people are assuming the cleaner is from an impoverished background because normally, people with real economic choices don't move abroad away from their 6yo DDs for half a year - to take a job scrubbing someone else's floors. Obv it's an assumption but a pretty fair one IMO.

Nancy66 · 17/04/2012 08:20

It's the OP's child who has a weak immune system - she says so above.

RevoltingPeasant - it would also be a FAIR assumption that the cleaner is paid cash, that she has other similar jobs and that she doesn't declare or pay tax on any of this but brought her child here to receive a free education and health care.

I mean, I don't know....but it's not unfair, right?

Cremeeggsandkitkatsoldiers · 17/04/2012 09:07

oh the old being paid in cash = not paying tax chestnut! Hmm

The OP didn't say her child was immunosuppressed, she said that one has a "weak immune system" which can mean something or nothing, anything really on a spectrum from them just catching "whatevers going round" their friends, to a child who could die from something that'ld be a minor niggle to most. It's one of those phrases like "allergic", which can mean anything from it makes someone a bit farty to touching it = death!

I would assume if the child was actually immunosuppressed that would have been the issue in the title and original post, as it was mentioned casually later at the end of a post it's probably just a child who gets a couple more episodes of runny noses than its siblings a year! Hmm

fedupofnamechanging · 17/04/2012 09:25

I don't believe for a minute that everyone who is paid in cash is declaring every last penny to the inland revenue. If it's possible to avoid some tax, then most people will do so, imo. Doesn't matter if they are a cleaner or Philip Green head of a major company.

Even if it's just the case that the OP's child is prone to picking up whatever is going around, that's a good enough reason to not want an ill child brought into your home.

Nancy66 · 17/04/2012 09:28

oh the old woman employing a cleaner = bitch chestnut

oh the old everyone in unskilled labour = lovely person chestnut

pinktrees · 17/04/2012 09:29

The treatment of the OP on this thread is absolutely disgusting!

TallyMeBanana · 17/04/2012 09:48

Some of the behaviour on this thread is disgusting!

Grown women bullying and insulting the OP

sunnydelight · 17/04/2012 09:55

YANBU. Your house your choice and I really don't think you have to justify your decision tbh. My cleaner brought her child to work (without asking) and I came home to find he'd been sent to play in DS's room where he had dismantled DS's Harry Potter lego castle. Have you any idea how long it takes to build the sodding HP lego castle!

ThePathanKhansWitch · 17/04/2012 15:29

Some of the comments have been childish, but you know OP asked the question on an open forum. Heat, kitchen an' all that.

Op doesn't have to justify her decision, but she sought opinions.

fedupofnamechanging · 17/04/2012 15:38

She sought opinions, not character assassination.

ThePathanKhansWitch · 17/04/2012 15:46

Karma unfortunately it's the way things get here sometimes, as a long time poster, i know you know that, not nice but true.

OurPlanetNeptune · 17/04/2012 16:20

Yes, I agree with karma it is character assassination. It's bloody nasty. When I saw the op I just knew this is how it would turn.

OP, if you are still reading this, for what it's worth YANBU. I have been in exactly your situation but I failed to address it when it first occurred (I was in my 3rd trimester, tired and really did not want to make the woman feel rubbish and her daughter was a well behaved child). Stupid me. I should have nipped it in the bud because soon after I gave birth I discovered she was also inviting her husband into my home when we were not present as well her older niece who used to try on my clothes including my wedding dress. Sod that. She no longer works for us and I refused to give her a reference.

The lady who took over is amazing. She respects our home and the working relationship she has with us. She is an extremely valuable part of our staff. Our relationship is based on mutual trust and respect. I would bend over backwards to help her (and I have) and likewise she has been wonderful to us. The reason this works so well is that we ALL understand what the boundaries are and we would never overstep them.

How rude not to a least ask.

KitchenandJumble · 17/04/2012 16:21

It would be the kind and decent thing to allow the woman who cleans your house to bring her child with her. Imagine being that child, just arrived in a new country, bewildered and perhaps not able to speak the language, not feeling well. Of course she wants to be with her mother. Have a heart, OP.

OurPlanetNeptune · 17/04/2012 16:30

And the use of the term 'forriner' to castigated the op is fucking appalling. Those who use it think they are being 'right on' and PC but you know what? People like you disgust me think you are standing up for woman like this 'poor' cleaner but you are being self righteous and patronising. I speak as a 'foreigner'.

mathanxiety · 17/04/2012 17:48

Wouldn't a cleaner be just as likely as the cleaner's child to bring a bug into your home though? Don't cleaners sometimes cough or get the odd virus? In other words, if the child has an immune system that is so poor that a sickness could have serious repercussions then why have anyone in the house who is not disinfected or the bearer of a doctor's certificate of health.

If the OP was that concerned about her DS, wouldn't she have bothered to find out exactly what was causing the cleaner's child to cough instead of just looking down her nose at it? Am speaking as someone who has the occasional bout of asthma that causes me to cough a lot; it's not contagious.

Nancy66 · 17/04/2012 18:03

Mathanxiety - how have you concluded that the OP was looking down her nose at the child?

xMumof3x · 17/04/2012 18:05

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

mathanxiety · 17/04/2012 18:14

The OP seems to resent the fact that the cleaner hasn't yet registered her child in a school despite having spent time talking about schools and how the system works with the cleaner -- seems to think the child should have arrived from wherever she was and bang, into school first thing. The child has been reunited with her mother for only a matter of days but the school thing has been mentioned twice by the OP. Apart from the lack of insight into how it might be reasonable for the child to have a period of adjustment upon reuniting with her mother, it is really none of the OP's business where the child goes to school or when. It's a bit patronising to get involved in the question of the child's school or to expect that your involvement so far should have had some effect.

'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'. That would have been less of a 'looking down the nose' statement without the bolded part. Someone looking down their nose at a coughing child would express no concern that the child was coughing apart from concern for her own child -- I didn't see much concern there for the coughing child.
And there is the body remark, which I don't see in a positive light.