When last we spoke, the housecleaner (the main one, the one I trust) had offered to reimburse us the $300, which I found did not fix the issue for me. I also did not get the feeling that she was fully understanding the situation; I thought she might still think the money was somehow accidentally lost, rather than stolen, and that she might be offering reimbursement in order to keep me as a customer, while not feeling any urgency about making sure the thief was removed from our lives.
I took the rest of the day to think through what I wanted to have happen, what was possible to have happen, and what the various likely outcomes were and how I would feel about each of those outcomes. I talked about it with Paul, and it turned into a family discussion, which was kind of satisfying (I really love having teenagers). Then I fired the housecleaners.
It was brutal and sad. But I came to the conclusion that no matter what arrangement she and I made, I would not believe that the thief didn’t still have access to my house. There are so many circumstances in which she WOULD have access:
• if the housecleaner misguesses who the thief is and fires the wrong person
• if the housecleaner loves/trusts the thief, and thinks they won’t do it again
• if the housecleaner doesn’t think a theft happened, and so doesn’t fire anyone
• if the housecleaner gets in a staffing pinch and really needs a replacement and thinks she’ll just keep a closer eye on her this time
• etc.
I realized that, no matter what, I would be continually monitoring my possessions for theft, and I don’t want to do that. I need to be able to keep my own normal possessions in my own house, and not have to move everything of value into a giant vault every time trusted professionals come to do work. When I was a babysitter, I had access to people’s jewelry and cash, and there was no “I wonder if I should take that?” (I did get into the cookies rather more aggressively than the average family might have anticipated.) When I did in-home eldercare, I had access to clients’ checkbooks, credit cards, passwords, narcotic medications, various antiques/valuables—and “Should I take advantage of this access to steal something?” could not be (and was not) something to even CONSIDER; forcing myself to consider it makes me feel queasy, and that is how it MUST BE. Our main housecleaner, I am certain of it, could see a heap of diamonds and cash on my bureau and she would not even be tempted to touch them; she would go out of her way NOT to touch them; the relationship is impossible if she isn’t violently emotionally opposed to touching/taking them.
But one of her employees is not only a thief, she’s the kind of thief who, after stealing the cash from a dropped wallet, throws the rest of the wallet in the trash, deliberately disposing of the things that are of no value to them (driver’s license, sentimental photo, the million little cards and other things that are a huge hassle to replace) but of huge value to the person who lost the wallet. A normal empathetic person who desperately needs money might take the cash out of a found wallet (feeling bad about it, but also feeling it is a necessity), but would leave everything else where it could be found—might even drop it into a mailbox to be sure it would be returned to the owner. There are LEVELS to theft, and what happened at our house is a level that strikes me as dangerously callous: she took a child’s money, and to cover it up she threw away a driver’s license and other important papers. And she did it knowing what a terrible perilous situation it would put the other cleaners in. I can’t take the risk of that person ever having access to this house again. It is bad enough that she could theoretically come back and break in, now that she has inside information about our house. I also worry that she stole other things we haven’t yet discovered, and that there will be more unpleasant realizations. I am trying not to think too much about either of those things at this point. We have saved the footage from our security cameras of the three people who came to clean that day, and of their car. We are sometimes a little casual about locking doors during the day, but we are not being casual right now.
When thinking through all the options, I kept trying to think too many steps/decisions ahead: “But will we be able to trust ANY housecleaners after this?,” and “If so, WHO??” (it was hard enough to find cleaners the first time), and “IF I HAVE TO CLEAN THIS HOUSE MYSELF I WILL END UP LEAVING MY FAMILY AND LIVING BY MYSELF IN A STUDIO APARTMENT.” But we only have to make one decision at a time, and then we can coast for awhile. The house was cleaned on Monday, which at least gives us a nice starting point. I cleaned the house during the pandemic, so I have the supplies and I remember how to use them. (If I do that cleaning again, however, I will pay myself at the rate we paid the housecleaners, which was 3-4 times what I make at the library, so that will be a nice little raise for me.) But for now: we only needed to make the decision about whether or not to fire the housecleaners, and we made that decision, and we fired them, and now we can coast a bit while we figure out what is next and see how we feel about things as the strong emotions die down a bit and we have time to process everything.
