To tell my cleaner to stop wearing perfume?

[LeMoax]

We have a cleaner that comes once a week for four hours. We’ve used the same cleaning company for a while but recently they’ve chopped and changed the staff, so after a period of different people each week it seems we’ve now settled on someone regularly.
She cleans okay but wears really strong perfume. So strong that after she goes I need to leave all the windows in the house open for a good hour or so to get rid of her smell.

AIBU to ask her or her boss to ask her to stop wearing the perfume before coming to our house?

I’m really surprised posters are asking for recommendation for perfume just because it has a strong smell.
Is that the most important thing in a perfume?

And in that case any lawyer or surgeon would happily leave you to sort whatever issue you were consulting them about on your own. Down right rude and disrespectful. Would you like them to provide their opinion on your cologne of choice?

She only said the cleaners work was unsatisfactory in her drip feeding update. She should ask her to be replaced because of this. Or, OP could advertise herself and stipulate no perfume wearing in my house. I’m sure she’ll be inundated.

Some of us know how to be respectful employers.

The only person being stupid and showing themselves up on this post is you.

Obviously I don't know the OP, so she might be an insufferable Tory voting snob from hell. But the point I'm making is that you would suffer in silence if your lawyer or Consultant wore overpowering perfume. You'd probably only meet with them on one occasion and then only for an hour at most (unless you were minted) and not in your own home.

I have to admit that strong perfume or air fresheners set my asthma and ezcema off a treat, so maybe I'm feeling this more than I should. If someone was coming into my home for 4 hours on a weekly basis and doing something I felt uncomfortable with, I'd have to mention it in a polite and respectful way.

They’d have a job, I don’t wear any.

And I hardly think pointing out that smells make me ill and asking if they mind refraining from wearing it when visiting me ill is ‘rude and disrespectful’. Get a grip.

If they chose to continue wearing it, I absolutely would look at using someone else’s services. But as I said, it’s unlikely that a lawyer or a surgeon would be making 2 hourly, weekly visits to my home so it’s a bit of a moot point.

I had a cleaner like that, had to stop using her. My hoover smelled so strong of perfume it took a lot of scrubbing and many month for it to go

You should open all your windows everyday anyway. Anyone who has cleaned their own house knows this.

I’d have to say something- I react to a lot of perfumes, eyes watering, sneezing uncontrollably etc. Most of the time I just put up and shut up but I wouldn’t want to suffer it in my own home.

Perfume is the devil! I can’t even describe how much I hate it and how ill it makes me feel. A lot of perfume also reminds me if the smell of urine

For some it seems the point of wearing perfume is to inflict it on others, whether they want to breathe it in or not.

It would appear so. I think that the people who are getting angry about this are those who absolutely drench themselves in perfume, which is frankly absolutely gross and also as common as muck. My favourite is when the scent of stale perfume mingles with that of sweat. Bleugh!

Well there's not much point in perfume that doesn't smell for more than half an hour is there?

Going by this thread i can see why Jo Malone is so popular- wishy washy stuff that costs a lot of money and is supposedly 'subtle' ie- non-existent!

Jo Malone has (some)amazing perfume, very clean and fresh and distinctive. I am wearing Red Roses just now. If your nose has been so coarsened by over exposure to strong perfume, that's on you.

It feels a bit rubbish being a cleaner. Of course, many people (usually women) of all ages and levels of intelligence do cleaning because the hours are quite flexible, but it’s difficult psychologically because you really feel that you’re at the bottom of the hierarchy. It’s also incredibly exhausting and can be damaging to the cleaner’s back and general health. So many people think that people doing this type of job are doing it because that’s all they’re capable of.

So for someone to then complain about the cleaner’s perfume would be the last straw.

Geez- you need to lighten up a bit! FYI I'm a big fan of fragrantica and have a large collection of perfume- but new suggestions to try are always welcome. I get lots of compliments and people asking me what perfume I'm wearing because nobody notices most people's perfumes as so many are poor quality and don't last these days. Most people like it!

@LovelyTheresa Judging by your not so delightful attitude and implications of how you’re so far above other posters I think we can be certain that your nose is stuck up in a place where the sun doesn’t shine, that’s on you.

I massively applaud cleaners, you definitely deserve far more recognition and pay - a hospital left without cleaning staff for even a day wouldn’t be able to run. Such a physical job, I genuinely don’t know how you manage!!

I don’t wear perfume or use any aerosols, so I am really sensitive to the smell. Aerosols literally turn my stomach. I would politely say something.

What happens here is that posters are mixing up two different things.

Longevity or how long it lasts on the skin and sillage, which is how far a perfume projects. They are connected, but not the same things.

There's a lot of truth here. This thread isn't a particularly pleasant read tbh.

Hmm, I think you'll find that Jo Malone is not that well regarded in the fragrance world because her perfumes are really not that distinctive or creative- she has a few good ones, but on the whole they lack any depth or creativity and have little tenacity or silage. They are owned by Estee Lauder anyway (who BTW have some much better scents amongst their other brands)

Exposure to different perfumes doesn't 'coarsen' your nose, (unless you are talking about cheap nasty strong perfumes of poor quality you might find on the bottom shelf in boots) but rather it fine tunes your senses and develops your appreciation for different notes within the fragrance. Very simple fresh fragrances are preferred by those who find the complexity of the more distinctive fragrances challenging. Guess perfume is a bit like wine- those who have an untrained palette may not appreciate the complex taste and aroma of a fine wine and much prefer to stick a bottle of cheap and cheerful Prosecco or a Lambrini.

We have a saying for this ‘Too Posh to Wash’.

It’s nothing to do with ‘common folk’.

I said that Jo Malone had 'some' good perfumes. I love Red Roses and White Jasmine and mint, but a lot of them are too simple, I agree. There is nothing 'challenging' about complex fragrances, I love a wide variety. However, the PP was asking where to find very strong perfume, they didn't say anything about complexity, which is why I responded as I did. There is also, as I am sure you are aware, a difference between sillage and longevity. They both relate to strength, but sillage is, as it were, horizontal, while longevity is vertical. My favourite will always be Chanel 19, pre-reformulation. I have a bottle which dates from the 2000s and I will never get rid of it, I just smell the bottle every now and then.

Cleaner here.

I don’t wear perfume but, if I did, I’m not sure how I’d feel about the request to not wear it.

How do you know for sure that it’s the perfume?
it could be a strongly scented cleaning product like Zoflora (which is a disinfectant, not a cleaner btw), or the Spanish products that are doing the rounds. They are heavily scented.
Just ask what products are being used as you find some a bit overwhelming and wonder if they could be switched.

Ooh @Fynoderee what are the Spanish products? Just back from Spain where hotel lobbies and shops had a wonderful citrusy smell.