#Asshole Agency | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gwydionmisha · 2 years ago

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Personal: This Person Just Uncleaned My Apartment

I think I need to tell you about the Cleaner, because OMG, but for that you will need context on my pain/meds situation.

So less pain does not remotely equal no pain. My hip joints were a mess Wednesday, and only a little better Thursday. My shoulder joints, and thus my arms, started to go bad Thursday. The fundamental things wrong with my body aren't fixable, but the new meds are doing a stellar job on what I think of as the secondary pain, IE: everything else not joint or tendon or in their immediate vicinity. It is far more effective than the muscle relaxants I've been using for decades at this since it's hitting the nerves and not just the muscles. It also adds to the tired. So much to the tired. Bonus: on the new dose, I get dizzy if I don't rest enough, and the heart palpitations hit longer and harder when they hit.

Dramatically better means for an extreme chronic pain/chronic illness perspective, not from a remotely healthy person's perspective, if you follow. I was into about a month of unbearable torment when we tried the one pill dosage. I'm still not sure my system can handle the two pills, and I plan to stick to this dose. They are supposed to last eight hours, but I get an extra four hours of partial coverage per pill, and like I said the side effects are scaling up on me.

So right now my balance sucks, I'm exhausted, and my shoulder joints scream at me if I try to do anything remotely strenuous with them, you follow?

So far I've had four different cleaners turn up, two of them twice. Three of those are hard and thorough workers. One of those will not wear her mask. I put up with it because I am wearing mine and turn on all the fans and I'm scared if I don't take her, no one will come. (see five skipped cleaning appointments in a row).

Cleaning is a hard fucking job and they are underpaid, get no benefits, no set hours, and have to pay their own travel costs including for the ferry if they are coming from the reservation and that is a lot of gas. I respect cleaners. I've done it, after all, amoung the many shit jobs I had over the years. I trust them to know what they are doing. This has been the case in three instances. Most of the conversation with those three cleaners has been things like: Where does this go? Where is (whatever) kept? What should i do next? I refuse to micro manage. In my experience, micro managing is dramatically less efficient and just insults the person doing the job. I know I hated it, when I was the person being micro-managed. This works great for Goth Millennial and for the other three cleaners on the other four occasions.

I'm sure you are sensing the big but here.

So the cleaner who came today, turned up the other time she was here high as a kite. I don't mean a little buzzed, which is fairly normal in this town and this state. Weed's been legal here for ages. People with shitty service jobs occasionally come to work a schootch high. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things if, say, your barista's a little buzzed. I don't partake myself for a host of reasons, but most of my friends since... I'm going to say 1985, have/do. A little high is no big deal.

Orbiting Pluto without a suit is. She was way out of it girl at a party who's friends have to watch her like a hawk high. She was barely coherent high. She drove here. O.o. She drove home. This terrifies me. after some consultation with my friends including them seeing the mess she made and me acting out vignettes, our best guess is she must have dramatically misjudged an edible. (It had to be vape or edible. I would have smelled smoke. Edible makes the most sense for both the degree of Jesus fuck high and the thinking she was fine when she left home, but waaaay not fine when she got here. Surely she would have cancelled otherwise, right?).

So basically instead of my working away at the aggregate or tumblr queue programming or whatever, it was a lot like baby sitting a toddler who would not shut up, only the toddler would make more sense and the mess would have likely been confined to things in a toddler's reach. I had to go around after she left and actually use the forbidden to me for safety reasons ladder to save a bunch of my cups and glasses from the accident I could see happening the second Squirrel opened a dish cupboard because he had jammed them in their so precariously that the door was the only thing preventing them falling. Goth Millennial came the next day and had to take everything out and restack it. I could live with the fitted sheet being inside out, so we left that for today.

I did not turn her in to the asshole agency because 1. worker solidarity. I never went to work on a substance, but I've worked so, so many shit jobs and the Asshole Agency is terrible. 2. I was pretty sure it was a mistake involving an edible. 3. I was big on giving people another chance when I was teaching. On fuck up shouldn't lat for ever unless that fuck up was malicious or really damaging to other people.

Well, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me.

No, she was not noticeably high this time, though I couldn't rule a mild buzz out. She also had a shamefaced and subdued demeanor that clearly told me she knew how badly she'd fucked up last time. She said she'd signed up for me on purpose instead of her other option because I was really nice to her and my apartment was full of interesting things to look at while she cleaned. My apartment is full of interesting things to look at and I suspect she liked me because I was consistently kind to her when she was a mess last time and hadn’t turned her in. She really is sweet and nice and she is clearly trying her best but not remotely the sharpest tool in the shed. Which can be fine. I've known a lot of good workers over the years with significant developmental or accident related challenges and they did fine. She wasn't in that category, but I realized she'd need extra supervision compared to the others. I underestimated how much.

She did walk right up to Tavy and start petting him right away like last time which again confused and alarmed him. Sure, Squirrel and I and a couple of the Millennials can do that because we are his particular friends, but he barely knows her and and she would NOT stop doing that last time no matter how many times I told her he was a biter and apt to maul when he was worked up. I was so proud of him because he did not attack her the first three times, and honestly the forth time, I would have bitten her too in his place.

