Stupid Housekeeper Tricks as told by Marie Antoinette *

I consider myself lucky, beyond reasonable expectations to have the problems I complain about but I will confess with guilt and shame that my housekeeper, Linda has some pretty annoying rules. Now, I love Linda dearly and she truly lights up my world when she arrives every other Friday but there are certain traditions which have developed at my house which can no longer remain shrouded in silence. It turns out that even the best housekeepers are nosey, do not work make up hours, avoid extra work, eschew certain categories of work altogether, and make you feel guilty in ways you never fathomed. Before I complain at length, I freely admit that if I had to go to someone's messy house and perform manual labor for them in exchange for $15.00 per hour, I might engage in some pretty peculiar behavior.  Still, in defense of my position, and at the risk of being politically incorrect, no one made my housekeeper take her job with me.  Apparently, I pay her more than she could make anywhere else.  I treat her with respect.  I let her listen to Mariachi music in every room in my house.  She cannot or will not speak English. I, on the other hand, review my Spanish verbs to make my conversation more lively while hiding in a small room most of the time she’s here so she will not have to contend with my imperial presence.  Thus she is left in charge of cleaning my house and I am too embarrassed about my spoiled status to complain about her failings as a housekeeper. Therefore, I complain to you. Let me give you a sense of the unwritten rules that my housekeeper has established for my household. I have learned never to expect additional service in a room which has already been cleaned.  This means that if I want my coffee cup cleaned this week, I must get up very early so that it is waiting in room number one, the kitchen.  Furthermore, even if my Linda is still in room number one, it will do me no good whatsoever to put the coffee cup in or near the sink if said sink has already been cleaned.  Too late.  I could try leaving the cup I used at 10:00 a.m. in a room Linda won't get to til 11:00 but this seems very sneaky. Anyway, she would surely know exactly when the beverage was prepared and consumed, rule it late, and I would just have to retrieve and wash it later. I have also learned never to expect Linda to finish a load of laundry I started.  It is the starter's responsibility to finish. I have tried leaving the clean, dry laundry, half hanging out of the open dryer begging to be put away. I was rebuffed.  The laundry would somehow come to rest back in the shut dryer.  Well, ok, I thought - maybe if I take it out of the dryer and sort it but don't put it away I will solve the dilemma.  No, it still has the stigma of laundry started by another. Although Linda doesn’t iron, she clearly loves to dust. I finally had to perform a cost benefit analysis and remove cute, small objects from my shelves to avoid spending upwards of thirty dollars per week to have them dusted.  My housekeeper must have loved my collection of miniature tea sets (collectively having a retail value under $20.00) very much because she painstakingly dusted them every week. I never learned to say I like those better with the dust on them and finally resigned myself to putting them out of sight. Spiders and flies fall into a categorical exception to Linda’s love for dusting. I call this exception the spider and fly rule.  Although Linda dutifully dusted, polished and arranged my kitschy collection of pottery, every time I walked up the steps I noticed my spider web collection - well actually just one amalgamation of spider web which I, in my passive aggressive way, would leave just to see whether Linda could ever bring herself to dust anything that wasn't cute.  Apparently not. After what may have been two or three years, I finally decided to remove the web myself.  She waited me out.  Confirming Linda’s rules, I discovered while in my rarely used living room, a dead fly on the living room floor she presumably vacuumed every week.  It is rare for me to enter the living (not so named by my flies) room but my curiosity persisted and I was able to establish that Linda deliberately vacuums around flies.  I cannot predict how long the fly will remain in its mausoleum, but I think it will be a very long time. I’m guessing Linda has relegated all matters insect to me. I have had housekeepers who break things and are too ethical to dispose of the evidence but compromise by putting them away in their newly transformed state. Linda would never do that; if she breaks something, she will mend it for me and thus I learned that a vase can be scotch taped together again. We’re not talking transparent tape. Conversely, no matter how much I long to get a new fully featured coffee maker, Linda will keep restoring it to a pristine condition unsuitable for replacement. My housekeeper takes perverse pleasure in hiding things from me.  