The housecleaner has reimbursed us for the loss of Edward’s money. We are going to reimburse William for the gift cards and cash that we’d assumed he’d misplaced, and maybe he DID misplace them and one day we will find them in a box of college stuff or whatever, but for now it seems reasonable to assume that those were stolen as well. (I did mention that incident to the housecleaner, in an imprecise “At the time we didn’t think anything of it, but now we wonder if it was connected” way—just so she will have the information if it becomes important for noticing a pattern.) When we thought he’d misplaced them, that seemed like a hard but valuable lesson in keeping track of one’s important possessions. But when a trusted worker, hired by his parents, steals them out of his own desk drawer in his own room in his own house, the lesson is not “Well, *shrug*, you shouldn’t have anything in your house you don’t expect to have stolen,” the lesson is “Some people do truly bad things, and it’s nice when you are in a position where something else (insurance, parents) can at least make up for the loss of possessions, if not for the loss of trust in humanity.”
Good decision. I think it’s the only decision you could have possibly made.
P.S. You make me think about things more thoroughly and I really appreciate that.
My take, too. Not that anyone needs my approval! Just that I started following this journey with hope and have ended on resignation.
This did not turn out the way I (most of us really) had hoped. BOO! It sucks.
Thanks for taking us on this journey. I think your raise for cleaning is EXCELLENT.
I am relieved to hear the conclusion to your story. I’m sorry this situation happened. I am also conflict-adverse and manage some things very closely in our life to afford a monthly housekeeper. I would be devastated if I was in your position. I absolutely think you did the right thing and I’m glad you got reimbursed.
That sucks, the whole situation, but I hope there’s relief that it’s resolved on your end at least.
I’m very sorry this has happened to your family, and I agree that you had no option other than to fire the cleaners. Would you be willing to share the language you used to fire them? I realize that’s an incredibly awkward thing to ask, but this kind of communication is paralyzing to me.
I also want to share that a similar thing happened to me when I was a kid: we went on a family vacation, I had saved up babysitting money and had a few hundred dollars in my suitcase. We came back to the hotel from an outing and I found my money gone, and all of the jumbled up clothes in my suitcase neatly folded. It was such a distressing and creepy feeling, and that was only my stuff in a hotel room. I have to imagine that your stuff IN YOUR HOUSE is a million times worse.
It was paralyzing to me, too, and I am still going over it in my mind and cringing, and I am nervous that someone will read it and think “…Oh, I would have imagined her handling it better than that, but that is really CRINGE.” There was also an issue of wanting to make the language relatively simple and easy to translate, and wanting to be clear while also leaving some things unsaid (i.e., no definite accusation about the other possible theft). I leaned very heavily on the comments sections on the posts, taking pieces of whatever felt right to me when I read it in the comment, and here’s what I ended up with; the first sentence is an answer to her question about how much was taken:
“This time was $300. I’m so sorry to say this is the second time something like this has happened. This summer a box of gift cards and cash disappeared. We could not figure out what happened. After yesterday, we don’t feel comfortable having people work in the house anymore. I am so sorry, because I know this was not you, and was not most of your team. I hope you will be able to figure out who the person is before she ruins what you have worked so hard to build. Thank you for all your hard work and I wish you the best.”
That was so perfectly said. You didn’t blame her personally while pointing out that she has a problem she needs to address.
What you said seems like a good balance of kind, respectful, and firm.
Perfect response, Swistle. Clear, concise, dismayed, respectful, and kind.
This is so diplomatic and kind and firm and final. A++ response to an F situation.
Really well put. There is no good way to do that kind of thing, but your way was the best I’ve ever heard.
I work in HR and sadly fire people as part of my job and this was perfectly said. You didn’t accused her, you were emphatic and explained why you couldn’t continue with her service in a short way, in this situations straight to the point is better.
I am glad you were direct about the fact that someone she is trusting is violating that trust. She doesn’t seem to have reached that herself (or maybe didn’t want to say it to the client), and I think she needs to know. I am afraid I would have skirted around that point, and it would have been a disservice.
