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?
Reader Comments ( Page 5 of 7)
61. Never used the oven ... it may need dusting too. She needs to be replaced, by someone like myself. For $100 at 2.5 hours, I would like to apply. For $40 an hour I will dust your lightbulbs and scrub whatever needs it ... are you local?
Sandi Lee at 8:38PM on Sep 26th 2007
62. i have anxiety just reading about this, its like quitting a job... but who's really quitting on the job?? krakovia.
eileen at 8:46PM on Sep 26th 2007
63. Mo,Mo,Mo! No mo'! Here's the deal: she works, you pay!(Why are we so afraid to expect people to earn their salary?) If you're scared that she'll clean the bathroom floor with your toothbrush, well, you cannot know, can you? Just to be on the safe side, clean it with Clorox after she's been there. But now, isn't that silly?? So,if you think she just doesn't understand what you require, pleasantly give her a list of things you want done each week. Praise her when she does a nice job. After a month or two, if things are not better, tell Krakovia your mother is moving in and may even arrive before Krakovia leaves that day. Tell her,"Don't worry! You'll love Mom. But she likes to do her own cleaning, so I'm afraid I will have to let you go." Give her one week's severance and a big hug. (I'd hang around for the rest of the morning.)
R.G. at 11:13PM on Sep 26th 2007
64. Hiya Mo.
Okay.... let's see....
Well. If you must know, my mother came from a very poor family (dirt poor, as you gringos would say) and her mother cleaned houses for a living for many years. For the first few years of her life, my mother would help out, and between the ages of 12 and 15 she was a part-time maid at several houses in Mexico City, before she got an scholarship to school.
So, that became two things:
1) My mother learned (sometimes the hard way) how to clean a house properly and how to earn money doing it.
and
2) How to treat a cleaning lady or any sort of hired help, once she got married and working and had two children (My sister and me).
I never, ever, saw her lose her temper with a cleaning lady. She might lose it with us, but never with them... however, she always was very definite about what she wanted. She is not confrontational, mind you. She explains what she wants, exactly, point by point. She stocks on the cleaning products she prefers.
Whenever a new cleaning lady comes in (we had one who lasted for years but left once she got a family of her own) my mother takes time to make all of her points, and then, she checks them out.
If her expectations are not met, she talks to the person, explains again, and makes a moot point of what might be customary to this particular person (i.e. Your socks -- those are personal customs).
However, should the cleaning not go as she wants it, she puts some money on an envelope, and dispatches the person firmly yet kindly, and always letting them know why this is happening, and never, ever humiliating them.
Why is this? Because she was one of them too.
Ever since I moved to Spain, I've been obliged to be my own maid. Service here is expensive and I am scrappin' by, you know how the life of the free-lance writer is. So, published novel and lunch with Mia Farrow (yes, I did, once) notwithstanding, every thursday morning I don my "cleaning" clothes and do my own cleaning. I dust all my portraits (I collect those, with pictures of friends and family), I polish the table on which I dine and write, I clean the terrace (I live on a tirteenth floor "attic"), I wash my windows, I dust my sofa, and I do my laundry. I am Mary Cockadoodie Richards. And I have learned to do it fast, effectively and as well done as possibly. I do it for myself, if nothing else (I like to entertain, though... but what I do is mostly small dinner parties).
So what I can say is this. Talk to Madame K. And let her know what you think, kindly but firmly.
Then, if it's not working... well. It's hard to do, you know this.
But when it must...
Spain reads you, Mo!
Miguel Cane at 9:15PM on Sep 26th 2007
65. Mo, as a Polish-American woman I am horrified. As a race, we are much more obsessive-compulsive than that (here I point to Martha Stewart as evidence). But even bad employees should have one chance to straighten up and fly right. You should make a checklist of items that need cleaning, and point out the need for cleanser. If that doesn't help, you should fire her.
ciocia at 9:40PM on Sep 26th 2007
66. Hmmm...my first thought is that I've wasted an awful lot of time reading about your non-problem.
Okay,now that I got that out of the way, I think you should incorporate Milan Kundera's "denial of shit" musings ((The Unbearable Lightness of Being) with Ghandi's "you're responsible for cleaning your own shit" philosophy and do the right thing: clean up your own shit!
While you're scrubbing the bathroom floor and folding socks, you can invite your cleaning lady over to watch "Decalogue." Be sure to put the TV out on the balcony so that she can smoke as she normally does when she's ostensibly cleaning your place.
You will soon become so enraged that your fear of conflict will vanish, along with your cleaning lady, the cigarette butts and the ruined socks.
J Bartos at 9:48PM on Sep 26th 2007
67. Mo,
If you would just move to Knoxville I would clean your apartment for free. I'm no professional but I am damn good at taking care of OTHER people's things. I have too many cats to keep my own place spotless - you know how messy they can be. Good luck, I think the note attached to the gift is an excellent idea, very encouraging!
Julia Wyrick-Egan at 10:47PM on Sep 26th 2007
68. Nothing worse than thinking about breaking up with your cleaning lady, getting more and more annoyed, noticing dust in places you've ignored for years, honing your passive-agressive talents by leaving your towel on the bathroom floor, returning home to find it folded neatly on the towel bar and sniffing it to determine if she laundered it, sniffing it again and again . . . and then she dumps you!!!
http://www.bloodmother.com
S. Ramos O'Briant at 10:55PM on Sep 26th 2007
69.
