...to have sacked the cleaner?

[ladylily29]

*Disclaimer: I'm quite possibly suffering from pregnancy hormones and therefore perfectly willing to hear IABU.

Got back from a mental day at work today to note from cleaner. It said she was shocked at the state of the house, that she didn't expect to pick up clothes (there were three socks and a pair of pants on the bedroom floor that had fallen out of a drawer...) and that the state of my house had cost her the clients after me because she had to stay so long. To be fair, it was a bit messy, but I'm pregnant, sick, and have had a manic week at work, so it's not been my priority.

I never asked her to stay more than her hours (and actually she usually cops off early!), and to be honest, I've come home early a couple of times to find her partner or kids here, which has made me really uncomfortable. And there have been quite a few broken items that have turned up... Also, I pay her 30% more than she asks for, so she gets a nice tip every time she comes here.

Was IBU to send her a text to apologise that she'd felt so unhappy about the state of the house, and to say that as we both now felt uncomfortable, it was probably best to call it a day? It's done now, but I feel a bit guilty.

I don't think fabulassie said cleaning was a profession. She stated that she worked with professionalism. To my mind you can be professional in your job if you are a street sweeper or a CEO. It is about how you conduct yourself not how many qualifications you hold.

OK, lets just say it sounds to me like over-use of the word professional to give an impression you are paying for something more than you are actually getting.

I expect competence from a cleaner, not professionalism.

Thechanlder is spot on. We had cleaners for 6 years. I just wanted someone to come for x number of hours a week. I would tidy up the house as its so much easier to clean.

I had two young women who tried to suck me into their chaotic lifes, they then fell out with each other and I came home to find them fighting with each other, they then proceeded to try and get me involved in their argument. They also decided to bring their kids during school hols without checking first and served themselves to the crisps in the cupboard!

The next lady was more mature but had issues, her Mum wasnt well so she often didnt turn up, didnt tell me she wasnt coming though which resulted in me rushing around on a Friday because we had guests at the weekend.

I so agree with the sort of people it tends to attract. Not in a million years is it a profession.

I now save the money and do it myself.

If anyone knows some reliable please let me know, the ones I had before were rubbish.

Man I really want to put a buffer in your hand chandler I think it would be amusing to watch. Or a ride on floor cleaner around customers.

There are different parts of the cleaning industry. From stick someone in a dirty house with minimum skills as long as they can read a bottle to the really dirty industrial. That's with forensic and other junk in the middle.

The higher you go the more training and qualifications you need and I doubt you would sound so sneery if you were faced with a situation where only the cleaner had the training to deal with it.

Anyway in the domestic world you get what you pay for. If you want to pay peanuts then expect to get a monkey.

Actually I think we are talking about general house cleaning. If you are talking about specialist cleaning such as cleaning in hospitals I think we should demand our money back!

My DM was in hospital last year and the toilets were horrible. A cleaner would amble around with a wet cloth and when you went to use the bathrooms again they werent much different.

Please dont get on your high horse about general cleaners. I think any old person can grab a duster and a can of polish - and that includes me! Whether the cleaning is done properly is another question.

Oh, for fuck's sake. I didn't say it's a profession - I said that if you want someone who behaves professionally, you shouldn't expect that from someone who is clearly working for a bit of cash-in-hand.

...which you pretty much said yourself when you went on to say that you can't find a decent cleaner.

You can find wonderful cleaners for £8 an hour, and good luck with that. You can be ripped off by big name agencies that are actually charging closer to £25 but the cleaning is actually done by minimum-wage employees.

I did an excellent job as a cleaner, using the correct equipment and having the full insurance. I was reliable and thorough. I was also clever enough to give a flat rate quote because I knew that there are plenty of snobs who somehow think a cleaner doesn't deserve £15 an hour. (I should point out that my personal pay wasn't actually that high: there were expenses involved. But I made more than £10 an hour.) My clients were happy with my services because they got the results they were paying for and they got them consistently.

Well, I'm a reliable, thorough cleaner, my clients say I'm the best they've had (that could sound questionable) I'm paid £7.50 an hour, through a agency. I probably could get more on my own, but I like the security of having insurance and a company to back me up.