This really really really stinks and I’m sorry. I was thinking about it this morning, rifling through the junk in my kitchen. One answer would be to hire though a service where they are bonded, I was thinking, but who wants to do that, knowing what we know about what people who work for The Man get paid? It’s truly an impossible situation and I hope there is some solace in the fact that you handled it in the absolute best and most fair way.
From the situation I was party to, a service that is bonded only protects you if they break something while cleaning and admit to it. My friend had a service that was ‘bonded and insured’, and two of her diamond rings went missing. The owner’s response was “you can’t prove it was one of our girls who took it”. So unfortunately that’s not foolproof either.
I’m so sorry you (and Edward and William) have experienced this violation and loss of trust, and had to lose a valued professional relationship/service because of it. I understand your reasoning for not having them come back. You have to feel safe and at ease in your home.
I totally agree with you being paid the same as you would pay the cleaners (especially because as I remember, you actually do a better job than they do, as you found when you took over in these times and then re-hired them.) So perhaps you should even be paid at a higher rate than you were paying them.
Again, I’m sorry. This whole situation is yucky, and you have done everything you can to un-yuck it and not make it yuckier. You’ve been trusting and considerate and thoughtful and honest and had uncomfortable conversations and made uncomfortable decisions. I think a special box of See’s chocolates or a Target care package may be in order.
Well, that all sucks very much. We have house-sitters come stay to take care of our pets whenever we travel, and it is SO TRICKY to find someone that we trust; I don’t know what I’d do if I thought one of the sitters had stolen from us or just rifled through our things. Ick.
Maybe now that the whole family is invested in the saga, perhaps one or more of the teenagers would be willing to clean for pay?
I had the same thought- since it was a group discussion on what to do, a group discussion on divvying out the tasks and the pay might be in order!
I’m so sorry about this incident. I think you did the right thing to fire the cleaner. My mind immediately jumped to House Keys. Will you have to change the locks on your doors?
THANK GOODNESS NO: we always just left a side door unlocked on their mornings to be here. I kept thinking it was silly not to just give them a key, but now I am VERY GLAD.
Should you ever not want to have to leave an unlocked door– we have smart locks on our house because my husband cannot be counted upon to lock doors and it used to Drive Me Crazy. Our house’s locks are all set to lock themselves after 15 minutes of being unlocked, plus I can assign individual keypad codes to any people coming in/out out of the house. Or shut down their codes. I can also set limits on when those codes work (e.g. only on Tuesdays from 10-4). And I can lock and unlock the door myself remotely using an app on my phone. I highly recommend it.
For what it’s worth, I think you did the only thing you could do under the circumstances. I wouldn’t write off having housekeepers ever again, but for me… it would probably be awhile. I say pay yourself the money you were paying them and possibly also pay yourself an annoyance bonus on days that you’re doing more annoying tasks.
Alice, can you share what product/app you use to do this? So cool! (My sister runs an Airbnb, and this would be perfect for that situation, too!)
They’re August Smart Locks with the keypads as an add-on. They aren’t cheap, but they do last. Plus they let me have consistently locked doors without a lot of reminding or quietly following along behind.
Thank you!!
I have a Schlage lock that does the same thing and can be accessed with an app. Our door locks automatically after 2 minutes. We got it when the kids became old enough to be home by themselves and sometimes had to leave the house when there was no one else home. We just didn’t trust them to not lose keys, nor to always remember to lock the doors.
I have the Nest x Yale lock, same deal.
I put it on the door that goes through the garage, because I wanted an easy way for contractors and kids to get in on occasion, but it’s so convenient I’m considering doing the front door too.
This is excellent resolution – firing them is really the only thing you could do in this terrible situation. I for one am very happy to hear you will be paying yourself if you end up cleaning the house.
Right now I have my kids clean our house in exchange for phone data. They don’t always do a great job, but if the options are me clean it, or them clean it and then me touch it up, I’ll take having them clean it as long as possible. Not sure what I’ll do once they’re out of the house (they’re in high school now). My husband doesn’t like having people come clean for us. Maybe he’ll get to take over housecleaning duties!
You absolutely made the right choice! How awful to feel so violated and then to worry on top of it about firing a (once) trusted employee. I’m sorry this happened to you.
