To be appalled at an email I’ve just received

[EltonHoratio]

I do a little bookkeeping in the evenings to help out with bills plus a little cleaning here and there.

The bookkeeping is for a holiday home company. I’ve been in email contact with an owner of a holiday home, let’s call her Joan. Joan is complaining about the cost of cleaning her three bedroom holiday cottage £60 is four hours at £15 an hour.

Not unusual for an owner to ask and it be explained it’s difficult to get cleaners in this area for less.

Joan has continued to complain and her last email explains the rigorous process she goes through to train her cleaners and to regularly turn up unannounced to check up on them, she proudly states they know she could turn up at any time but never know exactly when that will be. She claims it stops them wasting her time and money on fag breaks and playing on their phones! She proudly attached her own checklist of how to clean, including gems like hoovering carpets and cleaning toilets, who knew?

A quick stalk of her on Facebook and she’s one of these “I sold my soul to help the orphans of Cambodia”, plus she runs her own “charity”.

She’s a fucking hypocrite! Sorry just need to air this.

She sounds great!
I don't have a cleaner because most of them are dreadful.
I'd often come home to find the cleaner on the phone, having a smoke in the garden, and just arsing about, skipping one room because of 'time constraints', NEVER mopping my kitchen floor- not once. So weird. And beating my living room rug. Just hoover it! The energy required to drag my 15 year old Ikea rug out into the garden to beat it is just wasted energy! Hoover the rug, mop my kitchen floor. Both those tasks take less time and energy than beating a rug.
And please, don't use diluted viakal to wipe down everything with!
Ugh!
That was cathartic!

I still don't quite get your post OP. But hey, your lady's got standards. Nowt wrong with that. When you're paying for a service you expect good standards and good practice. She's on the ball. You should appreciate that.

Fuck me, I've read the OP 3x and I still have no clue what this is about

Your later post explanation makes it clearer - I thought originally you were the cleaner and the book keeper !
She doesn’t sound great tbh but I’m not sure why you’re so offended about her checking up on the cleaners when you’re not actually one of them?
Why has she sent you the checklist if you’re book-keeping? Does she want you to take on the cleaning instead?

Sorry what's wrong with checking up unannounced?

That's called a cleaning audit .

If you were a professional cleaner working for a big firm you would know that

I run a cleaning contract and theres a checklist of what cleaners have to do and how often .

Again checking up on them unannounced is part of a cleaning audit to check standards.

I cant believe you think there's anything wrong with that.

Have a look at the BICS page wealth of information (British institute of cleaning science).

We pay our cleaner / housekeeper £100 per changeover for a 4-bed holiday home. We think that's quite good money, but it's still been hard to get and keep reliable cleaners.

I can't see anything wrong with what Joan says.

Minimum wage is apparently £8.21 per hour so £15 per hour does seem like a lot (don't get me wrong, I've had cleaners in the past, it's well worth it!). Also, what is wrong with checking that the people you employ are doing a good job and setting out your expectations of what you want them to do?

I'm not sure how this makes her a hypocritical cunt

If Joan is whinging at you about her cleaning costs, I hope you’ve suggested her time would be more productively spent trying to find cheaper cleaners?

How much of the £60 cleaners fee does your Hoilday Company take Op? Or are the cleaners actually receiving £15 an hour.

Surely it’s not unusual for working people have what they’re required to do written down and outlined somewhere? Whether that be in a job description or a checklist or a weekly itinerary etc. And it’s not unusual to be sometimes monitored when working either, I know the headteacher might pop down into my classroom when I’m teaching occasionally so don’t find it particularly awful that she’s sometimes popping into the house.

In terms of it costing £15 an hour I imagine only a fraction of that is going towards the cleaners hourly wage. Presumably the cleaning agency takes a generous chunk of that for ‘admin’ costs and then some will go towards replacing and maintaining cleaning products and equipment such as the hoovers/ mops etc.

it's makes sense to me as well, the insult to joan is a bit rough though, why call her that ? she comes across as a bit up herself admittedly with the charity work though. sold your soul ? so she's a potential saint.but that aside. she obviously wants her holiday home cleaned properly for the price she's paying.

People are being stupid on purpose presumably, for shits and giggles. I agree with you and recognise the type of person Joan is.

No they arent. Most people can not see the connection between questioning value for money and checking people are doing what you pay them to and being a hypocrite for also running a charity.

You dont know the type of person Joan is. You know 2 things. She does charity work and wants to ensure she is getting value for money from the cleaners.

You know nothing about the type of person she is.

Oh people do like to jump on the bandwagon here....

Hebdenbridge
you are having a laugh

Joan is charged £60 for cleaning.
This is not what the cleaner gets.
My complaint is Joan’s attitude, holier than thou, charity giving, saving the poor, whilst penny pinching and spying on her cleaners who she has never actually found to be smoking or on their phones, that’s just her assumption.

The OP is not employing the cleaner. The OP just happens to know the going rate for cleaners.

Joan thinks this is too much (doesn't want to pay the going rate) AND thinks cleaners are a load of slackers. These cleaners are not employed by Joan. But presumably Joan is implying she checks up on these cleaners who aren't her employees.

After Joan continued to moan about a bill that the OP was just the messenger for, the OP decided to look Joan up out of irritation I imagine

Joan publicly states virtue signals that she runs an overseas charity.
The OP feels that Joan should care for the welfare of workers in her home country as well, by not complaining about their wages.

I’m still confused. I think I’ve got it but maybe I don’t.
Joan pays a cleaning company to clean her holiday home. She does rigorous checks to make sure the job is done to her specific standards. She also runs a charity. You think she’s being hypocrite.

I don’t see the two things as being mutually exclusive.
I’m not sure why you do.

'Penny pinching and spying' is dramatic and negative for 'checking that the work she's paying a lot for is being done.'
I think you have a chip on your shoulder op looking for the bad in people who are richer than you.

I don't understand your post either.

Neither things are related and it makes good sense to check on people you are paying to do a job.

I mean yeah...Joan sounds like a pompous arse...but charity work isn’t the universally accepted currency for Good Guy tokens either?

spying on her cleaners
That’s a very inflammatory way to write ‘managing her employees’ OP.

Having had cleaners over many years, I'm with Joan.
Apart from a few paragons, after a while they all started cutting corners and leaving early, and I also ended up being very specific with new cleaners about what exactly we wanted done. I paid them all over the going rate.
My boss expects me to do the work I'm paid for, and it's the same for anyone else.
I also do voluntary and charity work.

And pompous arse or not, she can check up on the cleaners if she wants to.
The hospitality trade attracts mean-spirited, money-grubbing, little Hitlers imo. I have some experience of these types having cleaned and waitressed for them myself. I’d say it’s almost an occupational hazard.
Her email, while revealing her as a self-important dick, doesn’t detail anything that isn’t within her remit.

I don’t see the connection to the charity work.

Disclaimer - I worked for nice people in the hospitality trade as well. I should have said that. There are no absolutes.

THEY ARE NOT JOAN'S CLEANERS.
They are employed by the holiday letting company.