Modern dilemmas: household management
My cleaner has just handed me a tub of tomato soup, prepared last night for Babster. What am I to make of this? Is she implying the Babster is malnourished? Is she commenting on my admitted lack of expertise in the kitchen? Or is she, as one mother to another, showing me kindness?
It is the latest gift from her. All have, with the exception of a fluffy bear, been of food: from croissants to chocolates to salty Polish snacks. Each time I have said: ‘You really should not do this’ I shake my head and attempt to hand them back. Each time she has refused, smiling sweetly making me feel a heel for refusing her gift. I have even told her unequivocally not to bring presents. But the gifts keep coming.
What should I do? Neither of us speak the same language, so complex communication is difficult. I do not wish to offend her with apparent ingratitude, but these gifts make me feel uncomfortable: it’s bad enough I don’t clean my house thoroughly every week, she thinks I can’t even feed my child. It highlights a dilemma many women I know face: how to manage someone doing a job we were brought up to believe was our responsibility?
Cleaners have more power than the old hard Left think. Often women, they enable other women, burdened by their own work, childcare and household management. It is a huge relief to feel stressed about one less thing. For those working as cleaners, at least those I know working locally, the job enables them to earn well above the minimum wage in jobs with a degree of flexibility.
Despite that virtuous circle, I know few women who feel comfortable with this relationship. It’s awkward. Not just because of the old feminist view that regards having a cleaner as subjugation of poor women by rich ones (as with all these things, it is WAY more complex than that). No, it’s because deep inside there remains a sense that this is something we should be doing ourselves. Or ‘would ‘ be doing if we were ‘proper women’ and not failed jugglers. Well, thanks a lot Shirley Conran, I’d love to see you wield a J Cloth.
I know I am not the only woman who has spent a fortune on a new vacuum cleaner or iron because the one you had – which seemed fine before – was deemed ‘not good enough’ by the cleaner. We appease those who work for us because the removal of this one burden from our aching shoulders makes a huge difference and, once one finds a cleaner who does a great job, one lives in fear of losing her – or him.
We want them to work for us, yet, and here is the fatal flaw, we want them to like us because we carry the double burden of thinking it important be be regarded as ‘nice’. (Ask any man, it is not, but still it’s hard to shift the nagging doubt).
I wonder too if, for those of us who have risen upstairs rather than descended below, the embarrassment felt at ‘managing staff’ is cultural. We have no template for managing people around the home, so either come down too soft or too hard. We lack the sense of entitlement inbred into the upper classes that makes them so much less awkward in these situations. or at least guilt free.
We need to manage these relationships professionally. If we do not problems arise and resentments breed beneath the surface on both sides. My cleaner is not my friend. I am pretty sure she feels the same and doubt she’d ask me to join her mates over a bottle of wine – she’s seen the state of my house, after all. I like her enormously and appreciate her work, but, as in all employment, that is not the primary purpose of our relationship.
Right now that matters little: I am stuck with a tub of soup wondering how to stop the gifts that keep on giving. If I accept them I encourage a familiarity that makes it harder to manage problems should they arise, and, if I refuse them, I risk offending a woman about an act of generosity. Either way I am damned. What would you do?
© Danuta Kean 2012
9 Responses to “Modern dilemmas: household management”
The way I see it, is that it might be a ‘cultural’ problem specific to your cleaner. If she was English you would feel more confident about refusing her gifts, but your awareness of different cultural norms is making you scared to offend.
I gave up having a cleaner because she spread the most heinous gossip about everyone I knew, until I was convinced that even I was having an affair with someone (possibly the Rector)
Take the soup, I’d say, but give her back something equally unwanted, unset marmalade would be good, I have some awful chutney in the cupboard if that’s any help. That way you stay in control.
How much English does she understand? Complex communication may be limited, but try making it as uncomplicated as you can. If she’s agency staff, perhaps someone there can help with communication – in a nice, casual way with the understanding that it’s not a ‘problem’, just a confusion.
It may be a cultural thing, a social politeness that has nothing to do with the power dynamic of staff/employer, but just a ‘I have too much of this, you don’t have any’ thing that’s perfectly natural in other cultures but has no context in the UK. She may be worried that you rejecting her offers is an indication that you’re unhappy with her work or something!
One thing it’s almost certainly not is some sort of comment on your parenting – I think your Freudian slip is showing! Zer projection of zer irrational and unnezzezzary guilt onto zer behaviours and interactions of anuzzer…
Finally, if still confused, just say ‘thank you’ and take it in the most unfussy way you can, the same way laydeez are supposed to receive compliments.
