More cleaning lady excitement

So . . . FINALLY heard from my cleaning service. The “boss lady” left her typical voicemail, to let me know that it’s time for my cleaning service. My cleaning day usually falls on a Friday, but she wanted to know if the ladies could come this Thursday instead.

Only after she ran through the schedule did she acknowledge my message of nearly a month ago that complained about my back door being left open. She apologized that it’s taken so long to call me back. She went on to say that she did ask the ladies whether or not they had left my door unlocked, and they assured her that the house was secured.

Now . . . before I heard that message, I actually entertained the thought of letting them come and clean one last time. I planned to be present during the cleaning, and instruct them to leave the key when they were finished. However, her message completely pissed me off, and I made the snap decision that this service needed to cease immediately. So, I left a return message stating that I was putting the service on hold indefinitely. Yes, I could have simply said “you’re fired,” but thought that would have been unnecessarily rude to leave with an answering service.

She left a reply message, sounding disappointed, wanting to make sure that I was happy with the cleaning service.

I was so tempted to call back, and leave a scathing message that explained that while I was mostly happy with the cleaning service, I could have done without a few of the byproducts — a bit of negligence, a cracked mirror, and a few items that are oddly missing. I could have also done without the groundless protection of the cleaning ladies on her part. I mean, seriously . . . would I have been LYING about my back door being left open? I think not.

But, I didn’t say any of those things in the message. I thought it best to leave a message, simply asking that my key be returned. Let’s let her guess why I cancelled — although if she had a brain in her head, she could figure it out.

So . . . this is a pyrrhic victory for me. Maybe I showed her that I don’t take shit from service providers, and the victory for me is that I stopped my services. How I’ve cut off my nose to spite my face is that I now have to seriously look for another service. And I say “seriously” because it’s now been 30+ days since my house had professional cleaning, and trust me when I tell you that it could use some attention. Ugh!

Cleaning crew redemption

FYI, the cleaning crew redeemed themselves. They did a beautiful job with the stainless, the floors were spotless and I haven’t detected any broken items . . . yet. I think they knew their asses were on the line. I guess I’ll tip them the next time.

Now before you go thinking I’m an ogre (which would be easy to do if you read this blog regularly), I tip the cleaning people sporadically, but when I tip, I tip well. I was certainly not going to reward them for doing a bad job with the floors and doing damage to my home.

Looks like I’ll be hiring them again.

And FYI, I always tip 20% in restaurants (unless the service sucks, in which case I tip 15%). I certainly don’t want to contribute to the theory that black people don’t give good tips. There are enough of us that feed that stereotype, and I’m determined to be the exception.