To set some traps for the cleaner?

[Dothetwist]

Not thinking the wire abd bucket kind...

I have never had an experience with a cleaner before, she starts tomorrow morning

I was wondering how people manage to gain trust in someone coming in to their house, I've given her a key and asked it to be posted back through each time..

Wibu to set some little traps? Like a dirt patch somewhere i would expect to be cleaned or a £10er somewhere?

Our cleaner is good, I know that because the house is clean. She is also honest and I know that because she finds coins (not left as traps) in sofas and bathrooms and stack them neatly on the table.

I would never leave a trap unless I had a very strong suspicion to start with. As hefzi says, there are more people who need a good cleaner than there are good cleaners and shit clients will be known quickly in the area and you end up left with a super-expensive cleaning agency sending a different cleaner every week.

Our cleaner brings all her own equipment and products.

How do you know if something is a tip or a trap hefzi?? Unless they also leave you a note, I suppose...

I'm a bit worried now that I'm going to leave something that looks like a trap!

You will need to clean up all crumbs and dirt patches before she comes and do a fingertip search for coins, Stealth

Maybe I could hire someone to come in advance and do a full clean. :o

I've never considered anything to be traps, just mess, but the OP makes you wonder ...

Having said that the responses to the OP confirm my initial reaction, that this sort of thing is not the norm in most people's opinions.

Our cleaner was a word-of-mouth one, and she is phenomenal. As is our dog walker, who also has a key. I think people are far more honest than society would imagine.

If our cleaner found money she'd leave it where it was or pop it on the kitchen windowsill. She's found all sorts over the time she's been with us and never once have I considered that she'd do anything but the right thing. Starting out a transaction like this with doubt or suspicion would make me kind of sad. If I had to lay traps to check if someone was trustworthy I'd probably doubt my own sanity.

It's really sad to read this.
My cleaner is starting on Wednesday. The only thought I've had is, fuck I need to clean up before she comes. I don't want her to think Im dirty!
Dont set traps for her, chances are it'll be quite obvious you've left her a trap, and that won't put u in the nicest of lights.

Also ... I don't know what kind of cleaner you're hiring, but a friend of mine is a 'treasure' - she 'does' for all the local well to do lot, and if she thought you were setting a trap for her, you would be history.
Not only would you not have the 'treasure' cleaning or dog walking for you, you would find it really hard to get that lovely lady who fills the freezer for half term, and your children would never, EVER get that pony with the three year waiting list loaned to them. Because, as it happens, they are all related - the one who does, the one who fills the freezer, and the one with the loan ponies! Sister, sister, sister in law.
You may be in a town, but I bet there's an equivalent. Tread carefully!

Ah yea I knew of a house where they put rolled up bits of tin foil under seats, sofas, that sort of thing. The people who cleaned there thought they were muppets.

Strikes me as weird..never ever had a job I can think of where someone in a postion of authority has deliberately left me 'traps' to check I was doing things. Can you imagine if you went into any other job and the 'boss' had set you up a 'trap'?

Also if you start from that sort of suspicious postion then you can quite easily blame the cleaner for all sorts. My ex mother in law who is a massive drama queen once told me a long anecdote about having to fire the cleaner because she stole a ring. On further enquiry the ring was hoovered up by accident, the cleaner told them and it was retrieved from the hoover bag. Apparently it was an attempted robbery. or something .

Oh dear, norest, I just read that as I watch my 3yo shred bits of foil and stuff them places and tell her "you have to clean that up" and she nods (but my belief of that is decidedly unsure). I'm afraid my house with its coins all over and foil shoved places looks like a massive trap. Or maybe just a tip :)

How insulting and demeaning.

OP - really, you need to get over yourself.

If you feel you need to "set traps" for someone, that tells me your gut feeling is not good. It may not be good about anyone as having someone else clean their house isn't for everyone. I personally wouldn't like it - Id like the clean bit, but not the someone else being in my house bit.

This thread has really had me thinking.

It's not just the devaluing of the cleaning person and the disrespect for her work that is bothering me now, there is also the liability aspect as in who knows what a person like this would accuse the cleaner of down the line.