We charge around £15 per hour (we are flat rate) and simply cannot keep up with demand for our service!

I am on the panel of a cleaning association and our members charge at least as much as that.

The sticking point is finding the calibre of staff we need to deliver this level of service, not finding the client willing to pay for such!

It is a seller's market in reality for sure, despite what some would like to believe, cleaners pick and choose their clients! I have sold cleaning for 17 years!

Man I really want to put a buffer in your hand chandler I think it would be amusing to watch. Or a ride on floor cleaner around customers.

That's right gamerchick, cleaning is now so professional, no-one is actually allowed to clean their own home without a professional qualification. Get over yourself. I've buffed parquet floors by hand, in my time.

The higher you go the more training and qualifications you need and I doubt you would sound so sneery if you were faced with a situation where only the cleaner had the training to deal with it.

No, you're right, I wouldn't be in the least sneery. If someone pissed about like the OP describes, I'd simply tell them not to bother coming back. Sounds like gross misconduct to me. A good, reliable cleaner is hard to find, but no-ones going to pay megabucks for it, so don't get carried away with yourself. Unless you go and work for the super-rich, in which case have a nice time on Neckar Island!

Anyway in the domestic world you get what you pay for. If you want to pay peanuts then expect to get a monkey.

Well, unfortunately for the overchargers, its also something that you can do yourself, as its not that skilled, so no-one's going to pay for a monkey either.

Thechandler - if we EVER delivered a service the homeowner could easily do for themselves I would close us down!

That is why we are £15 plus per hour as are our peers in the UK! People don't know how to do for themselves what we achieve in their home that is why we can command premium rates!

How wonderful Balls. If someone tried to sell me a service like that, I'd run for the hills. Its like when you get a builder's firm out for a quote, and the reliable, well established firm gives you a sensible quote after going round the property with you, going over the plans, takes it away and sends it through the post a few days later.

The overly keen firm immediately starts telling you how it is far more difficult than someone like little you could possibly understand, there are various mysterious problems which you weren't aware of, and basically its all so incredibly difficult and advanced, that only they can do the job, at twice the price of firm A.

I think you may possibly be touting for business on here if I am not mistaken.

I wouldn't do domestic cleaning. Too many lazy gits who expect the moon on a stick.. rich or not

Crime scene cleaning or toxic spills and whatnot I would however with bells on.

TheChandler - not touting for business as I just explained I havent got the staff to service any more accounts and three enquiries on my phone right now from today only, with all my teams fully-booked - welcome to the REAL world!

I CAN'T get the STAFF - got TOO MANY client enquiries!! Duh!!

Is £10 ph really considered that low? I'm currently looking for a job and have seen many jobs advertised for less than that. £10 seems quite generous to me!

£10 an hour is not a crap rate at all.

Mouldy - its low if you plan to run a business - margins are tight at £15 per hour, my friend who has 30 employees and has got past the VAT threshold now has to charge £18 per hour (to incorporate VAT) and is only making it work due to economies of scale when ordering supplies and equipment!

You have to start as you mean to go on and with the great demand you find yourself in you need to start high! Costs of doing business are not cheap and must be factored into price fromthe start otherwise you will not be provising service for long, you will go bust!

• providing

• providing

It's funny there are plenty of other threads stating there is a recession on and they cannot get a job, would love to get one, there is just nothing around. Now someone is stating they are run off their feet!

For people wanting a part time role around school hours it seems ideal for a hard worker but honestly you don't need any training as such, just a good set of standards.

Yes you would think Hillingdon - just try recruiting cleaning staff with strong discerrning criteria! (which there needs to be!)

You can offer £8 per hour and only get ridiculous offers from undesirables!

Btw it is not just my company run off it's feet, I am in the position in the industry to know we ALL share the same problem around the UK - it is staff not clients which is the sticking point to growth within the industry!

