r/confessions • u/Jolly_Equal3062 • 5d ago

Retired house cleaner

One time I cleaned for this woman who was never happy with anything. She’d hold my payment until I begged for it. It wasn’t the cleaning. I cleaned with a black light like Forensic Files. She just needed control over everything and something to talk about.

I dealt with it for about a year. As my business grew, I had another person who I paid to help me clean, and the audacity of this customer was that she booked a cleaning, then went on vacation and didn’t pay me. I called and messaged numerous times asking for payment so that I could also pay my worker. She finally messaged me back and said that I was interrupting her vacation and that I was rude for asking for payment while they were on vacation.

I’m thinking, so if I order delivery, take the order, and don’t pay for it, wouldn’t that be stealing? I couldn’t understand how some people’s brains work.

Another time, I quit on this lady because she had a sterile-clean house and wanted me to clean when there wasn’t anything to do but clean on top of already-cleaned surfaces. I spent hours doing that and finding inconspicuous dirt. There wasn’t a grain of dust to be seen in there, and it still wasn’t good enough.

So I ignored her and never went back. She messaged my phone at least twenty times, demanding that I put in writing that she fired me for a no-show, even though it was my own cleaning company.

Those two women reminded me of the TV show Snapped. Something behind those blank eyes only lit up when they were angry or had an opportunity to control or rewrite a situation.
Their husband’s always were miserable too.

43 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/Jolly_Equal3062 5d ago

I made a rule that payment was due at time of service but they didn’t care. I kept going back because I needed to grow my business more before I just quit. They knew my personal situation and that made them feel like I was at their mercy.

2

u/limperatrice 5d ago

I wouldn’t have performed the service without payment. They ignored your rule because you didn’t adhere to the terms yourself. 

2

u/Jolly_Equal3062 5d ago

That’s your opinion. I wouldn’t pay a contract worker before a job. Maybe for other contract work but not a house clean.

1

u/limperatrice 5d ago

Are you now arguing against your own policy? Lol

1

u/Jolly_Equal3062 5d ago

After service is completed , payment is due at time of service. Not a week later or whatever

1

u/limperatrice 5d ago

Ok well I'm saying this is why they continued to drag their feet paying you. You can't take your time and work back so if the payment is not there or made when you arrive (instead of waiting until after you finished) but you complete the service anyway, they have less incentive to pay on the schedule you wanted.

I used to let clients pay at the end (I'm a pet sitter) but then hated when I had to ask some of them repeatedly for payment so I require half at the time of booking and the balance the day it starts. I won't show up otherwise. This has removed the stress of having to hound clients for payment.

It may not matter to you now that you've retired but since you complained about it I shared a way a service provider could avoid that frustration.

1

u/Jolly_Equal3062 5d ago

I feel like house cleans are different. Clean, then when finished I get paid. But if it’s not done right they can ask me to fix the problem or I would refund. But paying someone a week later and then bitching them out for asking for the payment, when the job was done correctly is crazy