To feel sad & horrified by these comments from a former cleaner

[strivingtosucceed]

twitter.com/TabitaSurge/status/1260647664565121027

The lady in the tweets is a former cleaner who has spoken about the issues she had during her time as a cleaner. She's spoken of horrific things like clients leaving, sick, skid marks and crusted over appliances for her to clean. Others have also spoken about being 'tested' with money left out and casually followed about the house.

Judging by the amount of people who have cleaners on this board, she's probably one of you. Would anyone admit to it though?

Fancied my husband but not really a problem as I don't fancy him.

Sorry @Thisbastardcomputer but this really made me

I pay my cleaner by the hour to clean, sometimes it's quite messy - I do clean the toilet in between visits of course and she doesn't do bedrooms anyway. If cleaners don't like having to clean i suggest a different job

This.

When I had a cleaner I paid by the hour and left her my dirty dishes to do. I also gave her paid holidays and paid a wage equivalent to what I earn per hour. My friend who has a cleaner has her on paid leave at the moment so that she doesn't have to take public transport.

Cleaners should be treated like the professionals they are.

We’ve hosted teenage foreign students for years and I have my share of grim behaviour to deal with (bowl of vomit left was my worst).

Over the years of dealing with students I.e. the general public the pattern is the majority are fine and decent a small minority are hideously vile and a small minority are amazing and special. Guess if you have a job like a cleaner you have to accept this fact!

I think there are two points in the twitter argument being discussed:

1, that housework, like most household labour, falls to mainly to women. For Owen Jones to suggest that everyone suddenly has 'lots more time' in lockdown to do their own cleaning is a bit tone deaf.

2, but more importantly that doesn't mean it is ethical to have a cleaner in the current climate, as it would mean literally risking their lives. Housework should be shared amongst the family, not outsourced to other (mainly working class) women. It is not only a woman's responsibility to make that happen though.

He definitely wasn't talking about just having a cleaner in general.

I wish people would just stop working as cleaners. Then there wouldn’t be so many of these complaints. Problem solved.

I've literally had to pluck shit out of blocked toilets with my (gloved) hands. How do people think blocked toilets stuffed full of shit and toilet paper get sorted out? Another human being gets the privelidge.

but more importantly that doesn't mean it is ethical to have a cleaner in the current climate, as it would mean literally risking their lives. Housework should be shared amongst the family, not outsourced to other (mainly working class) women. It is not only a woman's responsibility to make that happen though.

MissMoz when are people suggesting it’s ok to get them back?

And yes, I utterly despise the known person that thinks it's ok to leave a toilet in that state. I clean in an office block.

Sorry, unknown person

I used to tidy as I went, putting things away.
So the cleaner could actually clean the house not our daily mess.

When ever we came home it looked like a show house.

Doesn't surprise me. Back when I was a student I used to work in hospitality. The absolute state of the toilets night after night just showed how fucking disgusting some people are.

It doesn't matter if you're drunk or sober. There's no excuse for leaving a mess behind that someone has to clean like that.

I'm talking shitting in cups, shaving pubes over the cubicle floor, leaving used tampons on the floor, dirty underwear on the floor, kissing cubicle doors with lipstick on so it was covered in hundreds of kiss marks, vomiting everywhere, shitting on the toilet seat (where the hinges are etc)... it goes on.

I'd never clean again.

@InSpaceNooneCanHearYouScream

So you never eat out (as surely you cook your own food?)
You have never used a babysitter? (Surely you look after your own children)
You have never used public transport? (Surely you transport yourself?)

The list is endless

I have a cleaner, she usually comes twice a week, at the moment she isn’t coming but I am paying her 80% of her wage.

I don’t clean before she comes, obviously when I cook etc I wipe the sides down, but I don’t deep clean anything. She also does laundry, so she does the washing on the first day then ironing/bed making on the second visit of the week, although I do tell her to only iron work/school wear as the rest doesn’t matter.

My flat isn’t the tidiest, I have a little basket that she shoves things in that she finds out and about, if somewhere is too messy e.g sons room covered in toys then she doesn’t vaccuum that room/dust if surfaces are very cluttered. I also have a small pile of toys in the living room that she refers to as ‘shit mountain’. She has been my cleaner for five years and stayed with me through two moves. Sometimes she pops over 10-15 minutes early to play with the cat.

I miss her so much, because I have her I’m usually a spoiled little prince, my boyfriend has been doing most of the cleaning. My cleaner will definitely tell me off when she is eventually back, she has text a few times to remind me to clean certain things 😂

Love this @SimonJT - she sounds awesome!

I have cleaners and I would never expect them to do anything more than hoovering, dusting, washing floors etc. There is no way I would expect a cleaner to clear up bodily fluids or anything gross. I generally take off all the bedding, throws off the sofa and leave out clean bedding for her to put back on, empty all the bins and tidy the house generally (I don't think they should be putting things away either). It actually works really well because I do "my" bit once a week and she does hers. It focuses us to do the things that we are not paying her to do.

