I just don't see any other way out.

First let me say that the woman who cleans my apartment is a great person. A warm and lovely woman from Poland. To protect her identity we'll call her Krakovia.

Krakovia is kind, with an easy, if sad, smile. (The Polish are a proud and beautiful people - but wedged as they are between Germany and the former Soviet Union, they've suffered dearly. They wear their history on their faces.) Krakovia is empathetic. When she asks how I'm doing, she really wants to know.

She's been with me for two years. I don't know much about her. She's made a few trips to Florida during our time together and tans quite easily. (I'd always assumed that Lech Walesa and the other shipyard workers in the Solidarity movement were pale for genetic reasons. But based on Krakovia's savage tan, I've revised my opinion: It must simply be that Gdansk is overcast.)

Currently she comes in the morning, once every two weeks on Thursday. If I'm not rushing out of the apartment to catch a plane for Chicago for Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!, I'm usually still in my pajamas eating oatmeal and trying to figure out a blog topic. On Krakovia mornings, I always make sure to wear briefs underneath my pajama pants, so that my schlong doesn't accidentally peak out my jammies. And I brush my teeth so that I don't offend Krakovia. (A couple years ago, I walked out of the bathroom with just a towel, and Krakovia blushed and averted her gaze. I was embarrassed by my own lack of decorum. My mother would have been furious with me.)

Everything seemed to be going well until a couple months ago when I started noticing ... things.
Krakovia isn't –maybe never has – mopped the bathroom floor with a cleaning solution. As readers of this blog know, I don't make a mess. But I also walk with shoes on the bathroom floor. So the floor needs to be cleaned properly. I don't need to install a Krakovia-cam to tell you that she's wetting some paper towels, putting them on the floor and shuffling her feet around. That doesn't cut it.

Still in the bathroom: This last Thursday she didn't launder my bath towel and bathmat, which I hang over my shower rod. Yes they look neat hanging there. But that doesn't mean they're clean. This time they weren't.

Otherwise Krakovia does the laundry and folds well – except when it comes to socks. I clearly prefer my socks to be folded only at the tops, so that the feet dangle separately. (What I call the conjoined twin style.) Krakovia can see this by looking at the clean pairs in my socks compartment. Yet she insists on balling the socks, one engulfed inside the other. Of course the outer sock end ups getting stretched out. I now wait until Krakovia leaves to un-ball each pair and conjoin them.


My happily conjoined socks. (In the background is my bust
of Grover Cleveland.)


My balled socks.

Then there's the living room, where I write. Krakovia mops the floor, yes, though I'm not sure she uses a cleaning solution here either. Plus she doesn't mop under the sofa or move the piles of books I leave on the floor. (I know that's lame of me.) Overall there's a lot of dust in the living room.


"Someone" forgot to wash the gray (make that dust!) out
of Grover's hair.

The kitchen is a cinch: I've never used my oven. Not once. So she just needs to clean the floor and wash some dishes. But she's slacked off even here. My hardworking Hamilton blender still smells like banana after she "cleans" it. (I blend a lot of bananas and protein powder.) And the carriage of the blender is never windexed. After this last visit, it still had banana shmutz on it. Yuck.

Finally there's my terrace. A couple weeks ago, some lowlifes were smoking on my building's rooftop and flicked their butts on to the street - or so they thought. They ended up littering my terrace. It's gross. One even got into one of my plants.

Not that Krakovia would know. This past Thursday she didn't set foot on my terrace!

So why don't I just sit down with Krakovia on my dusty couch and tell her what's on my mind? Fair question.

I don't like confrontations. (Yes, it's something I'm working on with Dr. Saguaro.) I like that Krakovia feels comfortable with me. I've never shown disapproval and now that we've been together for two years, I find it harder than ever to suddenly be the boss.

Believe me, I've rehearsed the speech I know I should deliver to her – delineating her shortcomings and my demands – but I end up feeling petty. (Why am I not doing my own damn cleaning?) I also start to worry about recriminations from Krakovia:

"You want I mop bathroom floor with soap and pick up cigarette butts?" she snarls.

"Um, well, yes," I say, my voice halting.

"You must choose," she snaps back.

"Oh, for chrissakes, Kravokia!" I lash out. "I'm not Sophie and I'm not making any choice here. You do both!"

"Then you have to pay!"

(It's an ugly exchange and one that makes me less than proud. It also violates Dr. Saguaro's mandate that I be "appropriately assertive.")

Full disclosure: I pay Krakovia $100 for about two and a half hours of work. I don't think I'm being cheap. I've never used my oven. Dammit, what I'm asking for is not that hard! I'm getting mad just writing this.

Of course I'm more frustrated with myself for not knowing how to fix my relationship with Krakovia. After Krakovia left ("See you Thursday after next, Mr. Mo!") I resigned myself to breaking up with Krakovia by leaving her a message canceling her next visit, then never calling back to reschedule. Unhealthy, I know, and nonsensical considering I was so concerned about her feelings.

But then I had lunch with my agent Dan. (He took me to a diner, when I was kind of expecting an actual restaurant. Whatever.) He could tell I was frazzled, and I told him what was going on with Krakovia. He thinks the relationship can be saved. His very rational advice:

I need to separate the two issues. The folding of socks is a simple personal preference. Krakovia isn't doing anything wrong here. Millions of decent law-abiding people like their socks balled up. Telling her that I happen to prefer my socks Siamese-style isn't going to upset her. I could say it very casually, as I'm passing into the kitchen to leave my oatmeal bowl in the sink: "Oh, Krakovia. The laundry looks great. But would you mind conjoining my socks instead of balling them? Thanks!" Simple enough.

But then there are the grievances that have to do with fundamental cleaning lady responsibilities – i.e., those charges that when leveled amount to charges of cleaning lady negligence. These are bound to put Krakovia on the defensive and in turn give me anxiety. She's at least as high-strung as I am and would likely worry that she'd been failing me for a while. She might even get angry at me for not being open with her these last few months.

Dan's advice is to be dispassionate as possible and stay positive: "Say to her, 'Krakovia, I appreciate all you do. But here's how I like my apartment cleaned." Then mention a cleaning solution for the bathroom floor, dusting in the living room, and cigarette removal from my azalea.


A cigarette butt in my azalea. (There's a hit country music
song in that sentence.)

Most importantly, he advised me to stay focused on the objective here: a cleaner apartment. Krakovia is here to perform a service. Fixating on the imagined negotiation and hurt feelings is a mistake. If I stay focused on getting a cleaner apartment, the relationship will right itself.

So maybe ... Krakovia and I won't break up.

What do you think? Am I the only person who's had these kinds of issues with service people?