Does ANYONE clean any more?

Doesn’t anyone in this town clean?

A friend stopped by this morning and noticed a pile of stuff on my couch. I explained it away as a cleaning lady who saw me momentarily toss something there so that I could use two hands for something else, and my setting something there for a minute was interpreted as permission to use the couch for permanent storage. He nodded; once one of his cleaning ladies saw him put something on the kitchen table that wasn’t dinner, she also decided it was easier to pile things on the table than to put them where they belong.  In other words "you won't mind me putting things there, because you put stuff there yourself."

He confirmed having the same problems with his cleaners: just like mine, when you tell them "put this in the closet", they act like they don’t understand English, and look for somewhere else to put it so that you’ll put it away yourself. But when you refuse to pay them for not doing what they were hired to do, suddenly they speak fluent English, including the phrase "pay up or I’ll sue you for fraud". (Though they don’t do so well with the legal term "quantum meruit", i.e., paying what the job is actually worth.)

His also have only wanted to dust and mop, and not do any serious cleaning. He also had one who considered it "cleaning" to move things from Point A to Point B this week, and from Point B to Point A next week, without ever wiping them down in the process.

After reassuring me that I’m not the only person in town who can’t find a good cleaner, verifying the same experience I’ve had (most don’t clean and those few who do clean are flaky and can’t remember to show up unless you call to remind them "tomorrow’s Tuesday, and you need to come clean my house"), we concluded that there is not a single cleaning lady in this town who is both a good cleaner and a reliable employee who’ll show up every week without fail.

So, I’ll put the call out here – if there is anyone in the Sacramento area who is willing to do more than just dust, who really cleans, who does 3 hours work for 3 hours pay, and can guarantee that she’ll show up every time, I know a lot of people in town who are looking for a good, reliable cleaner. Impress me, and I will give them your phone number. Between us, we can probably network you into working 5 days a week. I can’t speak for them, but I have no problem with paying a lot more than minimum wage for a job that’s done right. But you’re not going to convince me that I owe you 4 hours pay for a job that I know from experience can be completed in under 1 hour; if it took you 4 hours to do only that one task, that tells me that as soon as I stopped watching, you stopped working.

Although years of being forced to use hired cleaners instead of being able to do it myself might lead you to believe otherwise, I like my house CLEAN. Don’t assume that because it’s a mess when you come in the first time you’re here to clean that it’s OK to leave it a mess ... a lot of that mess was created by cleaners who put things on the nearest flat surface instead of back in the cupboard. You were hired to clean, not just to dust the clutter and spray a little Pine-Sol thinking the scent will fool me into thinking the house was properly cleaned. I can see for myself that you just boxed things up instead of putting them away, and the first time I open the fridge and find something with fur still sitting on the shelf, I’ll know you didn’t actually clean the fridge in the manner in which you were instructed to do the job.

My kitchen is logically organized, all the canned goods here, all the pots there, all the towels in this drawer – there is absolutely no excuse to say "I put it all in a box for you to put away yourself because I couldn’t figure out where to put it." Similarly, my dresser is logically organized, but I’ve had people tell me that they can’t figure out that the underwear goes with the underwear, the socks go with the other socks, the T-shirts go in the drawer with the million other T-shirts. (Not "I can’t make the million-and-one-th T-shirt fit in there because there’s no more room", but that she can’t deduce from what’s already in the drawers which half-empty drawer the socks go in ... so she just piled the laundry on the dining room table, messing up what had been a clean dining room, for me to put away later.) Either these people have a sub-moron IQ that they can’t figure out underwear goes in the drawer with the other underwear or they’re too lazy to work, and the easiest way to avoid working is to pretend you’re too stupid to do anything without being led by the hand through the steps, i.e., make the employer do the job herself under the guise of teaching you.  (The prizewinner in that category is the one who had to be taught every 3 days how to load the dishwasher.  And 3 days later had to be shown again.  And 3 days later had to be shown again.  Because if you put the dishes in sideways, you can call the bottom rack "full" after just 6 plates.  If you put them in ||||||, after 6 dinner plates there's still room for 6 soup bowls, 6 sandwich plates, and 2 pots, requiring you to bend down 14 more times.)

I have a disabled friend in another part of the state who, thank God, has been deemed "officially disabled" by the government, and thus gets her cleaners at no cost to her. Apparently, they are paid quite a bit less than I pay my cleaners (I’ve been paying $15-20/hour, and I think the government pays $9/hour ... I’m sure someone will correct meif I’m wrong), but because she is in a wheelchair (which I am not), they understand that she is disabled and that they cannot leave the chores for her to do, because she can’t do them. And because if they don’t do the laundry, put away the groceries, etc., she will call the government agency who sent them, complain that someone has to come and do these tasks, and they’ll get in trouble with someone far more powerful than a single disabled lady. One private agency told me that if I was not happy with what the cleaner did, I would have to take it up with her directly, but then refused to give me her phone number so that I could. Needless to say, when she was told by the boss that I wanted the work done that I had paid for, she wasn’t going to call me and get chewed out, so I paid $80 and got absolutely nothing for it.

Unfortunately, to get into the same government program that sends cleaners to my friend, I either have to convince the judge that it is possible to be legally disabled without being in a wheelchair, or turn 65. And since I’ve been fighting for nearly a decade with this judge’s perception that if I can get to his courtroom for one hour once every other year, I can get a job 8 hours every day, I’m thinking I’ll qualify by turning 65 before I’m deemed "officially disabled".