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.

But Joan pays for them.

Or rather...Joan pays the holiday home company (that OP works for) to manage the property and organise cleaning, which Joan is then invoiced for.

This is not what the cleaner gets.

This is not Joan's fault. Perhaps it is the company who are the cunts?

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.

Penny pinching and spying? Firstly, watching your costs, when you run your own business, is good business.

Joan will also know (though it's odd the OP never thought to mention this as a point to joan or on the thread) that all £15 doesnt go to the cleaners. Joan may feel the people the cleaners are employed by are taking the piss with their charges or the job could be done quicker. I know several people who have cleaning businesses. None of them want jobs doing quickly. They want them doing properly, but if charging per hour, quickly, isnt encouraged.

Hmmm op mentions it's not good to spy on people. Yet has stalked this woman's facebook? To make a judgment on what type of person she is.

Personally, I would have more of an issue of someone facebook stalking me and making character judgements based on a few details, than I would about a person checking I am working when I am cleaning their property.

I still don't see the connection between book keeping and her moaning about the cost of the invoices of the cleaning via a company the woman herself employed, and presumable has already seen and either authorised or paid the invoice for before she passes to you to do the financial stuff? Unless you do all admin for her. Another one confused here.

I used to own a cleaning company, getting good cleaners is extremely difficult. Retaining them wasn’t difficult as we were clear what they needed to do, paid welland treat them like the lovely people they were

IF OUR clients checked up that we were providing the service they were paying for I saw that as perfectly understandable, if any of our staff had been found napping on a bed, they’d have been ‘let go’ (with my foot up they’d bum’ immediately , except of course if they weren’t well. Then their training would have been revised (we had a process they should have followed)

I think though that someone needs to tell Joan that the fixed cost of getting her holiday let cleaned& sorted for the next iccuoants is £x and that if she’s not happy with the price or the completed job the contract can be voided.

It’s better to invoice for ‘the job’ than the hours.

Beyond that I can’t work out what you’re whinging about, especially WRAF it has to do with her charity stuff.

I was beginning to believe I’m a moron who can’t string a series of sentences together as I’m too busy being a busy body

Well, I wouldn’t disagree with your assessment of yourself

I run holiday chalets. I pay £15. I check on my cleaners because they miss stuff. This week it was medication in a drawer, an exposed rusty razor blade which sliced my finger open...in the past it has been class A drugs behind the sofa, a bong in the kitchen cupboard full of skunk, various sanitary towels, broken knives and so forth. Tenants can be good, but you get some bad eggs who break stuff, steal stuff, damage the chalets etc.

As the owner, you would expose yourself to all sorts of legal claims by tenants if you didn't check up on the cleaners. Holiday cleaning is more like an industrial level service than domestic, as some tenants are pigs and leave the accommodation in a dreadful state. Our cleaners have been with us for 20 years+ and they miss stuff, but they do their best and accept I am going to check up on them. I am with Joan on that score, but she is lucky to find decent cleaners for that rate and should probably tone down the lady bountiful routine.

@EltonHoratio ‘would you do it?’ Yes I would.

Crack on then @littlechocola there’s plenty of toilets to be scrubbed, you might stop whinging about how much cleaners get paid if you were to try it for a day.

I have done cleaning. I would do it again, if I got paid £15 per hour.

She runs her own charity so that she can score philanthropic points
She then spends those points by policing her minions

So she runs her own charity I bet she doesn’t even take a wage she so holyier than holy.
But I do bet she pays herself expenses like trips to see how all your hard earned cash you have donated has been spent on whatever “good cause” she has deemed fit to support. Of cause this will include flights hotels travel food entertainment but it’s all in the name of charity.

One thing at least it’s not oxfam and the dubious assignments they send there “aid workers” on.

OMG please tell me she owns a holiday house in Essex.

I worked as a cleaner for a woman just like her. Lasted two weeks. We had to wear hairnets to clean and she would come in and tuck any loose hairs away. She was obsessed with microwaves and then smelling.