We do not know why this is either except that there are FAR more people needing quality cleaning than there are suppliers of such and if only we could raise the standards of the industry as a whole ie rule out the 'cash in hand' brigade who are neither insured nor trained to carry out such a personal service which carries so much personal liability and responsibility then maybe we could attract the staff for whom we are SO desperate ,this is a good and desirable position.

i have a friend who advertises for staff at attractive rates (£7.50 fully employed with benefits) she is lucky to get applicants to turn up at the interview! I have had more luck than her but been stood up several times by interviewees! It is a good job we offer - well above minimum wage with benefits, full-time hours if desired and yet we struggle to find such staff!

Fed up is not the word - if us cleaning business's could find quality staff all around the UK we could literally 'clean up' but no! We have to turn down work countrywide because nobody wants a legitimate job cleaning!!

I'm not touting for business: I no longer clean houses.

I didn't clean for the super rich, either. There were a handful of clients with big houses and good middle-class incomes. I mostly cleaned modest tidy bungalows in a former mill town in the North.

I went to meet one woman who had had a good cleaner for several years at £9 an hour. So I was thinking that she might not want to hire me... then when I told her that I could do it for a flat rate of £30 she was very happy. Her previous cleaner (who had not had insurance, etc, although was apparently a lovely woman) had taken three hours to clean the four-bedroom house. I got the same results in slightly less than two hours.

£10 an hour is good pay for an unskilled job where you just show up and do your job. I'd be happy with that. But a cleaner has to drive all over the place. I would say £10 would make sense if the cleaner used the client's materials and equipment.

I wouldn't want to clean with their cloths and hoovers because I am picky about such things. I had a system involving a tool belt and I used specific chemicals appropriate for each surface. I would clean with tools like a razor blade, a toothbrush, a scouring pad, and a microfibre cloth and I followed a particular system of working around the room very quickly. I wore the sorts of trousers joiners wear, with knee pads, so that I could crawl along the floor if I needed to clean the baseboards or something.

I would clean about three houses a day, Tuesday through Friday (leaving Mondays for deep cleans that would take all day). Most of the houses were £30 and there were a handful that were £45. So, I made pretty good money and after expenses it was still worth it to me.

Maybe they don't want to give up their benefits! When I spoke to a couple of applicants for our cleaning job I found one didn't turn up for a chat about the role and one told me on the phone her DH didn't want her cleaning other people's houses (so why are you calling me then!).

Yet many many threads state that there are no roles, nothing at all....

Fabulassie - you and i are on the same page, I have took it a lot further we now service 60 plus accounts but you have just outlined the difference between mediocre and professional cleaning services!!

This is what the people want there is HUGE market for this and NO real competition for this end of the market!

Frustratingly there are not many staff willing to train to this level - I only have six fabulous ones to this day - hence the problem you have to push through so much crap!

If you ever set up again pm me and I can help you to grow!

Hillingdon - it is bulls**t if people say there are no jobs we are literally tearing our hair out within the industy for want of staff with the brains they were born with (since thy have to take good care of our client's homes)

You can offer whatever pay but they don't want the work at the end of the day!

I couldn't handle the stress of managing a staff and putting out fires. I did the maths over and over - including looking at what happens when you hit the dreaded VAT threshold - and I realised that even if I could somehow clear £5 profit per man hour, I would have to sell thousands of hours a year to make an income that I think that amount of headache would be worth. Like, for that sort of stress, I would want to make £30,000 a year and that would require selling 500 hours of cleaning a month ... that's 500 hours of employees potentially breaking things, not showing up, letting pets out, forgetting to lock front doors, getting injured, poaching clients... I would lose my mind. Kudos for you for being able to do it!

I like working by myself and I was happy to do that but I broke my arm and ended up giving my clients to a friend/competitor I respected and left the business.

FWIW, to get back on topic: I think the OP was right to sack this cleaner. Although I think the cleaner was justifiably annoyed by the excessive messiness, she lost all claim to professionalism when she brought family members into the client's home. I was just addressing the idea that £10 an hour is some sort of princely sum for a lowly cleaner. It may well be more than many cleaners get paid, but I don't think most cleaners working for cash in hand have a professional attitude towards their work. "Trunk slammers" is what they call them in America.