Housekeepers
By:KK

Copyright @2002

I don't spoil myself with massages, designer suits or expensive jewelry. But I will admit that I abhor cleaning and am willing to pay someone to my dirty work. I can also appreciate being a housekeeper, since I was employed as a nanny/housekeeper for over seven years. I don't abuse the ladies that work for me, but there were a few ladies that I would have had no problem dropping head first from the highest cliff that I could find. I used to advertise through the want-ads to find the perfect lady to work my vacuum and run a feather duster over my ninety-nine cent knick-knacks. It quickly became apparent to me that frightening creatures would start to appear at my door and I needed to up my budget and pay an agency to send me a cleaning angel.

My ad was simple and to the point. Or at least I was delusional to believe that the general public would understand it.

Wanted Part-time housekeeper to help busy Mom of
two children. Must love and not be allergic to animals.
Must have own transportation, non-smoker, speak fluent
English, references and green card (if necessary). Pay is
$xxx amount a week.

Of course I receive tons of phone calls from around the city. Las Vegas is not a tremendously large city, but we do live a little out of the way and expected some people to drop out of the running for this reason. We live near a major landmark, the airport. I was surprised that people weren't concerned about the drive. But they didn't know where the damn airport was!

"Sorry, I don't know where McCarran airport is. Could you please give me directions?"
Me: "Um, No."

People would call and ask if the job was part-time or full-time. I would politely ask them if they read the ad.

"Yes, I read it."
Me: "What does it say?"
"I don't see where it says part-time or full-time."
Me: "Give the paper to your dog. I'm certain he will clarify for you. Have a nice day."

I particular loved the people who would call and ask me if there was a bus depot near my house. Not only did they want to know where the drop-off was, they also expected me to know the bus schedule and would I mind picking them and dropping them off at the depot. I thought I had made it pretty clear that they needed their own transportation and that my vehicle would not be involved.

The english speaking part was the most entertaining. I don't speak any other language. So it's a fair assumption that if someone calls my house with, "Hola, hablo Espanol?" I quickly realized that if a push the off button on my phone, a dial tone has no language barriers.

The "animal lovers" that showed up were the most entertaining. When my five dogs rush you at the door for kisses and hugs and I have to peel you off the roof, it's a fair assumption that you are afraid of dogs.

Once in my house, some would see one of my cats and declare, "Oh, I'm deathly allergic to cats."
Me: "Well if that's the case, then you'll be dead by the end of the day. Because I have six cats."

I interviewed one lady who claimed she was a non-smoker. The give away were the puffs of smoke coming out of her ass as she walked through my house. I could not breathe the entire five minutes that she sat in my home (no exaggeration!). I had to spray my house with air freshener and leave my windows and doors open after she left. Not only could she have been the poster girl for Marlboro, she was obviously on some form of drugs that caused her to sway back and forth and her eyes were a pretty shade of strawberry. Buh, bye!!

An older lady showed up, unannounced and waltzed into my house with slippers and all. She wandered around my house, looked it up and down and commented that she wasn't sure if she wanted to accept this job or not. I made it clear that I did the hiring!  Little did I know that my bird was going to be the final decision maker in this interview. I have an African Grey (a parrot) that has a vocabulary of over 150 words.

The lady walks up to my bird, gets close to her face and says, "Oooh, what a pretty bird you are."

 My bird responds with, "Ooooh, SCARY!!" (no joke, you gotta love the bird!).

The lady looks at me and tells me that my bird is rude and has bad manners. There is no way that she could work in that environment!

I high fived the bird as the lady sauntered out of my home.

I loved the several women that would come to my home and announce what they would not do. Like wash windows, do laundry, dust, wash dishes, make beds...but by the way, how many smoking breaks were they allowed to have?