Tavy was noticeably wary of her. He did want to watch what she was doing, but he remembered her. (By contrast, the other cleaners he'd watch from a distance for a while, and then follow around and in a couple cases, get me to pick him up so he could get a better look. He really took to the GNC person who came once, and kept sniffing their legs). He did let her pet him without biting her, and she was together enough to stop when I told her he was down, and leave him alone for the rest of the two hours when I said he was in a mood to hang out and watch but not interact.

I got her through the linen change okay and last time she was so high she forgot we had a dishwasher after she'd emptied it and it took her most of her shift except the linen change, but the dishes looked and smelled clean, so I set her to that and did not remotely supervise her enough. This I did not discover until evening, but we'll get to that.

Then I set her to sweep and mop, which... Like I've worked a lot of restaurant jobs, often with people in a supported worker with severe intellectual challenges. I've never seen one who'd been doing it for years who couldn't do it correctly. She said she'd been doing this for several years.

Assuming makes an ass out of me, doesn't it?

Oh gods the mess she made! I should have known it was too hard for her when she started prepping for mopping before sweeping. So I told her to sweep first, which she did. I told her to dump the water in the sink, not the tub, which turned out to be very, very lucky. (The tub is the most expensive thing I own. A city program that remodels for elderly and disabled people paid for it. I will never be able to afford to fix or replace it. There are super strict cleaning directions for a reason, because the mechanism is delicate.) I told her to use the liquid all purpose cleaner under the sink. I should have got it out and prepped the bucket myself, but bending hurts and I was exhausted and dizzy and my arm situation was deteriorating. I should have done it anyway, because this is So. Much. Worse.

She used a ton of water. Like way, way to much water in a way that suggested she did not wring the mop and/or she was dumping puddles out of the bucket. It was a terrifying fall risk situation because this was the end of her shift and I really really needed to get ready for bed as soon as she left and forage delivery was late so I had to go drag it in, just as I'd given up and settled into bed. So I'm dizzy with unreliable legs, using both hands and going careful back and forth over this swamp of a floor with a weird gritty, soapy texture. Which is... not what you want in a cleaner for elderly and disabled people. I could fall and end up in the hospital under those conditions. And it;'s not like I could want a couple hours for it to dry. There was no point in washing my feet in the bathroom, so I kept using wipes on them before getting into bed.

Then I woke up to pee and realized just how bad it really was. *head desk* My best guess is she used Ajax, which is stored under a bookshelf in the bathroom, not under the sink. Like a TON of Ajax. The kitchen sink and nearby counter was caked with it and the floor was tacky and gritty and full of muddy footprints. I couldn't leave it like that. I cleaned the sink. I took the other mop with the disability friendly easy to wring it out attachment which had been to complicated for her head and wet mopped it all again, frequently rinsing and wringing it out, until my arms basically gave out and I had to wash up and take a nap.

It's still incredibly dirty. I feel like crying, because I can't feel clean unless my feet are. I've been skating around on damp towels, but though my hip joints are a lot better this evening, I wear out fast and it hurts quite a bit if I do it too much. I hate leaving a terrible mess like this for the millennial, but I simply can't mop any more with these arms. I'd have been so much better off giving her something else to do, but I couldn't think of anything else simple enough for her, and I know from last time she will not leave early no matter how much I tell her she can just clock out at the end of the hour.

At this point I was debating what to do. I had settled on calling Monday and asking them to put her on my no list without giving a reason, because I simply can't go through this again. It's too hard on my body and it's incredibly could seriously injure me dangerous.

Then I went to feed the Empress Livia and discovered something worse.

I'm medically fragile. Amoung so many other things, I have an immune system that is far more interested in own goals than fighting pathogens. I can and will catch anything you expose me too. Anything. I also have a dicey digestive system. Anything I use to prepare food or eat or drink needs to be really fucking clean. We prewash for grease and stuck on food then run them through the washer to make sure the soap and anything else is off. yes, I know this is bad for the environment as it uses extra water, but it’s a serious safety issue for me.

I was very, very clear on directions because I remembered last time. “Wash the dishes and then put the in the dishwasher. The dishes in there are dirty, so don’t put them away. I will run the washer after you leave.” Did she do that? No. Were the dishes cleaned and dried, which would be reasonably acceptable as an alternative? No. They were jammed in with the clean dishes, soaking wet and covered in soap bubbles six or seven hours after she left. We'll have to go through all the pans tomorrow. I pulled the pans and dishes I remembered were in the sink yesterday. I have no way of guessing with the glasses and flatware and I don't know which things Squirrel put in there.

I am exhausted and I hurt and I've been pushed way past the limit of what my body can handle in a day and I can't trust my dishes or the glass I'm drinking out of and I can't get the dirty Ajax grit off my feet. I'm going to go take a bath, but my feet will be dirty again the second I touch the floor.

She's another poor person. I feel like a class traitor just putting her on my no list, but she could theoretically kill an elderly person with her mopping, and I can't decide if I should say something, because anything I do will be a terrible option.

This person literally uncleaned my apartment. I just....

Look, I know it’s a free service, but this is so very much worse than when they don’t send anyone.

#WTF?!?#Asshole Agency

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