Cleaner drank the juice, ate the salmon and charged her phone

[Shadow743]

I have a cleaner who has been coming for 2hrs a week for approx a year. She is unreliable, often texting the day before with a wide selection of reasons as to why she can't make it, and she doesn't always do a great job. I've been thinking about getting rid of her for a while but I have a lot of guilt around having a cleaner in the first place, as it feels like such a luxury and I feel like a bit of a snob for having one. I've come home whilst she's been there before and seen her charging her devices, noticed that the cordial seems to have been drunk and a couple of weeks ago, I'm sure (but can't be 100% certain) that she finished of the smoked salmon from the fridge. Today, my kids marked a line on the juice bottles as a little experiment and lo and behold, I've come home to find not only has she drunk the cordial, she's finished it AND put the empty bottle on the top of the bin.
Am I being unreasonable to be furious and feel like she's taking the mick now or am I overreacting to some minor issues which I should overlook because a little bit of juice and a little bit of electricity here and there won't kill me???

Do you have comprehension issues?

I don’t understand why you’re talking about tea and coffee when it was never a part of the story. But you crack on with the fake narrative. I’ll just pretend you’re making sense.

You can make up all the stuff you like to try and justify calling people names, but it doesn’t make it true. As the thread I linked to showed, in the UK some offices provide, some don’t. If it’s not something employees can generally expect without a lot of them being disappointed.

In a home it’s normal to offer, but some people forget or it just doesn’t occur to them. Regardless of whether the person whose home it is is a tosser or not, it is not normal to TAKE what hasn’t been offered unless you’re a thief.

You obviously know what she means; any decent person would offer their cleaner a refreshment (coffee, tea, squash or water)

Do that.
Sad that you have to pretend to understand, but if it’s the only way that works for you 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yep. And if I offered my cleaner a drink and they helped themselves to my dinner that would be ok would it?

Stop it. Where is the mention of tea and coffee from the OP? And where is the mention of the few centimetres of squash you made up earlier too? Stop painting a narrative that doesn’t exist.

That’s not remotely the same 🤣

It is very difficult to understand what you are saying. You didn't like my first post and, like a dog with a bone, you won't leave it alone.

It isn't generosity, for a start. Why you think that I am being generous to the extent it worries you is something I cannot reply to.

If you think about it, anyone who has any training to go into people's houses knows to avoid anything already opened in the fridge. It is common sense, especially for nannies, who know well that kids can be little monsters and take every opportunity.

In the lockdown, I had my carer's shopping delivered to my house so that they wouldn't have to go into a shop at risk to themselves, catch covid and bring it back to me. Nothing generous about that. I am looking after myself as well.

When Jesus fed the five thousand, he didn't do it because they were poor. He did it because they had been listening to him and the hour was late and they were unable to go to the shops to buy food, so he sat them down and fed them.

When my helpers couldn't go to the shops, I fed them. Nothing wrong in that.

As for saving lives and owing lives: why would anyone employ a cleaner?

If it is to make their life easier, it may not be saving it in the dramatic sense, but if it improves your life, makes you happier, able to face life with a bit more confidence, there isn't much difference.

It is indeed, literally true. I try to live as Christ taught. He said ''If you are hoarding things, or have things and you see your brother/friend in need, give it to them''. He also said, when telling the story of the widow's might, ''what profit is there in giving when you have plenty?''

If you are attempting to make me, a disabled person, into someone without much sense and vulnerable, please don't try. 'been there done that' and on the receiving end of worse. People do, unfortunately label us with more vulnerability than common sense. It is a cross disabled people bear, because despite there being discriminatory laws, people still think they have the right to insult.

You are turning a comment I made on the OP into something I never invited.

If you cannot understand how ensuring that someone you rely on is content in their work, I am sorry. Insulting me may salve a conscience, but why would you want to be so nasty, just because you cannot understand how to treat employees?

You wouldn't turn one down though, would you?

You say that, then humiliate me - and probably many others because you seem to be practiced at it.

I tell my helpers that anything individually wrapped or drinks in individual cartons and cans they can have, then you tell me I am being taken advantage of. I don't think it necessary for someone to ask. I prefer to tell them.

In the past decade I have had about four helpers. The longest is someone who came for five years, all through the lock downs. They only left now because they were diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer about 10 weeks ago. Before that, the helper was almost 4 years. She had to leave because her father died, and her mother started chemo, and she was coming so far it was too much. I miss them both. It matters not that they can be easily replaced. It is a hard-to-bear loss.

I am glad, that for the times they were helping me, I was able to make them feel at home.

I say what then humiliate you? You've responded here to a post I made in reply to someone else. You'll have to be more explicit about what which bit of my words here you're responding to that you think are directed at you or how you think I've humiliated you.