This is a very appropriate, very understandable, very sad conclusion to the theft of Edward’s money. Thank you for keeping us posted.
I worked in retail right out of college, this was many many years ago and learned the hard truth about how many people are willing and do steal. I’m like you and have had plenty of opportunities to do this in life but the thought never crossed my mind. I once accidentally stole a bookmark from a store as a child (I thought my parent had purchased it) and still feel bad about it. However working retail I’ve witnessed people steal massive amounts of clothing – felony level offenses, cash from the register, even my own wallet was stolen out of my bag – this was most often other employees who I considered friends.
When i college I worked fast food (lots of fast food), I worked under an assistant manager who kept saying my drawer was short (and I knew better), and it only happened when he was there. He said we would split the cost to replace the money, I said no. Well, lo and behold that gave others the gumption they needed to report him and sure enough the only time money was missing was when he worked. Guess who got fired, one of the most satisfying moments of my young life!
I wish this had come out another way for you, but given all of the events I would have reached the same conclusion. In the beforetimes our housecleaners came during the day when no one was here and it was absolutely imperative that we could trust them. Something like this happening even one time would have had to be the end of the cleaning because I’d never feel comfortable with them again. I hope you get recommendations from some people you trust and find an excellent replacement as soon as you can.
I’m really sorry there was not a happier outcome, but you did exactly what needed to be done, and I hope you can rest easy knowing that (instead of, as I would, second-guessing it for the next two months).
I did laugh out loud at this: “I did get into the cookies rather more aggressively than the average family might have anticipated.” Me too! but I had been invited to help myself. I would never have thought to help myself to NON-FOOD items.
It was the chips for me! We never had junk food in the house, so when I was babysitting and they said “help yourself”-I headed right for the chips. I never would finish a bag, but sure would put a dent in it. I loved babysitting for people with good snack cabinets. Now that I look back, I was getting paid 50 cents per hour, so a bag of chips was the least they could throw in! This was in the early 70s, and I remember not just babysitting, but doing dishes, cleaning up. Talk about cheap labor!
Again I’m sorry for your dilemma and struggle here. I think you handled it very well. So unfortunate.
I totally related to the babysitting scenario you shared where there was always plenty of opportunity to snatch money or jewelry. Never considered an option by me, but when I was sitting their cookies and ice cream were NEVER safe. I tried to never finish a box of cookies though lest they think I had woofed them down.
I think you handled this perfectly. You gave the cleaner a chance to explain or fess up, you thought about your personal comfort level, and you stayed nice and civil the whole time.
The only thing you might do next is make sure the kids have bank accounts and debit cards! I had a wallet with $300 in it stolen at about Edward’s age, and my parents reimbursed half – because we had already talked about the bank being the safest place for money, and about only carrying as much cash as I would need in the near future.
Thanks for keeping us updated, and I feel like you handled this beautifully! I really appreciate your thought processes, too – especially the “we only have to make one decision at a time”.
I also really appreciated the “we only have to make one decision at a time”. I also have a tendency to think too far ahead- “If I do this, then this1 or this2 could happen. What would I do in those scenarios? Then any of this3, this4, this5, this6 could happen, based on this1 or this2, and how would I handle that? THEN…” and it was a good reminder that you don’t need (and can’t) figure for all eventualities- you really just need to make the decision in front of you and then you can go from there.
I am really impressed with how quickly you wrapped this up. When it comes to difficult decisions and then having to draft a difficult email on top of making a hard decision, I tend to either avoid the whole thing or overthink it so much that I get exhausted. Thanks for sharing this journey. I found it helpful for a variety of situations.
The situation is indeed appalling from beginning to end, but you handled it so well and I love seeing your thought process throughout. We have a housecleaner we adore who’s been with us since the kids were little and I would pop out for ten minutes and leave the kids here when they were younger. But it was just dumb luck we had friends who employed her and loved her – I don’t know how we’d go about finding someone otherwise, or if we would have hired anyone at all.
Thank you for the update and I’m so sorry this has happened to you all. I am impressed that you wrapped it up quickly—I will be taking the one decision at a time advice, since otherwise I could see myself dithering for weeks.
