To (privately) disapprove of my friend having a cleaner

[Unami]

Ok. This may be long, but I will do my best to explain where I am coming from. My friend has a cleaner and I privately disapprove. I would never make an issue of it to her, or even bring it up. It was brought up by another friend when we were at her place for drinks. She was a bit about it, and it led to a big discussion, but I didn't say anything committal. I do recognise that she can hire a cleaner if she likes. If she likes she can hire a troupe of jugglers and have them juggle in her kitchen all day, if she likes. It's none of my business, I get that.

But I still privately disapprove. AIBU?

Her cleaner comes to her two bedroom flat twice a week and gives it a full clean, and that apparently includes hoovering all carpets and upholdstry, dusting all surfaces, polishing wood, sweeping and cleaning wooden floor in hall and kitchen, emptying waste bins in the house and taking kitchen bins round the back, cleaning mirrors, cleaning the inside of windows, full clean of the kitchen including inside the fridge, full clean of bathroom. Once a month she also gets the oven cleaned, extractor fan cleaned and polished (!?), cupboards dusted inside and out. She says she pays £45 a week for this.

It's just her in the flat. She doesn't have kids and doesn't live with her bf.

Here's my perspective. People say that having a cleaner is just like hiring any other service provider. But it's not. Domestic cleaners clean intimate, private parts of our houses, and clean up our bodily mess, and it's low paid, low status work. Yes, people hire gardeners and window cleaners, but these are roles which require specialist equipment and insurance, and they only work on the outside and periphery of your home. Yes, I recognise that cleaners are employed in offices I use, cafes I eat in and so on, but it's not really the same either. Most commerical cleaners are employed as staff and so get holiday pay, sick pay, NI etc. Agency workers don't have it so good, and I disagree with the terms of their employment too. But domestic cleaners are often paid cash in hand because employers think they are doing them a favour. But they have no holiday, sick pay - what happens if they have an accident in the house they are cleaning in. I know there are some well organised small cleaning companies, but I think they are the exception.

But most of all, I just feel like my friend is just being lazy or thinks she's too good to pick up after herself. If you are elderly or disabled or immobile, then I see nothing wrong with getting the help that you need. Likewise, if you have a busy family, and don't want to be stuck being the person who picks up after everyone else - get the help you need and show the family how much your time costs. But if you have a quiet life and are fit and healthy, I don't see why you think it's ok to have someone over to clean your toilet. I also think that people who say they are so impossibly busy with work that they can't lift a duster once a week really ought to think about cutting back their ft hours, and give others access to the surplus of work they have.

I'm not going to have a go at my friend. But I just don't think it's right.

You sound like a bit of a weirdo to be honest. I have a cleaner, she does it for a bit of extra money to treat her grandchildren. She regularly takes holidays as she is a sun worshipper and I in know way feel I exploit her, she gets £10 an hour for not terribly strenuous work, and through me, now does our neighbours two, pocketing her £60 for a mornings work. I really don't feel remotely guilty and she just makes my life a bit easier.

Sorry that should be no and too! Silly phone.

I have a cleaner, she is invaluable.

1. she saved my marriage
2. she has kept a part of the house running when I couldn't
3. she is lovely and kind and has happily cleaned round me when I have laid in bed wishing I was dead. Never really cared what people thought of me having a cleaner.

YABU and v odd. It's none of your business what she spends her money on.

I pay my cleaner holiday pay and a Christmas bonus too. I also pay her well over minimum wage.

You are completely unreasonable. And why are you so obsessed and judgemental? Maybe she has better uses of her time than to do cleaning. I know I have. I've had a cleaner for years. And mostly, it's just me, unless the DS descends. It's not arduous work in a "naice" person's home, particularly if there's only one person usually living there, and it gives someone a job.

I regard it as a proper and political response to capitalist patriarchy to employ a cleaner because for us to have any chance of equality, we must professionalise all the labour that goes into producing and maintaining workers. Especially because the unpaid labour done in capitalist systems usually dis-empowers the worker performing it, relative to paid labourers; and because it is notable that the majority of the unpaid work that goes into our economy is associated with traditionally feminine work

And this! Brilliantly put -- I think it'll be a "cut out and keep" post for me.

"People get awfully confused about cleaners don't they? Is it because they are mostly women? Does the OP have similar objections to window-cleaners (mostly male)?"

Hear hear Ruraininja

I'd rather spend £180 a month on... loads of other stuff, and live with a bit of dust, but each to their own.

Eccentrica, it is rare for someone to agree with me on here, even if it is only to a point. It is an interesting point as to how you would refer to rhe people that do other jobs for you and proves the very dated view that people still hold of 'cleaners' as it is unlikely that you would refer to your soliciter for example, as a 'real gem' or your accountant as a 'real treasure'.

It is not a 'very odd' opinion to hold at all, it is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate one. It is not some kind of modern day phenomena to believe that it is wrong to employ a domestic cleaner.

Sparklyboots, who are you kidding- yourself? Equality it not going to be achieved from making cleaning jobs 'official'! FFS it is 2013, where's the progress, I don't want a cleaning job because it fits around school drop off/pick up of my children. I want to return to the kind of position I held prior to Maternity leave and/or career break, on a PT basis, that Is accommodating of family commitments- they thought I was the best person for the job when I didn't have children but not post DC.

If you want to make things more equal you don't start with officializing working conditions- to me this is a reactivecresponse. A proactive one would look at ways to minimise those inequalities to begin with so the prospects for children at school are similar and not determined so much by social and economic circumstances.

