Had someone in to do some housecleaning last week. I heard the box of CDs falling off the table, and just assumed that, having made a mess, the housecleaner was going to clean up the mess.
Wrong. The CDs are still on the floor.
I was going to pick them up myself, but as soon as I bent over, I got lightheaded (as usual). It wasn't worth fainting for, so the CDs are on the floor waiting for the housecleaner's next visit so they can be picked up by the person who created the problem in the first place.
And this has been the problem with many hired cleaners. When they leave, I have a bigger problem on my hands because they have put boxes in front of the places that I need to put things away. If I cannot put the Tupperware into the cupboard when it comes out of the dishwasher, then the Tupperware that had been in the fridge is added to the mess. If I cannot get to the cupboard with the canned food because a heavy box has been placed where I need to stand to reach the cupboard, then I have to go buy more food, which adds to the mess, because I can't get to the cupboard to put it away.
At the moment, I can't get to the boxes where I store my needlework supplies, because someone thought it was an excellent idea to put a stack of boxes in front of them. Which means, (1) I can't get to what I have, and (2) when I buy new stuff because I can't get to the old stuff, I can't put the new stuff away neatly, so it's still cluttering up the living room (though the clutter is receding as the yarn gets used -- I've been knitting a lot of clothes for a friend's grandbaby, so three bags of yarn is already down to one).
My house was MUCH cleaner when I was struggling to clean it myself, because I had enough brains to not block doors and drawers with heavy boxes that I couldn't move, which meant that I could put things away as they came into the house or out of the dishwasher.
But as soon as I started hiring help, my problems started because they refuse to leave boxes in the middle of the room. It makes sense to me to put the boxes away from the cupboards, so that I can get into the cupboards, but the only thing the paid cleaners see is that if they put the boxes in the middle of the room, I might trip over the box and sue them. Being unused to dealing with the disabled, it doesn't register with them that I cannot simply move the box to open the cupboard.
And, as this incident demonstrates, the hired cleaners get focused on one task, and if they create a new mess in doing the task that they're focused on, they simply leave that mess for me to clean up because they don't see it as part of the task they were hired to do.
1 comment:
Don't forget that genius cleaner who kept taking things out of the trash and putting them on the dining room table because she couldn't understand why anyone would throw away "good stuff" like a pair of socks with huge holes in them.
How many times did you have to put those socks into the trash can before they finally went out the door?
It is just horrifying the type of idiots who hire out as cleaners nowadays and will not trust that the educated employer knows more than they do. I think they work as independent cleaners because they have proven incapable of listening to the boss and think that if they're independent they won't have to take instruction from anyone.
I hear far more stories about theft and laziness by cleaners than praise for hard work and perfectionism. Anyone who disputes that has never hired a cleaner themselves.
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