Any other problems, just drop a letter to Granny Oddly’s Problem Page. *whistle*
If you’ve asked her to stop bringing gifts and she still brings, just accept them without fuss, but every time, say firmly but smilingly, ‘Thank you, but you know I’ve asked you not to bring presents.’ That way you re-emphasise the point while not being ungracious. On the more general point, no woman who employs a cleaner should feel guilty. There’s no morality, good or bad, involved – she wants to work as a cleaner (given her range of available choices) and you want to employ a cleaner (given yours). There’s nothing wrong with it. The idea that we ‘should’ clean our own houses is total bollocks. I have never cleaned a house, a loo or a bath – never. Before I could afford a cleaner, I lived with the dust and the dirt! I choose to spend my time in other ways than cleaning. I’ve always employed cleaners, and have had good friendly (but not close friends) relationships with two out of three of them. The third was a snide bitch that I was about to sack when she left me voluntarily. Her snide butchery involved making constant snippy comments that implied I sat around on my arse all day while she did proper work. One final thought: I’ve heard a lot of people express distaste about people who complain about their cleaner’s inadequacies. My brother-in-law won’t let my sister say in public that their cleaner is crap, because he wants everyone to think she’s a nice, guilty middle class person rather than a horrid entitled one. I think there’s nothing wrong with complaining about a rubbish cleaner as you would about a rubbish novel, hotel or restaurant. Does anyone these days actually disapprove of the householder-cleaner contract, even Arthur Scargill and other v left wing people?
This is an interesting dilemma – perhaps a read of Antigona and me is required! Does she work directly for your family or is she part of an agency? If she works for an agency it’s important to remember that you are not her boss, you’re her client, which is an entirely different dynamic. Maybe she feels more appreciated by you than her other clients? She can’t be cooking for all of them surely? I say accept the gifts with a smile – you pay her and appreciate her, you have no reason to feel guilty about your relationship. Could this possibly be a clash of cultures? I ask because a good chunk of my family are from the North West – in my experience people from ‘oop there’ are famously independent and hate unsolicited gifting! To be fair that could just be my Auntie Margot
I have just started reading this blog and am very much enjoying it!
I’m from the North West too, so maybe you’ve hit on something.
I think Oddly Active is right when they say this sounds like a cultural thing that has nothing to do with the employer/employee power dynamic. In much of Eastern Europe the giving of food is something people do, like the offering of a cup of tea. It’s not, or at least very often not, a loaded gesture and I very much doubt it’s meant as a dig at your parenting skills. Not to generalise but there are often more entrenched rules about hospitality, of which food – both the offering and eating of – is central.
On reading your first paragraph that old saying men have ‘women are hardest on eachother’ comes to mind. A woman offers you a gift and you come up with 3 possibilities. The first 2 are negative comments regarding your abilities as a cook and mother. Number 3 considers it may just have been an act of kindness. My advice; jump to number 3 everytime. Life is hard enough (let her love your child a little, perhaps she has left someone cherished behind.)
‘It takes a village to raise a child.’
So they say. I really didn’t appreciate that when i was a new mother, wondering why it was so hard, and why I was so exhausted. But my family live elsewhere by about 300 miles, so there is no one else to pop in and do an hour of childcare while I do laundry unhindered, or bring us a homecooked pie when it looks like we’ve had a tough week. I suspect your cleaner is just assuming a part in your village, but the waters are muddied by the exchange of money, your own sense of independence, and the hard to shake idea that you should be able to manage it all alone.
Incidentally, my mum did cleaning when I was growing up and I helped her do it. It was a lifeline after her divorce. And now I have my own cleaners. They’re a part of my son’s life, and a part of mine, but I’m also a part of theirs, and part of their independence. We’re all muddled up together.
Take the soup. If you want to offer something in return, practice English with her perhaps, in small ways. If problems happen then it *might* be harder, but that will be a small price to pay for having it a bit easier most of the time.
You sound a wee bit upstairs downstairs on this, you the woman of the house receiving gifts from the lowly char. You may have to get used to the fact that while she may be the cleaner she sees you as just another woman and her equal. Bringing gifts to children is a normal thing. I’m Scottish and would never dream of visiting the home of someone who I knew had small children without bringing a small gift like sweetie. It would be rude not to and I wouldn’t understand if it was rejected. Your cleaner’s just doing what comes natural to her by her own upbringing. It’s called being kind.
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