This One Takes The Cake

In my ongoing search for the perfect Clean Team, I hired a housecleaning service that, at first glance, seemed to be a family owned business. Turns out it's really another franchise, not that the franchise part turned me off . . . at first.

I wanted help with cleaning just the bathrooms and mopping the floors, and I wanted it the very next day. The owner told me she would call some of her 'gals' and give me a call back. She did have someone in my neck of the woods who could do the job the next day. I was floored!

An unkempt woman, probably in her 50's, arrived at our agreed upon time. She looked like trailer-trash, but I wasn't going to judge a book by its cover.

We immediately started talking about her 'special' cleaning products that were safe for animals, and I started to have a good feeling about this one. She started bragging a bit, and told me about a 15,000 square foot home that she completes in a matter of hours. I asked how that was possible, and she simply said that she had special ways of 'keeping it up' on a weekly basis. OK. I had two small bathrooms and a kitchen floor and hallway to be cleaned. This should take her less than an hour!

She started in the master bath, and almost immediately I heard lots of banging and slamming, and eventual groans like she was performing some kind of agonizing feat.

Oh yes, something I forgot to mention earlier. During my phone call with the owner, she had asked if I needed a 'deep cleaning', a 'regular cleaning', etc. I opted for 'regular cleaning', although the bathroom was pretty dirty. Because of that, the day before the scheduled appointment, I scrubbed the shower, sinks, and bathtub to make them, what most would consider, presentable. My expectation would be that the cleaners would make them sparkle.

After 20 minutes of her groaning, I decided to investigate. "Everything OK in there?", I asked. When I entered the bathroom, the shower door and unhinged and she was stuck in there. I apologized, grabbed the door and leaned it against the tub. We laughed a bit, and she went out to tackle the other bathroom.

"Oh I can dry the door and make it sparkle, if you'd like!", she exclaimed. "Oh no, that's OK", I replied.

As I inspected the work that had induced moaning and groaning, my jaw dropped open with disbelief. I could see nothing more than the cleaning job that I had performed the previous day. NOTHING, NADA, not even the smell of her fancy cleaning products. The soap scum remained on the unhinged door, the bath was exactly as I had left it, the sinks and mirrors . . . the same.

Did this low-class, white-trash, trailer-trash woman think she could actually con me into thinking she was working with her moans and groans?

Par for the course, she tried to milk me for several hours of work. I finally intervened and told her I had to leave in a half hour. She still had the mopping and the kitchen to do. "No problem!", she replied, even though she had already spent over 3 hours doing one bathroom (moaning in a bathroom, I should say).

She told me that she actually owned her own cleaning business, and just filled in when the other woman couldn't complete jobs. Of course, this meant the other owner would receive half of my payment. After explaining this fact, this woman jotted down her own number, and asked me to call her directly next time. That way she could keep all of the money for herself.

Yep. This one took the cake. My faith in the human race has come to an all time low.