Just my own experience. I had a cleaner who was very good and came via one of those friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend referrals.
I knew a bit about her personal circumstances and knew that money was quite tight for her. Because of that, I deliberately paid her roughly what I would have paid a commercial cleaning company, so considerably more than the usual direct hourly rate. I’ve never felt particularly comfortable with getting cheap labour by underpaying someone who may be in a vulnerable financial position.
Our arrangement was that I paid her by bank transfer every Friday, because that’s when I do my banking. I was a very steady and reliable payer, so she knew exactly when the money would arrive, and it worked perfectly well for a couple of months.
Then she started insisting that she wanted to be paid cash on the day. Initially I wondered whether it was simply because she was cash poor and needed the money immediately for groceries or other day-to-day expenses. I was sympathetic to that, but at the same time it was quite inconvenient for me to make sure I had cash available every time she came. Paying on Friday meant I knew exactly what I owed for the week, including if she’d been off sick or hadn’t come for some reason, and I could just transfer it.
When I said I wanted to stick with the arrangement we’d agreed, she got quite huffy about it. That did make me wonder whether there was another reason she particularly wanted cash rather than a bank transfer, potentially because of tax or benefits, although obviously I didn’t know that for certain.
I found the whole thing quite tricky. I was genuinely trying to do the right thing. I was paying her very well, I was a reliable payer, and I was conscious of her circumstances. But I also didn’t want my sympathy for her situation to mean I was being taken advantage of, or to find myself inadvertently facilitating something fraudulent.
She moved on a couple of months later, which was disappointing because she was an excellent cleaner. I did um and ah about whether I should report my concerns, but in the end decided it wasn’t really my business to speculate about what she was or wasn’t declaring. I’d paid her properly, all my payments were documented, and what she did about her own tax or benefits was ultimately her responsibility.
It was just one of those situations where trying to be fair and decent to someone while also maintaining sensible boundaries became surprisingly complicated.