How Clean is Your House?
This week I lost the third cleaner that had been sent to me. She was the third and the best. I am sad to lose her. She would come into my house and tell me tales of her life that was like watching an Aberdeen based episode of Eastenders (I work from home most days- I want to point this out in case you think she was telling me these tales whilst mopping round me as I sat on satin pillows and casually devoured a box of chocolates, wearing a negligee and fluffy slippers whilst slipping the odd soft centre to my faithful attendant Shih-tzu pooch, Mr Beaujangles).
My cleaner would say thrilling things like “Right Misssy, next week I’m going to have a right go at those blinds” (who knew blinds needed cleaning?) or “I’ve used up that bottle of Flash you bought last week, can you get some more?” (A bottle of Flash that doesn’t last a whole year?? Either she’s drinking the stuff or she’s a bloody great cleaner!) She leaves me not because I beat her, or my filth was too much to bear, but because she has family issues that need her attention. I am sad about this. Very sad.
Still, I am not going to replace her, for the ordeal is really not worth it. I am afraid I will get someone like the second cleaner. The second cleaner was the only one of the three who didn’t leave of her own volition. It was summer and my first cleaner left due to family issues (yes, I know, there’s a pattern, but I did not beat them, I didn’t!) . Within a week the agency assigns me someone new. On the phone to her I check what the agency should have, “I have a dog. Do you like dogs?” She emphatically does not. Oh dear. She wants to start anyway, so we arrange to meet the next day at The House of the Flying Martinis.
She is from Nigeria. On that first meeting she brings her two year old daughter along who sits on the couch watching telly as I take her mother through the house to point to the potential areas of filth I will want her to deal with. My guilt-o-meter needle is in the red portion of the gauge at this point.
My guilt is short lived. For she is a completely shit cleaner. Who hates my dog. And wants to talk to me about the love of Jesus at any opportunity. For weeks I dread her arrival as she comes in the door and stands stock still hyperventilating and whimpering unable to walk past the dog who sits in his bed looking at her with spaniel like bemusement. Normally he’s the kind of dog that jumps up excitedly at people as they arrive, but he is acutely aware of the terror he evokes in this woman and just looks at her, trying to appear benign.
I phone her. She has indeed been round. She just didn’t clean the kitchen because “the dog was in there”. Here’s a pic of my dog, Sonny the Black Menace, in case you have him pegged as that dog from The Omen or Stephen King’s Cujo.
The next day I phone the agency to let them know, “Oh, I wondered if that would happen,” says the agency bod, “You are the last one of all her clients to fire her.”
Back to the mop and brush I go….with a clean conscience if nothing else.
By the way, you can vote for The Misssives on the Scottish Roundup Awards. It’s easy- you don’t have to faff about with registering or owt. Just click here and vote against The Misssy M Misssives. Thanks! (other great blogs are also listed but try to power on through til you come to mine, there’s a good chap)