I am just astonished at the lengths will go to in order to take the papers I was working on and pack them up in a shopping bag in my pantry only to be discovered again during  - the hunt.  I have gotten awfully good at the hunt.  If I am foolhardy enough to forget to put something away, I now know where to start looking.  Please don't tell me to ask my housekeeper where something is or her hunt will consume more money than the actual retail value of my pie shaped Tupperware. Another cost benefit analysis occured to me when I asked Linda to help me cook something. I had a $2.00 package of boneless chicken thighs in the refrigerator.  and was about to put them in a pan.  Linda said I shouldn't cook them so early.  I suggested she put them in the pan for me.  Later, I learned that Linda had painstakingly removed, every speck of fat on those chicken thighs and for only $10.00arranged them in the pan devoid of any unacceptable chicken like matter.  I couldn't bear to cook, let alone eat, the worked over chicken thighs even at 12.00 a pound.   However, I did keep them in the refrigerator until Linda returned so that it could be she who cleaned the pan.  Boss's rule - never wash pots and pans dirtied by my housekeeper. I no longer put anything in my garbage which I am not thoroughly comfortable having evaluated.  Linda is very nosy. Then, to make matters worse, rather than just taking my disposed of, torn underwear home with her, she brings it to me and asks if she may have it for her charitable cause.  What about a little charity for me.  I simply refuse to feel bad about throwing out holey underwear.  So now, I get up before she gets here and throw it (and other objects Goodwill would clearly decline) away in the big can outside.  I think it's safe and I won't be rebuked for my complete disregard for impoverished people without any underwear. Still not convinced that housekeepers are nosy? Once, in the interests of maintaining enough cash flow to continue to employ my housekeeper, I rented out my mother-in-law unit to a local art college student.  To my utter shock, my housekeeper came and found me somewhere in the house and gestured to me that I should stealthfully creep up to the wall outside the mother-in-law unit and listen.  I listened and was baffled.  What exactly am I listening to?  Water.  Yes, the shower was in use.  Ok, still baffled my housekeeper explained that she has been listening against the wall because she heardt my tenant and someone else were in the shower whispering honey to each other.  My housekeeper was appalled to think of the extra water I would have to pay for.  She made it a point to spy on this poor girl for the remainder of her stint at my house.  I was informed of any infraction of my housekeeper's rules at the earliest opportunity.  I arose from passiveness for a few brief moments to defend the girl and then slipped back into silence. Redecorating is not something which was in the job description I composed when looking for my housekeeper.  However, no matter how many times Linda sees my guest bed made up with the bedspread pattern facing up, she insists on reversing it so the non-patterned side shows.  I guess she just doesn't like my color scheme. Thinking myself well armed with a solution, I salvaged the original wrapping on the bedspread and displayed the picture of the perfectly made up bed. See, this is the way that the bedspread is supposed to be. It is not just my foolish notion. There are authorities out there who agree with me. I asked a male friend who works out of his house if he had anything to add on the subject of housekeeper detente.  I was wondering if a male point of view would be different and in particular if testosterone empowered him to speak up for himself in his housekeeper relationship.  It seems that he too is saddled with guilt induced silence.  He tells me he has "cord issues" with his housekeeper.  At first I expect to be presented with an explanation of his unresolved need to be taken care of by a mother figure from whom he could not completely separate.  Instead, I find that his housekeeper unplugs many, if not most of the plugs in his house, presumably to facilitate her vacuuming, and , perhaps in order to leave evidence that she vacuumed, she leaves the cords unplugged.  How can he protest when he remembers that this woman drives an hour each way to take care of his family's home.  He replugs.  I wonder how the cord and fly issue would be resolved if ever they were combined.  * Having recently been instructed on what Marie Antoinette really meant when she said “let them eat cake,” I don’t wish to imply that my attitudes on these subjects exactly parallel Marie’s. It seems that 18th century usage of the word “cake” referred to the portion of the remnants of baked bread which had to be thrown away, but surely would suffice for hungry peasants.)