I have not told you you were being taken advantage of. I expressed concern that, if you really would "deny them nothing", then they might take advantage of you. Because that's a fairly extreme position to take and certainly not a normal one with employees or contractors. But when your later posts suggested that you didn't actually mean that, it was just a phrase you were using to emphasize how generous you are to them I stepped it back.

The last time I had a cleaner she stayed with us for 7 years until we moved away. The one before that only 6 months. 3 years before that. They were all treated the same. They had different needs and pressures in their lives that had far more impact on whether they stayed with us than whether or not I offered them food and drink. As it was I offered what we drink - tea, coffee and tap water, but not normally any food. The one who stayed with us for years drank the coffee and tap water and sometimes brought her own soda. But, as with your own example, that's just one story about how people act in individual circumstances. It has no bearing on whether it's right for OP's cleaner to help herself to OP's food and drink when it wasn't offered.

You know full well what you meant, how you meant it.

I think you should stop and consider just what you are saying, You as good as called me a fool: someone easily taken advantage of. Apart from the fact that it is patronising, why would you say those things, if not to humiliate and insult.

You are probably already joining the site's offer to look up particular people's posts in the past, and working out how you can insult, and incite others to do the same.

I am not sure if the management of this site realises how easy it is for several posters to ''gang up and bully'' other posters. As you deny insulting and humiliating, I can only think that you do that so often you do not even realise you are doing it.

I am very pleased that you have cleaners who have stayed so long. It belies what you said in previous posts, though I am not saying it isn't true, just that you add into the mix something you never said in your first post. Why did you know introduce yourself and say that you have had cleaners all your life and the last one stayed 7 years. I wrote in response to something else. You, on the other hand, said nothing until I answered your insult post and added another two years. It would have read better had you said so earlier. How you managed to keep someone 7 years, I cannot imagine, because you are so against kindness.

It’s hardly unlikely that a poster on a thread like this is going to have had cleaners, why would you think I hadn’t? I probably wouldn’t have posted my first post on here if I hadn’t. I expect many people could give their experiences of how many cleaners they’ve had and for how long. I didn’t mention how long they’ve stayed earlier because they aren’t relevant to the OP, who isn’t asking how to keep her crappy cleaner for years. I only mentioned them to answer you in kind as a way to demonstrate that your own anecdote and reasoning is also irrelevant to the OP. (Another tangential fact, in case it comes later and you have trouble dealing with the idea of another revelation - I’ve also worked as a cleaner in a shop when I was teenager and both my mother and my gran cleaned houses at various points to make ends meet. Also not relevant to the OP, though)

I have not been advance searching your posts. I have stuck to attacking the arguments and assertions you’ve made on this thread. It’s a crap argument so it hasn’t been hard. I am happy to insult that. I haven’t called you a fool and I haven’t meant to. It’s your argument that’s foolish.

Yes this if any of this is even true. Encouraging your kids to mark the squash bottle to catch her taking a few pence worth of squash is teaching them to be petty and mean.

I’m sure half the responses here are from other cleaners.
If she needs a drink, she can drink water? Not take whatever she likes from my fridge. Eating food!? How would that be acceptable!!?

Charging phone is perfectly acceptable though.

The OP doesn’t know if she took the salmon though - so all she’s actually done for sure is have a drink of squash (oh no!!!!) and charge her phone

I’ve been a cleaner. Even on colder days, I used to sweat buckets- it’s a physical job. I only drank water because that’s my preference, but I was always told to help myself to drinks. I also put my phone on charge from time to time because I listened to music on it as I was cleaning. If the family’s kids were ever home they would offer me a hot drink and chat to me like I was, y’know another human being, rather than a potential criminal.

Im glad I never worked for you.

well I have done, depending on whether I was thirsty/hungry or not! But my point is I wouldn’t just help myself.

My cleaner is welcome to charge her phone, and help herself to drinks/food etc

The salmon maybe she should have asked but charging her phone and having a drink i think it's fair enough

After getting over the shocking revelations made, I have given the original post a lot of thought over the last 2 days. Firstly we only have the posters side of the story and more importantly the story of the children. I have learnt to only judge situations after hearing from all involved.
My view is the children ate the salmon and drank the juice and the fact that they were so quick to come up with novel ways point the finger elsewhere supports that vie4w. I know we all like to consider our children littler angels it is rarely true. Charging the phone is nothing more than just about every employee does every day of their working life and will have used about 5p of electric. The idea that this cleaner in a position of trust would stoop to stealing from the fridge and drinking juice is a complete non starter but feeds your prejudice about her cleaning not meeting your standards.