I get it. Joan is complaining about the cost of the cleaning she has been invoiced for. She is also saying that her cleaning company would do it for less. The rest of her email is attempting to get the job.

I think OP is annoyed because Joan is banging on about checking up on the workers, in a very detailed way, starting from an assumption they are taking the piss and trying to cheat her, so need to be checked on. It seems patronising and offensive. OP just thinks this implies a nasty woman and finds it odd that Joan has this suspicious mean spirited attitude while simultaneously virtue signalling her kindness and charitable nature on FB.

Joan doesn't run a cleaning company.

Personally, I would have more of an issue of someone facebook stalking me and making character judgements based on a few details, than I would about a person checking I am working when I am cleaning their property.

Yes....

Anyone apart from me wondering how the OP justifies Facebook stalking clients to her holiday company? Doesn't quite seem to fall into any 'minimum necessary data, for specific purpose' category for GDPR.

@EltonHoratio
So, I wonder if my post will be helpful?
I wouldn't take her email personally OP. The service that you do book keeping for, has had what appears to be a complaint or comment (if it isn't clear what complaint is) about cleaning service used or management /checks of cleaning service that your employing company is paid to do. So I'd reply "Thankyou for your email, I have passed it into manager of holiday let management company." And redirect each time. Doesn't sound like an issue you need to get involved in. I'm sure the team who manage either cleaning or letting service is capable and best placed to deal with it.

(the rest of the stuff from her FB is irrelevant)

If Jason kept boasting of her charity to the OP, then that would be very annoying
However she doesn't - the OP had to "stalk" her on FB to find out

Why do that over a client monitoring a cleaner ?
Why is the OP so invested in the cleaner and her £60 for 4 hours ?

Charity /= "virtue signalling" or "leftwing"
Just enough disposable income to be able to afford charity, plus the wish to do so sometimes

Charity does not mean taking a vow of poverty and / or being a humble doormat

Several OPs recently seem to have a chip on their shoulders about rich people.

Rich people in general don't pay over the going rate

• or they won't stay rich for long

They often got rich in the first place by being very frugal and / or ruthless, rarely by being "nice"

"Jason" wtf, iPad - JOAN !

Lizzielocket I haven't had a drink in nine years and I struggled tbh.

Right OP - why is Joan complaining to the book keeper instead of the management company? Just direct her to them and don't waste a second more on this fuckery.

She runs her own charity so that she can score philanthropic points She then spends those points by policing her minions

No one needs points, to ensure they are receiving the service they have paid for. Especially, if they feel they are paying alot for that service.

The Facebook at charity work are entirely irrelevant because this formed no part of the email. She didnt try and say it was ok to check up on them because she also runs a charity .

The OP decide to facebook stalk the woman, whilst moaning that the woman dares check up on people while they are working.

OP can come back and challenge people on wether they would be a cleaner, but not answer anyone else.

Bit odd that

But unsupervised workers in many fields DO take the piss and get away with doing less of a job than they are expected to do.

I’m quite sure the standard of work expected is being explained to them very clearly. I would do drive by check ups too tbh, if the job is being done correctly then the cleaners (or whoever) will have nothing to worry about.

I’m not sure that a manager carrying out reasonable quality assurance makes her ‘a cunt’.

If she was hiding in wardrobes, setting up secret cameras or catfishing I would understand your dislike but I really don’t see anything wrong with random drop ins.

Joan doesn’t seem like the most charming of individuals but I can’t see that anything she’s doing is actually harming the cleaners. She’s paying up - albeit whingeing about the price and she’s not attempting to underpay them or get them the sack without good reason.

Also, some (by no means all) people who are heavily involved in developing world charity and see the sharp end of global poverty tend to develop a lack of sympathy to the situation of working class people in the UK, (who may be deprived by local standards, but are very much in the top 10% globally) so it’s possible that that’s a factor.