My cleaning lady at work is a sassy 40-something robustly-voluptuous Mexican beauty. I can tell she was very pretty as a young woman. She likes to talk while she's working and she smiles at me, too, in a flirtatious-kinda way.
One day, she mentioned something about her son's old computer she wanted to sell. I offered my services as a freelance computer consultant. I told her that for about $40 I would clean out her computer of old programs and files. I suggested she could then sell the computer for $80-$100 (she later did!) She invited me over to her government-controlled housing apartment, and I "scrubbed" the 1st Generation Sony VAIO computer. [NERD ALERT!]
After I finished the job, she offered me a large shot of tequila and we sat down on the sofa (which was more of a couch as I remember). We watched the ten o'clock news together and commented on the stories. It was very romantic and now we have this special bond. I think I could get her to clean just about anything if I wanted to...
Point is... form a friendship with her by offering her some kind of service and in exchange you will see improvements to her service. Open the doors of communication with her, create a bond (sexual if necessary), and then you can approach her easier about your personal cleaning preferences.
For instance, you could offer to clean the delicate-yet-commanding bust of Grover Cleveland and to take care of the plants yourself.
Ya know Mo, I'm sorry to say this but.. I don't agree with you using your cleaning lady as a personal "gardner" (indoor or outdoor). It's not her job!! You really should tend to your own garden. Besides, research has shown that caring for plants can result in improvements to one's mood.
And while I'm at it, you really should clean your blender immediately after use to avoid yucky banana bacteria build-up. Don't wait every two weeks for your cleaning lady to scrub your caked-on BANANA(!) gunk off the blender!!
Otherwise, SHOW HER you like her (;-) and then SHOW HER the way you like your socks (use the pictures?) and then SHOW HER what you want her to do on the floor or else SHOW HER THE DOOR!! She has other clients and will get other work. And then maybe you can try out a cute hard-working flirtatious bodacious Mexicana "chick-ita" maid like mine who wouldn't mind seeing you with or without a towel. !Aye Carumba!
FINN at 11:02PM on Sep 26th 2007
70. My dearest Mo,
I worked as a housekeeper at a nursing home during college. One gentleman used to put two pennies behind the toilet, I guess to see if I cleaned there (I did). I would then place the (clean!) pennies on the edge of his sink and casually mention that I “found” them and thought he might want them back. Eventually, he started leaving dimes (He thought I was cute).
I always wondered HOW he managed to sneak those pennies WAY in the back of the toilet-- as he was 102! Perhaps you can leave pennies on Grover.
BTW $100 for 2.5 hours? How expensive IS New York?????
Andrea at 11:56PM on Sep 26th 2007
71. Mo-
How can she fix the problems if you haven't specifically told her there was a problem. Doesn't she deserve a chance to improve? If you can't say these request to her face, make a list and give it to her for her to read. Tell her you appreciate her but would like her to do these things too. Good luck!
Kelly Serman at 12:04AM on Sep 27th 2007
72. My dearest Mo,
As for the hit country song--well--just off the top of my head...
A cigarette butt lies in my azalea
He didn’t care enough to light one for me.
but did he know that those last dying embers
like my heart crushed and broken would be.
(Sung to the tune of "It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk Angels")
OK-I'll work on it.
Andrea at 12:20AM on Sep 27th 2007
73. 1.) i have no idea how to deal with this. i have always done all my own cleaning. my momma raised me such that if i make a mess, i should clean it up myself.
2.) like a few before me: you've never used your oven??!!??
3.) another country song suggestion, to the tune of "momma, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys":
neighbors, don't fling your cig butts down onto my terrace.
my plant it needs water and sun shinin' on it,
give it some nitrates and phosphates and such.
neighbors, don't fling your cig butts down onto my terrace.
they poison my plant and they cause me to rant
because your litter is gross.
noonday at 12:51AM on Sep 27th 2007
74. Mo, you should be honest. Assertiveness is just being honest; it's not being pushy or confrontational--those are different things. The note idea is ok if you are not going to be home to talk to K, but if you are going out of your way to leave a note and run away before she gets there, that's lame. If you decide you can't go on living this way, you could say, "I need to be honest with you, Krakovia. There are a few things I'd like done differently. I feel like the bathroom floor needs to be mopped with a cleaning solution (etc.) I appreciate having you clean for me, but these things have been bothering me." Remember, you're being honest about your needs, not derogatory or confrontational. Please don't do the note-and-run; this is the grown-up, rational way to communicate, and it'll be good practice at being more assertive.
Katy at 1:55AM on Sep 27th 2007
75. My cleaning lady, Rosa, is really lovely and always smiling, and greets me warmly with "Hi Mess Seet!." Her friendly can-do attitude makes it hard to tell her that I'd rather she not reorganize all my clothing and stacks of papers into tall towers of randomness. This problem stressed me out for about six months until one day, I pointed to my papers and said, you don't have to bother moving these. And she didn't. It was beautiful. I think cleaning ladies with positive attitudes, like Rosa and Krakovia, really just want to do a good job so you'll be satisfied, so I think you should definitely talk to Krakovia.
Sarah Sitts at 2:12AM on Sep 27th 2007