should I confront cleaner?

[littlepollyflinders]

A friend bought for my birthday a really lovely vase that is shaped like a milk bottle but is heavy glass with simple design etched around the base.
I had in the toilet (cloakroom?) with some flowers in.
On cleaner's last visit flowers were dead (she throws out dead flowers) and now I can't see the vase.
I'm worried that she thought it was a milk bottle and threw it out.
She is Lithuanian and wonderful. But usual story is struggling financially and very hard working - a widow and bringing up a son.
I feel so bad about having to confront her about this but equally bad about friend who is always talking about the great find in the vase and me about how much I like it.
Oh dear...

Do you have to confront? Could you just ask? You just want to know, don't you? You're not considering sacking her or anything?

Ps. My cleaner has some interesting ideas about home storage - for example, she always takes the towels out of the bathroom and into dd's bedroom, and puts our post in shoeboxes in the wardrobe - which is a constant reminder that people do have very different concepts about where things belong. With any luck your vase has just been stored somewhere unexpected in yoru home.

yes, I would ask her.
even if it was a milk bottle it shouldn't have been thrown out it would have been returned.
so, just ask her where she put it. at leasyt you'll know then

Well it's tough because I feel I should replace it for friend's sake or is that really daft?
No I wouldn't sack her over it and don't think I would want her to replace it.
Am I just suffering from middle class guilt?

I think you are, lpf. Stuff happens - you just need to know what happened, then moved on.

And you really don't need to replace it for your friend's sake. It was a lovely gift, you appreciated and enjoyed it, that doesn't mean you have a lifelong responsibility to have A Vase to represent that thoughtful gesture.

you don't have to replace it, but you do need to find out what happened to it, and it would be polite IMO for her to offer to replace it,
and personally I would take her up on that,
I mean, you don;t just go throwing peoples stuff away do you??

Found it!
phew....

.......can i ask where it was??

Hooray

Oh yes. We need to know where it was.

It was on the window sill in the toilet but further back and because it's transparent I didn't see it against the lace curtain.
I'll put it down to the on set of menopause and crawl embarrassed into my bed

Forget menopause - go to Specsavers!

Your cleaner sounds fun-at least you know where to find things. Post in box in cupboard makes perfect sense, in a Lithuanian sort of way, possibly, maybe?

We had a cleaner for years who turned out to be a kleptomaniac with a predilection for teaspoons and forks. We were too embarrassed to confront her even after years of sneaky suspicions being confirmed by DH seeing her with a fork in her jeans pocket. I even went out and bought new sets of cutlery to replace the ones she'd nicked. Middle class guilt indeed. And I felt sorry for her-another sad story. So we figured we'd just pay her £8 an hour plus a secret teaspoon...

But in the end she nicked something that was actually valuable so we finally worked up the guts to fire her. I think the moral of the story might be to be upfront, even about teaspoons?