Obnoxious customers, and house cleaning, oh, one of my favorite topics.
All right, hi there, I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is the show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, today's show is brought to us by HouseCleaning360.com,
which is a 360 view of the perfect home.
It's a network where you can log on and you can list your business, so that the homeowners
that hire house cleaners, or professional organizers, or carpet cleaners, or window
washers, they can find you and your business.
So it connects homeowners with the people that service the home.
HouseCleaning360.com.
All right, onto today's show, which is from a house cleaner who wants to talk about obnoxious
customers.
Here's what she has to say.
Speaker 2: I had a question, how do you deal with obnoxious clients that insist on using
appliances, or using some in the room that you're currently cleaning?
I have gone to two houses to clean at where I was cleaning in the bathroom and the client
came and did number two in the bathroom, and then left out, and expected me to go ahead
and continue cleaning.
Or all of a sudden there's sudden that they had just got to find in the room that I'm
cleaning, and they're opening drawers, just rambling through, and just leaving a mess.
Angela Brown: All righty, so the key word there was obnoxious customers.
And I want to suggest to you these are not obnoxious customers, these are called, wait
for it, people.
I know, right?
They're homeowners, they live in these houses.
Sometimes they have to go through their draws, and sometimes they have to do number two.
So, that's just what homeowners do.
In fact, it's what house cleaners do too.
So, we're all people, we all have similar habits, and when you show up for work in a
perfect world, you would should up and the customer would be gone, and they would give
you your space to that you can do your systematic approach to cleaning their house.
But the reality is that there is no job on the planet, not house cleaning, not carpet
cleaning, there's no job on the planet that's a perfect case scenario.
And as a house cleaner, when you show up to a customer's house what you're saying is I'm
showing up to make your environment better.
You're not showing up because you expect a perfect environment when you arrive, right?
So as a house cleaner, we get to expect, this is part of our job, it's part of our expectations.
When we show up to a customer's house, stuff will be strewn about.
There will be dirt.
There will be stains, there will be spots, there will be mold, there will be grime.
Oh my goodness, it's crazy!
It's crazy, but guess what, that's what employs us.
So if a customer has a messy house, that's what keeps us employed.
And so it would be ludicrous to think that you're going to show up and the customers
are obnoxious because they are just living their lives.
Does that makes sense?
Now, as a reality, if a customer comes in the bathroom that you're cleaning and they
decide that's a good time for them to poop, it's probably not like they were waiting and
holding off ... "I think I'm going to wait until the house cleaner gets in there and
then I'm going to go stink up the bathroom."
That's not what happens.
Someone holds it as long as they can and they're like "I just can't hold it any longer," and
for whatever reason that's the bathroom they're most comfortable in.
Maybe it stinks up less of the house, I don't know.
And so then they go in and they do their business,
they do what they've got to do,
and then they get out.
Yes, your job is still that you have to clean the bathroom and you have to do all that stuff,
in spite of the fact that someone went in the bathroom and they pooped
while you were there.
So I mean I hate it for you, but the reality is this is not an obnoxious customer.
If you want to see an obnoxious customer, oh boy do I have some stories for you.
So, the reality is this is a normal person that for whatever reason got in your way while
you were cleaning.
Yeah, it's unfortunate.
Yeah, too bad.
And I want you to ask yourself this question, if this is the worst thing that happens, are
we still doing okay?
Because there are worse, worse, worse things that can happen while you're cleaning a house.
And so if the worst thing is somebody comes in and they rummage through some drawers,
or they poop while you're there, golly, let's be grateful that they pooped inside the bathroom
where it belongs.
It could have been on the living room floor.
But it's not, it's in the bathroom where it belongs.
Yay!
I mean that's like a home run, right?
Okay, so things could be so much worse.
So the next time you think "Oh, I have an obnoxious customer," stop, be grateful that
you have a job, because the messiness in people's homes is what keeps us employed.
And then the second thing that I want you to ask yourself is if this is the worst thing
that happens, am I still doing okay?
Because the answer is, 10 times out of 10, you're still doing okay.
All righty, that's my two cents for today.
Sorry for the swift kick, but that's kind of the way it is.
All righty, get back to work, have some fun today, and until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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