There is no way we could have a client like this in our books, this has made me think of each individual client and I just KNOW none of them would dream of treating us so disrespectfully, they treasure our staff and view them as essential. Cleaning is not cheap, and it's not cheap to provide good cleaning as a company, but in general clients value cleaners so highly they are worth the expense and each of our teams are 'treasures' to the families and elderly they attend.

I feel valued and treasured for providing these teams and the same when I go out and clean with them.

The whole relationship relies upon trust, not just one way but both ways, the homeowner trusts us with their home and all the personal items within it and we trust the homeowner to prepare the house for the level of cleaning they require, to let us get on with our work while we are there and to be fair with us and not to suspect us unfairly of theft or 'not trying hard enough' every one of our cleaners goes through a training period with us and are supervised during this and if they make through our probatory period and through training they are good, in both cleaning ability and attitude.

A lot of smaller cleaning business the owner goes out alone or has just one or two cleaning staff working for them, these will all be doing their best to provide the best service level in terms of both cleaning and customer service that they can. It's hard work and you have to have the shoulders for it, it doesn't just end when the cleaning is over there is so much to take care of behind the scenes of the business too. It does deserve respect and most of all trust from the clients of whom we are never short and for whom we can never meet all the demand.

Nobody should put up with this, it's wrong on so many levels.

I tend to think that if I don't notice any bits that have been missed then they've done a good job. I don't see why traps are necessary.

Dangly my cleaner is doing a job that I don't have the time, energy, inclination or skill (she always gets things cleaner than I do!) to do myself and therefore I value her extremely highly. Just as I value my accountant, builder and butcher, for example.

I can't have a cleaner (I did try but hated it) because:
a) I spent the whole evening the night before tidying up and cleaning so she would not think it was awful
b) I worried about the key thing- had she made an impression of it in a bar of soap and had another one cut? Would someone come and burgle us/murder us?
c) i felt all the valuable things needed to be locked away somewhere safe - passports, watches, jewellry, ipads, cameras etc
d) I worried about someone looking through personal stuff

In the end, after a month, we just stopped because, as DH said, it was easier to do it ourselves and have less stress (caused by me ).

Yaobu about using the word trap. Anyone that earns a decent wage will be set challenging work to test / try them.

Yanbu to feel unsure about someone unknown in your house alone. That's normal and I've had a cleaner thats stolen from me before (2nd home in Spain).

WorldsBiggest - that makes me feel very happy

I think yours is the more usual attitude towards cleaners thank god, I am really loving our clients right now after reading this OP, sometimes you need to see the dark side to appreciate the light hehe, I feel like hugging them all, but I might send them a nice email of appreciation, thanking for their custom and all their lovely feedback etc.

It's actually done me good to see this, I will never take our customers for granted again (I haven't really taken them for granted as such, am very big on customer service, but I've just never focussed on appreciating them like this before!) Will be having a staff meeting on 'client appreciation' this week.

Love, love, love all our clients and all the lovely posters on this thread

My DM has worked as a private cleaner for years. Primarily on word of mouth for quite wealthy people. She's very in demand and can turn down work when and as she chooses.

She started a new client and found £300 down the side of the bed. Picked it up and left it on the bedside table. The next week she found the same wad under a sofa cushion.

She quit that week.

About two months after she quit they phoned again and asked if she could come and help serve at a dinner party they were having. She said I'm a cleaner not a waitress, they said oh we thought you would like the extra money.

Oh how we laughed

To those of you that are cleaners, if you find pound coins in our house, they really are not traps, my dh in raining coins whenever he sits down so they can be found in the sofa, under the dining table, in the bathroom... Honest, we are just not that tidy and are not trying to catch you out. And thank you for what you do, we have loads fewer arguments since you started and everybody is less stressed and harassed.

I've never once doubted our cleaner. Not for a second. I think it's important to trust a person until you've been given a reason not to. How depressing otherwise!

Think this is a disgusting attitude tbh. This woman is a professional, delivering an important service. Anyone who values their integrity as a worker (white collar/blue collar/high pay/low pay) would be appalled to find a 'trap' being set for them on their first day - why would she be different?

Who do you think you are?