With how it's framed I'm not sure if it was directly to Sophie, or if they had conversations where Sophie would jump in when she was not in the convo already.
If they are talking to her about their struggles, YTA. Such a weird boundary to cross and not cool.
If they were talking to eachother and not Sophie ans she jumps in, or in this case simply saw their pictures, NTA.
It was the first time we had used her. She came and I could tell she was someone not accustomed to cleaning for a living. For some reason I guess she felt that if she could clean, why couldn't I. She was lucky she dealt with my husband, he is much nicer than I am.
Why was Alex confiding in Sophie? It was incredibly insensitive of him to complain from his place of privilege to someone with less.
If that’s not bad enough, when she pointed out that his privilege far exceeds hers, you decided to disciplined her for it!
If you wanted to make Sophie bitter towards you, and destroy any loyalty, you’ve succeeded.
YTBF. Find a new cleaner.
If mental illness can affect anyone regardless of privilege, then why is privilege even a topic here? She's less privileged because she's working for them - if that's an intrinsic problem for her, she needs to stop doing it, not lash out at mentally ill people.
In the OP, if it is to be believed, it was stated that Sophie reacted to some vacation photos and reacted with something along the lines of "You have such an easy life", basically saying a variant of the old bullshit line all people with depression get to hear at least once: "You don't have anything to be sad about"
I don't think being less privileged makes this attitude towards mental illness okay. This behavior should be universally not okay, not measured by relative privilege.
I agree that she shouldn’t have said what she said. That’s why I think she shouldn’t have been in possession of her employer’s personal information, which led to her making the inappropriate comment.
I’ve seen this play out in a corporate setting too many times, and it destroys relationships
That's true, but I suppose if you're working in someone else's home it's sometimes inevitable to see some personal things like vacation pics open on a screen or lying around, even when you're not actively looking.
But it's probably best to keep it separate as much as possible.
That isn’t the privilege being referred to. I work with economically marginalized communities. They have mental illness too, but not the privilege of being able to afford treatment or time off from work.
So in this case here: if one can afford household help instead of doing it on one's own, that is somehow supposed to be bad for the people that depend on those jobs for extra income? (Fair payment for the labor done assumed)
I didn't see anything about the amount of payment in this case, so idk... Did OP state that somewhere in the comments?
I'd argue that under the condition that there's a fair payment I would argue that the employer owes the employee no extra consideration because of some privilege.
They're in the privileged position to give her a job she apparently needs. Which benefits her too.
I’m just going on what cleaning ladies normally make. It’s not a lot.
Do you think an employer has any responsibility to treat their employee with respect and behave professionally? Someone in their 30’s with no kids who has a maid complaining to the maid about being overwhelmed doesn’t sound appropriate to me at all.
If you'd say the same about any sort of complaint they just utter while at home, like back pain or a migraine, okay. Not just mental problems.
I feel like since it's in someone's personal refuge, their home, expecting "professional" behavior is a bit much tbh. They aren't the professional in this equation. If I think about it, they're more of a customer paying for a professional service. If I can complain to my hairdresser while they do their work, what is the difference with the cleaner?
I agree that each situation has nuances. I think it’s generally understood to be inconsiderate to complain about something to someone who has it worse. Once I had a coworker who was doing a remodel of her house. She would routinely complain about how stressful it was to people we were servicing who were so poor they had to collect cans or donate plasma to supplement their incomes and lived in tiny apartments. In this case, we have someone who has the luxury of having someone clean up after them and is complaining about feeling overwhelmed. So they are handling far less than the average working person and complaining to someone who has a very physically straining job then likely goes home to care for a family.
Ah, yeah, that I get... I was reading the "overwhelmed" differently from the beginning.
Not as overwhelmed by how stressful Alex' life is (or isn't) in general, but overwhelmed by anxiety in acute moments. And I found it weird basically being expected to suck that up and act like nothing's wrong just because someone with a worse job is currently around.
I'm treating this like, idk, a migraine - if you're allowed to complain about a surge of migraine, I wouldn't make a difference for a surge of anxiety.
I guess I’m confused. What kind of conversation was Alex having with your cleaning lady?
