Maid steals clients time – and homeowners in uproar speak out. If you’re working from home you need rules and regulations and expectations in place for your house cleaners.
Time is a precious commodity. You’ve outsourced your cleaning and you’re not a free therapist. A maid is paid to work, not paid to chat. A maid is stealing when she plays drama queen on the clock.
You both should be working and following the sixty second rule.
Listen: Maid Steals Clients Time
Watch: Maid Steals Clients Time
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.
House Cleaners Stealing Clients’ Time By Talking Too Much
How do you stop a house cleaner from stealing clients’ time by talking too much?
A woman who hired a house cleaner says, “My house cleaner gets to my house and she starts yacking. And she’s got all these problems and she’s got all this drama, and she keeps talking and talking and talking, and it’s exhausting. How on earth am I supposed to make her stop?”
The Homeowner is in Charge
All right, well, that is a fair question and the answer is you’re the homeowner. And that means you are in charge.
Now, unfortunately, there are a lot of house cleaners that haven’t had proper training. So they don’t know that we’re supposed only to spend 60 seconds when we get into a customer’s house to have greetings like, “Hey, how are you doing? How is your dog? How was your weekend?”
That kind of stuff, as you’re putting on your gloves and your shoe covers and you’re unloading your supplies. So instead, you end up talking to them for 45 minutes because they don’t know when to stop.
House Cleaners Have 60 Seconds to Talk
But after that initial 60 seconds, both of you need to go your own separate ways.
They need to go clean the house and do what they’re being paid to do, and you need to go do whatever it is you’re doing.
Whether you’re kicking around your house or whether you’re working from home is irrelevant. But you need to get out of the house cleaner’s way and they need to get out of yours.
Talking on the Walkthrough is Not Stealing Time
The initial walk-through is the exception for this reason. You are going to talk and you’re going to build some rapport. And you’re going to decide on that initial walkthrough if you are, in fact, a good fit for each other.
Now, being a good fit for each other means they are qualified and they convey confidence that they are the right person for the job. And then when you say, yes, you’re the right person for the job and you’re hired, that’s when things change.
That’s when the dating if you will, ends.
Have a Business Relationship With Your Clients
All right, let’s move to the business relationship and here’s how it works. Tell the house cleaner this. “When you come to my house, I work from home, so when you come to my house, I promise I won’t be in your way and I expect that you won’t be in my way either.
I will move from room to room so you can do your thing and I trust that you will let me do my thing. I enjoyed visiting with you today, but we won’t chat when you come.'”
And then they go, “Oh, yes. I understand.”
Only Visit With Them for That 60 Seconds
All right, now that you have that verbal agreement when the house cleaner gets to your house, you can do the 60 seconds on them.
You can say, “It’s great to see you. How was your weekend?” Yada yada, whatever. And then if they start chatting and they start going on and on and on, I go, “Oh, hey, I got to get back to work. It’s so good to see you again. I will stay out of your way. I promise not to interrupt you.”
And then bolt like you said you were going to do. If you stand there and talk, you enable them to continue on. That’s what’s happening. And then they come back and assume, well, she chatted with me for 45 minutes last time, so I assume she’s going to chat again for another 45.
The House Cleaner is Your Employee
They are your employees at this moment. They are on the clock. You are paying them for a service.
Get out of their way and let them do the service you’re paying them to do. Because if you stand there and chat, they’re stealing your time and your money.
If they are chatting too long, either you need a new house cleaner or you need new boundaries. I’m not trying to be ugly, but what I am saying is right immediately you need to set the boundaries.
Set New Boundaries With Your House Cleaner
If this is a house cleaner that keeps coming in again and again and you love this house cleaner and you don’t want to fire them, that’s awesome.
Right now, you need new boundaries. As they come in, say, “Hey, listen. I know we want to chat, that’s fine, but we’re going to need to move it to a coffeehouse after hours. Because I feel like I’m eating up your cleaning time with all the chit chat. And I don’t want to do that.
I want to be fair to you and give you the time that you need to clean my house properly. And so I’m going to back out. I’m going to get out of your way, and I’m going to let you do what you’re being paid to do.”
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