Asking Cleaning Lady to pay for Damages

b from nj

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 7:54 pm

Tova wrote:

I would not ask for such a thing - as others have said, I'm human, make plenty of mistakes myself. I've jammed the copier at work plenty of times I'm sure over my work career, and about a year ago spilled a cup of water accidentally on my company's laptop and it would not start. I brought it to the Tech Team and they so nicely said - mistakes can happen; that's why we have insurance.

I want someone who is working in my house to be comfortable to best do their job, not to always be nervous about breakage.

Exactly!!! I like to treat people who are working for me the way I would like to be treated by others. Besides, I try to do my best to make a kiddush hashem (to all people) & especially to non-jewish/non-religious ppl. who I come in contact with b/c otherwise it makes a chillul hashem (which I prefer to avoid) b/c then these workers/colleagues etc start generalizing & will likely feel that ALL Jews are cheap or whatever it is that our actions cause them to think/believe.

sky

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 7:55 pm

I wouldn't have.

As Tova said - if you jammed paper in the copy machine and tried pulling it out because you didn't know another way - would you be annoyed if your employer asked you to split the cost of repairing the machine. I would.

Besides, I don't think most cleaning ladies realize the value of silver. I think they'd be shock to know how much it is worth. (When I leave a cleaning lady alone in my house I hide my jewelry and any cash but my silver is out for the taking, I don't think they realize what it is worth).

I've made big mistakes at work, some of them very costly (think shutting down a factory in china) but my boss has never yelled at me or made me feel stupid. I appreciate that. I try to treat my cleaning lady the same way.

allrgymama

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 8:19 pm

What I'm trying to figure out is if there is a difference between an employee that gets paid to earn her employer money (like most office jobs) and a cleaning lady.

By the logic of my 'having' to pay for her cab fare, my boss should have paid for my gas when I drove to work (from Lakewood to Asbury Park; there aren't other choices). My boss should have also provided free drinks and snacks, which I provide to my cleaning ladies.

I'm thinking if this also makes a difference: when I hired her, she told me that it is her 'policy' to only work for people who pay her even if they have to cancel on her, no matter how much notice is given. I explained to her that the only reason I would ever cancel on her is if I had a medical emergency and that I work my schedule around my cleaning lady so she wouldn't have to worry about being without pay one week. So she made an exception.

But if she expects to get paid for doing no work (her employer costing her money), why shouldn't she have to pay for damages (she costing her employer money)?

mummiedearest

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 8:25 pm

allrgymama wrote:

Wow. That's a lot of hate coming from some of you. Calm down, please.

@mummiedearest: she used to live near me and recently moved. When she did, she upped her hourly rate by $1 to cover the cab costs. So yes, I pay for her traveling expenses (not something my boss did for me when I had to commute 1/2 an hour daily by car).

And I don't think of silver as 'breakable'.

I hope you didn't consider me to be sending any hate. I think you had every right to do what you did. and the reason I feel this strongly in this incident is that silver is NOT breakable, just as you say. silver candlesticks are not that thin. silver is fairly malleable, but I can't imagine anyone of average strength being able to casually bend a candlestick out of shape.

mummiedearest

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 8:28 pm

sky wrote:

the difference is that the cleaning lady is paid to maintain the cleanliness and functionality of these things so that the employer can use them. the office staff is paid to use the office supplies, not maintain them. an office is set up to accommodate employees and allow for full productivity potential. a cleaning lady is there to maintain the home, the home is not set up to increase the cleaning lady's productivity.

ElTam

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 8:29 pm

I would not ask a cleaning lady to pay for something they broke, unless we had specifically agreed on that in advance. Accidents happen. I have worked at jobs where things could break in high school and college. (Stores and restaurants.) It was never deducted from our wages. If you broke a lot of stuff, you got fired.

Sorry, but I think you were in the wrong.

And by the way, she does pay taxes. She may not pay income taxes, but every time she buys something, she pays sales tax. If she pays rent, part of her rent goes to property taxes. Part of the gas money for the cab goes to taxes. Etc. Etc. Etc. Studies show that illegals pay more into the tax system than they take out.