As a side note, I would be very interested to see Ask A Manager’s response to this situation, and her language used to fire a similar service. I hope the weekend is restful.
I do not quite have teenagers yet, but a tween, and glimpses of getting to discuss things with them is a bit of a delight.
I was also thinking that the cleaner didn’t respond in the way she should have done and that, therefore, there was no other choice but to fire her. The wording you used was perfect. (No surprise as you have a great writing style.) And I’m relieved that your son got his money back (well, the recent money). I haven’t had a cleaner steal from me (that I know of), but I did hire someone with a high recommendation and then later found out she’d lied to me about something I thought was pretty big. I confronted her about it, and she refused to acknowledge it despite me having proof in texts. I knew I’d never be able to trust her again and ended the relationship also. I always feel uncomfortable with people in my house and I grew up with a very paranoid father, so I always put valuables in a closet that I could lock when the cleaner came. That gave piece of mind. I understand I shouldn’t HAVE to do that. But I tend to have low expectations for people unfortunately. I hope you’re able to find someone you can trust. They are out there! I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you. This whole situation is just awful but you handled it beautifully.
Agree with everyone that you handled this perfectly. The whole situation stinks, but you did handle it perfectly.
Best part in this post is aggressively going after the cookies while babysitting. The high point of every babysitting job was perusing people’s pantries and cupboards (second best was when the family had cable TV, which my household did not, so I could watch MTV or HBO after the kids went to bed). I still remember some of my best snack finds (a tray of homemade seven-layer bars in the fridge; a massive canister of Oreos; limitless quantities of juice).
I once had a mom ask me to not got after her cookies so aggressively. Clearly she did not get it!
I’m just getting caught up on the whole story now and I’m so sorry you had to deal with this. I used to work in HR and unfortunately have had to fire people and will say that you did a great job. It’ is especially hard when there is a language barrier as we want to be able to communicate nuanced thoughts and it can feel unresolved, or even rude, when we have to use very simple language to communicate. I think you found a nice balance of keeping it simple while being kind and clear about the reasons you can no longer use her company. Well done.
As a side note, let me just say that I am heartened to hear you say that you love having teenagers. My kids are 7 and 3, so they are still firmly in the “cute, but kind of a hassle” phase of life. I look forward to being able to include them in important discussions in a meaningful way, rather than having to frame everything as a choice between two things they need to do anyway, ie, “do you want to go pee first, or brush your teeth?”
This whole story made me so sad – I feel like I have also lost some faith in humanity. We were robbed once more than 20 years ago, but the violation of someone taking your stuff from your own house is really hard to get over. I hope you are all doing well and know that you made the right decision.
Good decision! And so well executed! By the way, I love the idea of you paying yourself to clean. The house cleaners seemed to be a general source of stress even before this incident. And even if it seems like a privilege to get ones house cleaned, I would say give it a miss if it causes stress. Just not worth it. Keep the money for yourself and buy lots of cute items with it 😀
You did a great job with a terrible situation. I keep coming back to three things: 1. That this happened to the child in your family who has had to adjust to a chronic illness (and pandemic related worries) makes the theft an even sadder/more maddening crime. 2. If this would have happened at a business, the police would have had to become involved, and it sounds like you’ve kindly spared the owner from this. 3. If I remember correctly, you continued to pay for cleaning while on lockdown – which really warmed my heart. I’m so grateful you’ve continued to blog and share these types of moments. I always learn so much from your posts and the smart comments. Here’s to better days ahead.
That is the first place my mind went – The Thistles continued to pay these people during the dark times of the pandemic! What a terrible thing to happen to nice people like the Thistles. (I mean, it’s terrible in general, but feels particularly terrible in this case).
My sister once had her very large diamond engagement ring stolen from her ring dish in her bedroom. The main cleaner had brought a new helper. After they left, my sister noticed her engagement ring was gone, but her wedding band was there. The entire house was searched, no ring was found.
It was horrible and awkward for all parties involved. My sister had to file a police report so that she could collect the insurance money to replace her ring. Her husband asked the main cleaner to come over to the house for a meeting to explain to her what happened and to let her know a police report was filed. They also fired her. Everyone cried.