To not pay the cleaner

[MamaD2207]

We have had a cleaner for about a month and she is absolutely great. Today I had £100 on my bedside table this morning. There is no one else who could have taken it, but there is no evidence it was her. Am I being unreasonable not paying her ?

Yeah, she has to go.
However even if you tell her you're letting her go because you'd be worried, it's close to an accusation, so I would let her go and just lie, for example i'd say I've suddenly got an opportunity to work from home for a while and can take care of domestics myself in the commute time saved.
You absolutely have to let her go for your reasons, but equally there's the chance of her having done nothing wrong, so that's really the message to give her. And if she did do it, she will KNOW your real reason anyway and get the right message. It cost her the job.

Self-employed rates are just completely different.

If this was an hourly rate for a permanent employed role with contracted hours – great.

In this situation, you know when you’re working, the hours are guaranteed, you just show up and go home. The employer takes care of timetabling, PAYE, marketing, contracts, chasing payments, customer service, handling enquiries, acquiring clients, dealing with complaints or queries. All of that is a LOT of work. And it’s not billable to anyone.

If on the other hand you’re a self-employed cleaner, then filling an entire working week with long-term regular clients at possibly as little as 2 hours per booking is a whole world of work outside of the cleaning. And any number of those people could cancel the agreement at any time and you’re back to square one. You might not be managing to get enough hours in any given week. People will also mess you about a lot with things like last minute cancellations, messing about with payments, trying to change their slot, etc, etc. The cleaner will also have unpaid travel time (and costs) in between each clean, in addition to covering the cost of cleaning supplies.

You also don’t have holiday pay, sickness pay, pension contributions, redundancy, or any of the other benefits you might get in an employed role. On top of the fact that in an employed role you can’t just be fired for no reason, whereas as a sole trader there is zero job security and no guaranteed hours.

£21 hour as a self-employed service rate is incredibly low.

A month isn't very long at all to be completely sure of someone's honesty, I'm afraid. So I think you will have to let her go but still pay her. The trust is gone.

Why wouldn't you ?
You should be able to trust your cleaners.

She has. She hasn't seen it.

This is so true- and when they find whatever they have lost themselves they rarely apologise to the people they have blamed and reputations have been ruined.

This and don't leave money just lying about.

Its better that than not paying her, and then years later you pull up the floorboards and find it fallen down there (or some other improbable place). This way, either way you have taken the high road!

Entertaining story, and very outing to anyone who knows me, but anyway - my great aunt (who nowadays would almost certainly have been diagnosed with some sort of learning difficulties) was in service back in the early 1930s, as general maidservant to a middle class family. One day, when the family had guests in the house, my great aunt found a gold half-sovereign on the floor under one bed. According to family legend, she observed it for some time. She then went to find a hammer and some wide-headed tacks, and she carefully nailed the tacks all around it so that it was fixed to the floor. The next day both sovereign and tacks had vanished and all that was left was a circle of tiny holes in the floorboard. She remained in post for several years afterwards.

I do this on purpose to see if I can trust them. It's not £100, more like £50.

Never had it stolen and we've had about 7 cleaners in the past 12 years.

There's more demand than supply for cleaners at the moment, you're lucky if you can get one at all. So they are calling all the shots on everything.

Many now also use your supplies rather than bringing their own, and only clean houses very near where they live (at most a couple of miles).

£21/hour is still higher than average.

Most of them aren't trying to book out a full week, they're picking up hours here and there around the school run or part time retired.

And a lot of them work cash in hand and don't pay tax.

Most domestic cleaners aren't employees, you don't have to sack them you just tell them their services are no longer required.

Where do these things go? Especially socks, one foot of which seems to wander off on its own when the humans are asleep.

£21 might be higher than average ‘for a cleaner’, but it’s extremely low for a self-employed sole trader. Even one who’s in demand. The fact us cleaners are undervalued and people would almost certainly be reluctant to pay more. As you say it’s seen as ‘casual work to fit around the kids’ or for extra pocket money.

Many labourers, electricians and plumbers don’t pay tax either! However I don’t think you can just assume that every self-employed cleaner is a tax dodger.

A lot of people underprice themselves when they first go self-employed as it’s difficult to get your head out of employed rates and really feel comfortable dealing with service rates.

Anyone who thinks £21 per hour for a sole trader is anything other than super low is almost certainly not self-employed themselves!

I completely agree with this. Unless you've got CCTV, how on earth can you be certain beyond doubt that your cleaner took the money?

Just ask her where she put it.

If you are 100% certain

your husband left, 100% certain, you haven’t moved it or it was a neighbour with a key or a teenager etc then I would report as a theft and change the locks - why wouldn’t you? Don’t need to accuse her - give the police the facts. Do you have a ring doorbell so you can see who entered and who left? Etc

Agree. I just can't see why she would do it knowing she'd be an immediate suspect.

Ignore these idiots saying to completely trust the cleaner. If you know the money is gone and gut feeling it’s the cleaner you’re probably right.

I’ve never had this but an ex colleague had a cleaner for ages and one day jewellery went missing. Nothing else gone and no burglar just cleaner in house. I think my colleague was going to report the cleaner to the police but she knew it was her after checking her house. Plus a few valuable pieces of jewellery were missing from her jewellery box.

It's under the bed. Pay her and if you're uncomfortable, don't have her back. You shouldn't be leaving money around anyway.

a) who uses cash in vast sums these days and
b) who leaves it out?!

She does

if not the cleaner could take her to court

MoonPieHazySky
Well,she's more than happy with what we pay so that answers that.Everyones situation is different, that's life.

You don't seem like the type who can have a cleaner I'm afraid. It's hard to know if she took it but you have to trust someone to be in your home. I had a cleaner years ago and stuff would always be put in the wrong place and I haven't been able to find certain things like the odd knife or mug and then wondered if they have been pinched. For this reason I would rather just do the cleaning myself.

You have to pay her btw and not allow her back as you don't know for sure if she took the money.