I'd never leave shit, pubes or sick. I have pride and would hate haveing to deal with that so wouldn't expect someone else to. I'd also feel really embarrassed!

Love my cleaner, always tidy before she comes (cue weekly discussion with dh, why do we have to clean before the cleaner comes... we're not cleaning, we're tidying so she can clean)... don't leave anything horrid for her and I'm paying her in full and don't expect her to return until it's safe to do so. She's awesome and (I hope) we're good clients for her. So I don't feel guilty atall.

So they expected their clients to clean before they came to clean?

There is general everyday mess, and there is filth.

No-one should be expected to clean up filth, unless they are getting "dirty-money" wages. It is totally disrespectful to your cleaner - whois another human being - to leave a week's worth of skid-marks for them to deal with. And it also says a lot about what a filthy skank you are if you do so.

My old cleaner (I moved 2 hours away last summer) is one of my closest friends now. And she always told me that she lived cleaning my house because I didn't preclean... So she felt like she had accomplished something 😂. Of course it probably helped that I literally gushed at the beauty when I arrived home😁

She always cleaned my cat boxes... I asked what she'd do when I hired her and that was one of the things in her list. She didmt clean up vomit once... And wasn't mad about it.. but was a shitstorm of a morning... My son had anxious vomit before we headed out and I had to rush to work.. apologized profusely a6nf told her to just skip cleaning the bathroom and I'd do it when I got home.... She did it anyway. I absolutely do love and appreciate her. Oh yeah... She also cleaned when I was home... Which is how we became friends because we'd chat all the time. Again... I asked her in the beginning of I had to leave for her to clean and she said no. I usually was at work... But she cleaned for me through 2 maternity leaves and after I started working part-time instead of full-time...so was home a lot more then.

Oh... Excuse the mass typos 😬

I work from home, My cleaner comes once a fortnight and I tidy before she comes, at lunch time We both stop, I will cook us both a meal and make a cuppa sometimes a glass of wine and we will sit and chat for an hour together over lunch. I love her but I am not paying for her whilst she is not here, we are both self employed and I can not afford to pay for a service which I am not receiving. We still speak regularly and I can not wait for her to come back but she would never expect to be paid, just like I would never expect to be paid for the services I can not provide at the minute.

Ex-cleaner - did it as a second job for quite a while to help with bills. I did mostly commercial contracts, but occasional domestic cleans.

Good cleaners seem to be difficult to find. That put me in the very fortunate position of being able to be choosy about my clients. If someone pissed me off then I'd give them notice and know I;d be able to fill their spot without any bother.

The money test didn't bother me TBH. I wouldn't do it to someone else, but I understood that people do need to be able to trust who is in their home.

That said, I did have a woman go crackers at me that I'd moved the money she'd "accidentally" left out. When I pointed out that I'd moved it to dust and then replaced it where it was, with the amount intact but in a tidier pile, she tried to say that I was dishonest for touching it at all. I asked her how pleased she would have been to have a sparkling sideboard with the exception of a dusty square with a pile of tatty cash and coins sitting on it. And that if she had an issue with me moving things then I would have to apologise for emptying the bins, moving the dirty towels off the bathroom floor and wiping the crumbs from the kitchen table. She didn't have an answer. And then looked surprised when I said that I thought it best for her to find a different cleaner, as clearly I wasn't meeting her standards...

As always on Twitter people always go to extremes. Surely every case should be judged on its own merits? If your cleaner has to get multiple buses/trains to get to you then probably not a good idea. "My" cleaner lives a 2 minute walk from me.

@Impropriety I’m not disagreeing with any of that but none of what you say changes Owen Jones basic assumption that people have more time in lockdown reflects a stunning misunderstanding of the disproportionate impact it is having on women. He deserved to be called out for it.

I love my cleaners. I pay for two hours and two women arrive for one hour. I told them when I interviewed them I wanted no tidying. So we tidy the house the day before then they swoop in and the entire place gets disinfected, mopped, dusted and vacuumed with their own products and appliances.

The previous cleaner I had was utterly appalling. I never realised how bad I was at asserting myself. Not once did she stay for the agreed two hours, she would stand chatting about her family life with me trying to get on with my freelance work and she just did things like folding up clothes and shoving them out of sight or fluffing up the curtains. She would leave unexpectedly halfway through a job - once all the bathroom items were out in the hallway. One week she didn't appear. Then it was two weeks. Then a month passed and she sent an apology message saying she had thrown her husband out for cheating but would be back. Thankfully three months later when she decided to return I was able to take the cowards way out and pretend I had had to hire someone else because I couldn't cope.