Goldenbear - if you cannot put in full times hours are you able to do the job properly? You are changing the goalposts by demanding to do a previously full time post on your terms. Would you employ a childminder while doing PT? It may be proactive to look for a way to minimise inequalities but there will never be a solution. At best, looking for solutions would create jobs. It is unrealistic to expect an employment utopia, someone, somewhere will always feel things are unequal. Respecting each other and treating each other as equals regardless of employment would be a great way to minimise inequalities but that won't happen either. I am not a pessimist just a realist.

I'm not kidding anyone- I just think people doing cleaning/ maintaining households/ looking after children etc. ARE working, they ARE supporting the economy by supporting workers, and they deserve the same rights and protections as other workers, like mat leave, employment protection and fair pay and conditions.

Well luckily my previous boss didn't think like you and he very much thought I was the person they wanted for that post but I didn't want to return to work at the time, I wanted to be at home with my DS. He was unusual in taking the 'best practice' line in recruitment and I appreciate that this position is quite rare but IMO it shouldn't be and the situation as it is now is not good enough.

Yes of course they deserve the same employment protection but that should be a given in 2013- let's face it, people who employ cleaners are not looking to address this issue, they are looking for someone to clean up the mess they have made!

I think there are valid points on both sides of the discussion here, but I do think that there's an unwillingness to recognise that in 99% of cases, the person paying is better off and from a 'higher' social class than the person cleaning.

All of the cleaners I have known are immigrants (from the Phillippines, Poland, and Iraq) who would struggle to find 'mainstream' (better paid) work, and in some cases are illiterate.

Is it good that they were able to find work? Yes. Did/do they have good relationships with the people employing them? Yes. Does that mean there is nothing at all troubling or awkward about it as a relationship? No.

In that sense I know what the OP is getting at, and I think people should at least be a bit more reflective. It's not true of other jobs - babysitting, hairdressing, etc. and it is worth thinking about.

I have been a cleaner and I have had a cleaner. I have worked as a domestic and I have run a domestic dept in a hospital. At no time have I swapped social class. To assume that your relationship with your boss is awkward because you are a cleaner?? You can have an awkward relationship with any boss. Just look at the Prime Minister and the Queen! It depends on the boss/employee dynamic not the job.

I am saying everyone who does that stuff should be regarded as a worker, not just people who currently do it professionally. I'm suggesting that all labour be professionalised because a capitalist economy can only recognise value where a price has been attached, and while we might have personal values that differ, the fact remains that if you want something to be valued in a capitalist society you have to quantify its market value. The failure to do so leaves everyone providing unpaid for labour relatively disadvantaged as the market literally has no means of recognising their value. This is at play where we see particular kinds of work as both the particular remit of particular classes of people and done out of personal duty rather than done to support the economy. E.g. women and childcare/ housework.

Honestly, would you view a male friend with the contempt if he were to employ a cleaner?

When I worked FT I had a cleaner as I literally had no time to clean
My job meant that I worked at least 50 hrs every week but more often 60+.
Bizarrely I quite enjoy cleaning and was an office cleaner during university.
I think it is a decent job. I certainly appreciated my cleaner's work and I appreciated the job when I needed it.
I had a male cleaner for a while but he was training to be a life coach and that was obvs where his talents lay

I don't have a cleaner at the moment, but when I move and go back to work I certainly will have one again. As a teacher, I'm working all day, then marking and lesson preping for a lot of my so called 'spare time'. Somone coming in and doing the vacuuming, scrubbing bathrooms, wiping down kitchen doors, windows, etc was a huge saviour on my time, and meant I could just do a quick whip around every morning to keep it tidy in between visits.

My cleaner was brilliant. She could do in two hours what it would take me five (and an lot of grumbling) to do. She was a sub contractor through an agency, and paid them a small fee to manage phone calls and insurance, but she could negotiate her own hours and rates, and she was making a very healthy full time wage, in fact more than she was making in her former role as a nurse. She said that she loved it because she was happy with her own company and didn't need to worry about hospital policy or shift work, she could just do her work and go. I know her work is well and truly appreciated by the people she worked for.

Gotta be, NorksAreMessy!

I think you are jealous and being unreasonable. Oh how nice it would be to afford to have a cleaner to keep your house nice and clean.I hate cleaning the oven! Probably doesn't even get done once a year in our house!

Not saying her friend shouldnt have a cleaner but,

Does the issue still seem a bit of "upstairs downstairs" to you, or even a white/black issue for you?

I have cleaners and "shock horror" I don't work full time or have children.

Frankly, I can't be arsed to clean my house (although I am capable of it), because I hate cleaning. DH & I also hate living in a dirty house. Therefore we have cleaners as it solves both problems.

YABU - there nothing wrong with having a cleaner. It's perfectly reasonable.

My cleaner is someone I have known all my life, her husband has a professional job, her dad worked with my dad, she lived in the same esate as me growing up and and she now lives in the next street to me in an identical house. The sweeping generalisations about class etc are ridiculous.

Even before I worked long hours she did my cleaning (I worked 3 days a week but had 1 DS at school and 1 pre school so he was off with me) because I felt it enhanced my life and was better for us as a family.

She likes her job, she cleans some quite nice houses of much better off people than me/her (and I always clean the toilet quickly first ) she chooses when she works and we agree between us when she works in the school holidays, the shorter ones she usually takes off then in the summer we figure something out as she is usually abroad at some point and so are we.

Goldenbear - there are only some jobs that can possibly be part time, you cannot expect that ALL full time jobs convert into part time jobs, big companies can cope better but sometimes a small business would suffer if they had to change people to part time unless a job share would work. I think its a thin arguement and this is speaking has someone who has gone back to work part time to a professional job (30 hours) however it is a struggle and I pretty much work full time hours anyway and just don't get paid for them.

I've been a cleaner and employed them. It's a good job and much less demeaning than some of the career jobs I've done. I'd rather dust someone's house than have to spout a talk a load of rubbish that I don't believe in.