Mama Bear

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 8:41 pm

$40 is almost 4 hours of work for her. Can you imagine if your boss (I know you dont work, so think hypothetical boss) would make you come to w ork and work a 4 hour day for no pay (let's suppose you made $20/hr) because you accidentally broke a machine which cost $80.00 to repair?

I don't know, I would feel terrible to make anyone work for me for 3 1/2 - 4 hours without pay;I would feel like a slaveowner.

What's done is done; but I hope you learned something new from this thread. I repeat again, that expenses are bashert, and if this wouldnt have happened you would have some other $40 expense. I recently sent away a cleaning lady bc she was working so slowly she was costing me tons of money, hired a much cheaper/faster one, and guess what? She clogged both my sinks. The plumber will cost me the same amount as I wouldve paid the slow cleaning lady. You cant escape bashert expenses....

hatzlocha with the next cleaning lady! hope she's better than this one.

b from nj

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 8:44 pm

allrgymama wrote:

I think ANY employee is there to give menuchas hanefesh to their boss. I don't think it makes a difference whether you make money on that employee or not. I know that when I have an overall good & reliable cleaning lady, I'm a much happier person & I find it very stressful when I am in the market for a new one & have to start the hiring process from scratch which is another reason why I am willing to overlook mistakes. That said, I once had a woman working for me who I did not like but kept her b/c I didn't want to deal with the unknown until she accidentally poured bleach into a load of my colored clothing. At that point, I knew that I would be firing her at the end of the day but I nonetheless paid her her wages for the day even though I was very upset about all of the ruined clothing that would need to be replaced. If I remember correctly she even offered to pay for it but I said I would pay her but that this was her last time working for me.

allrgymama

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 8:55 pm

@MaBelleVie: as I wrote earlier, she had cleaned my silver before. And I didn't assume she knew how to clean silver, I stood at the counter with her the first time and showed her exactly what do do and how to do it. She has cleaned my silver many times, just like she's folded my laundry and dusted my blinds and so on. She's working for me for months.

I mean -- do you realize how hard you have to be pushing to bend a silver candlestick?

And yes, the other cleaning lady was careless. She was cleaning it by balancing it on the floor on one of its corners and I watched her drop it.

@Mama Bear: if I walked into a friend's house and broke something, I would replace it. If I walked into a stranger's house for a tzedakah party and broke something, I would replace it. If I got someone's clothes dirty, I would pay the dry cleaning bill. Why should my cleaning lady be exempt from this? And yes -- in the rare instances where I have cost any of my past bosses money (and my current one -- I work less than 10 a week from home) I feel very badly about it. I apologize non-stop and I try to get as much work out of my day so that they are really getting their money's worth -- I try to make it up.

And there are certain...operating costs that a boss assumes when he has a running office. Paper gets jammed. The end. The assumed operating costs I have when employing a cleaning lady is cleaning supplies (the brands they like, in the amounts that they like; I had a cleaning lady who used so much solution when cleaning the floor they stayed wet for 1/2 an hour after she was done). I don't assume costs for a cleaning lady breaking my things.

cuties' mom

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 8:58 pm

Dh and I had this discussion several months ago. My cleaning lady dropped my crockpot and it broke. She was very upset about it. She told me as soon as she saw me, apologized, and offered to pay for it. I told her not to worry about it. Dh wanted her to pay or at least that I wouldn't pay her for the 2 hours she was here. If I wouldn't be able to afford a new crockpot, maybe I would have felt differently, but my cleaning lady's husband is still in Jamaica. She's trying to save money to bring him here. Besides, accidents happen. My cabinets are too full and anyone could drop things. Dh saw my logic and we got a new pot for a good price and maintained our good relationship with our cleaning lady.

sky

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 9:06 pm

mummiedearest wrote:

sky wrote:

So I"m paid to help my company earn money. So then lets say I do something to cause my boss to lose money. I take too long completing a project and we loose a large contract and its a tremendous loss for the company. And it was clearly my fault. Should I be required to cover that loss from my paycheck?

sky

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 9:10 pm

allrgymama wrote:

And there are certain...operating costs that a boss assumes when he has a running office. Paper gets jammed. The end. The assumed operating costs I have when employing a cleaning lady is cleaning supplies (the brands they like, in the amounts that they like; I had a cleaning lady who used so much solution when cleaning the floor they stayed wet for 1/2 an hour after she was done). I don't assume costs for a cleaning lady breaking my things.

office supplies (pens, notepads, staplers) are to cleaning solution.
Jammed printers are to broken items.
mistakes at work that are costly or time consuming are to broken items.