We finally hired a younger girl that was alert and ready to work. Two days into the job, my husband (who is an attorney), calls me from District Court and wants to know where the housekeeper is. I told him that she would be late because she had to pay a parking ticket. He notifies me that traffic tickets are not paid in District Court and that is where he just seen her. She had not spotted him, but he told me that he would call me back as soon as he found out what she was there for. Five minutes later he calls to let me know that she is now out of a job and I was to fire her the minute she shows up. Why? She was in District Court on a theft charge. Lucky me. I'm now picking criminals to change my sheets!!

The next lady was a real winner. She wasn't all that bright when I hired her, but she fell under all of the other categories that I requested. What could I possibly lose? I realized that I was about to lose the last of my sanity. We have a decent sized home, 2700 sq. feet., but it's not a mansion by any means and it never occurred to me that someone would need a map to find their way around. Obviously she did. She worked for about a week and a half. EVERY single day she would ask me where the washing machine was! I finally got to the point that I told her that if she could locate the washing machine, that I would give her cookie and if she could figure out how to open the lid, she would find her head in the rinse cycle. She refused to be fired. She called our house and my husband's office non-stop, crying, hyperventilating and begging for her job. FOR DAYS!! My husband paid her off and threatened a restraining order if she didn't leave the planet.

My all time favorite was a very nice, older lady who was eager to work. She had experience with her husband. They used to own their own cleaning business and I thought, FINALLY! We checked her background, references and all her ID's, everything checked out. One week after she started, she was late and I had a million errands to run. I was getting antsy and could not reach her. It turns out I didn't need to reach her. My girlfriend Janis, who lived across town, found my housekeeper at 11:00 in the morning at her grocery store. Janis calls me.

J.: "Um, K. I have your housekeeper here and I think we have a problem."
(In the background I could hear my housekeeper wailing and sobbing
uncontrollably)

Me: "Oh, God. What is going on?"

J.: "Well, your housekeeper recognized me, she's crying and she's drunk. I
mean loaded! What do you want me to do?" (J could not stop laughing!)

Me: "SHIT! I don't have time for this. Bring her over."

 (At this point I'm thinking that my girlfriend is exaggerating about the housekeeper's level of
inebriation. Who the hell would be that drunk by 11:00 in the morning?)

Janis brings her over and I was stunned. The woman could not walk, make-up was all over her face and she was completely incoherent. My day was officially over. Our biggest mistake was bringing her over to my house. We should have left her wandering around the grocery store. Janis confiscated a grocery bag of miniature bottles of wine from her. Somehow the woman had stashed a few in her purse, in the garbage can in my kids bathroom and kept trying to hide the empty bottles. We kept trying to calm her down and decipher what she was babbling about. We finally got her to sit in my leather chair and covered her with a blanket. She calmed down enough to tell us that she was an alcoholic, her and her husband were recovering drug addicts and her husband continually beat and raped her. She was clueless as what to do. Four hours into this mess, my neighbor, an ex-cop comes over. I thought that at least he had experience with dead beats like this and he would offer some phenomenal advice as to how we should handle this and get her the hell out of my house. He did. We convinced her that if she didn't leave my house, that her husband would come looking for her there and then she would really be in trouble. I wasn't up for watching a woman get the shit kicked out of her.

We poured her drunk ass into the car and drove her to the nearest police station. We thought that we had convinced her to file a report against her husband, but when we arrived, she flew down the hall and threw up all over the place. We thanked the officers and snuck out the back door. After all of that drama, she called me the next day to tell me that she wouldn't able to make it to work, because her husband took the keys and locked her in the house. She and the prior psycho housekeeper must have been related, because she could not comprehend why she no longer had a job with us.

The drunk now decides that we owe her money for two days that she worked. I didn't have a problem with that until I found, buried in my brand new leather chair, my bottle of Kahlua, spilled all over the cushions and down into the fabric of the chair. The alcoholic was sneaking alcohol from my bar into the coffee that we were force feeding her! The best part of this story is when I confronted her about the spilled liquor and she claimed, "it wasn't me. I don't even drink!" She finally gave up when I presented her with a cleaning bill for the chair and we called it even.

I now have a wonderful girl from Romania. She is the perfect housekeeper and the bird even likes her! What more could I ask for??