A cleaning lady wasting lots of solution is like an employee doodling on lots of company paper, not like jamming a printer (and having to pay for a company to come out and fix it and lose productivity)

MaBelleVie

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 9:13 pm

allrgymama wrote:

if I walked into a friend's house and broke something, I would replace it. If I walked into a stranger's house for a tzedakah party and broke something, I would replace it. If I got someone's clothes dirty, I would pay the dry cleaning bill. Why should my cleaning lady be exempt from this? And yes -- in the rare instances where I have cost any of my past bosses money (and my current one -- I work less than 10 a week from home) I feel very badly about it. I apologize non-stop and I try to get as much work out of my day so that they are really getting their money's worth -- I try to make it up.

Ok, but you offer to pay in those examples. What would you think if you hadn't realized you broke someone's furniture? This actually happened to a friend of mine- she had a guest who broke her couch, but there was no indication at the time, no loud noise. She only realized once her guest had gone. What would you think if she called you to tell you, and asked you to pay for the repairs?

I don't think anyone is saying it's ridiculous for her to pay. I think people just wonder about forcing her to do so.

spinkles

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 9:14 pm

Quote:

But that's just not realistic. I'm the cleaning lady in my home; I break things. That's life; you have to plan on things happening sometimes.

morah

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 9:14 pm

In OP's defense, it sounded like there was some pretty serious negligence involved. Yes, accidents happen. That's why it would be wrong to ask her to pay for say, a dish that slipped from her hand while washing dishes, or something that broke or got scuffed up when she knocked it over. But forcing a piece into something until it's bent out of shape? You can't file that under "accidents happen". If the piece wasn't fitting, she should have gone to OP and said "I can't get it to fit, can you show me how?" That's what mine did when she was changing the vacuum bag and it wasn't clicking into place. That's the reasonable thing to do in that situation. Instead, this woman decided to make it fit and caused damage, which she didn't even inform her employer about. OP was justified in asking for some compensation. Now, out of rachmanus, don't ask her to give a up a full day's pay at once. But to maybe ask her to give up say $5 per week until it's paid up seems reasonable to me.

mummiedearest

Wed, Jun 13 2012, 9:23 pm

sky wrote:

mummiedearest wrote:

sky wrote:

let's look at it a different way. suppose, as a way of helping your friend, you decided to go and run her dishwasher one day while she was recovering pp. you are not familiar with her kitchen. you place a butter-smeared plate into the fleishig dishwasher and render a sizable percentage of her fleishig dishes treif. would you replace the dishes? I would.

if you cost your company a large contract as described above, you should lose your job. this will save the company more money in the long run than having you cover that loss but retain your job where you could potentially cost them more contracts.

if you have a repairman come to fix your refrigerator, and in fixing it he breaks the door, do you expect him to fix that as well? I certainly do.

a cleaning lady's job is specifically to clean without breaking. there are times when damage done by a cleaning lady is very costly and she should just be fired. there are times when the damage is negligible and should be ignored. there are times when the damage is in between, and it's ok to ask her to pay for repairs. some of you say you wouldn't do this unless this was agreed upon when hiring her. have you guys read the signs in every dry cleaners? "not responsible for broken buttons, damage to clothing, shrinkage, etc..." she never specified that she would NOT pay for these things. this is entirely up to the employer, and if she deems it appropriate, she has a right to do it. if you break someone's personal belonging, you should replace or repair it. I do not include mops or brooms in this category. those would be considered the cleaning lady's office supplies. I expect those to need replacing from time to time.