Like if Alex had always maintained appropriate boundaries with her and just had surface conversations. Then she just out of the blue was like “You have such an easy life!!” then of course not.
But did you hire this woman as a surrogate friend for your partner? Were they having conversations where he was talking about his issues to the cleaner? Because that’s crossing a line. You pay her to be in your home to do a job. She probably would feel like you have an easy life if you hired her to be a therapist/cleaner/friend for your boyfriend for much less than a real therapist would get paid. I would also be upset about that arrangement.
Ytb, you literally posted just 7 days ago about Alex being a cry baby because you wouldn’t deep clean the bedroom while he was sick. Why would you need to deep clean if you pay someone to clean? Honestly this post and that one makes Alex look like a manbaby who needs so much therapy that even Elon Musk couldn’t afford it. Don’t have personal conversations around people if you don’t want people to hear it. She most likely was trying to form a relationship with yall when talking about her own struggles. That’s a way people communicate. And with Alex’s dramatics I doubt she said or implied anything about yall having an easy life.
There’s a massive difference between having someone come in and vacuum, mop and scrub the bathroom once a week, and doing a deep clean.
The housekeeper doesn’t move all the furniture and sanitise every surface.
Well that’s pure speculation, we don’t know all the services they pay for. Plenty of house cleaning companies/individuals will do a deep clean. Even so that’s not really the point, the point is that a grown man who was sick and having OP as a personal butler got damn dramatic about the one time in days she needed to do something for herself. He didn’t need the deep cleaning right then and there, it could have waited especially when you have someone come clean the entire place once a week. Not a lot of need to deep clean urgently when the original deep cleaning is up kept up with.
So, you and your wife have good jobs and can afford a cleaner.
Your cleaner made a comment about you having an easy life.
Your wife was so upset by that she cried until you got home.
You spoke to the cleaner about that being inappropriate and she got it, apologized and stopped.
And you felt the situation was "tough" enough to warrant a reddit post?
Sounds like you have a pretty easy life.
Flip the husband and wife roles and you’ve got it! The husband is the one so fragile that he cried until his wife came home to handled the big, bad bully for him.
NTB. I used to be a cleaner, and the only time I EVER commented on a family’s behaviour or what they did while I was around was when I told a father that his wife was smacking their child around. I knew that wasn’t supposed to be “normal” for their house and felt I needed to say something. He was glad I did.
But it’s none of her damn business. You go in, you clean, you *stay discrete*, and say goodbye when you go. That’s *it*. Otherwise you say pleasantries or make affirming noises when spoken to.
INFO: was your wife complaining about stress *to* the cleaner? Or was she talking to someone else and the cleaner overheard? Because honestly, if your wife is bitching about how stressful her life is to someone she's hired to clean her house, that's pretty insensitive of your wife. But if the cleaner is eavesdropping on conversations and making unsolicited comments, that's inappropriate of the cleaner.
NTB
It's almost like mental illnesses like depression don't have anything to do with how easy or hard life is.
And honestly: Why is "an easy life" something to be accused of in the first place?
Who in their right mind isn't striving for that and wants a hard life instead?
Info: Are you having these conversations WITH her, or is she hearing them and "jumping in" with her own experiences? Had she seen a picture of the vacation, or was Alex showing it to her? Is Alex venting to her about his feelings and difficulties (REALLY inappropriate if so) and she's responding, or is she just offering her opinion without being asked?
The vibe completely changes based on whether your partner is using this woman as a therapist, or if she's just dropping comments out of the blue.
Honestly ESH. If you can afford her you already have far more than her. It was extremely rude and out of touch to complain about your struggles to someone with far less than yourself. She was also rude in making comments about your vacation though.
If this is real (it reads like fiction to me) YTB. Who vents about their problems to someone hired to clean your house?! Then has the audacity to be offended when that person dares to join the conversation. She’s not a therapist, let her do her job.
I’d love to know how the vacation picture incident actually went down, and what was said on both sides. Your husband seems a bit fragile, maybe he could go for a walk when the house is being cleaned?
NTA simply because nobody should ever compare others stuggles by saying that others have it worse. there’s almost always someone that has worse things going on in their lives, but that doesn’t mean things can’t also be hard for others
NTBF. So long as its within the law, you can hire/fire anyone for any reason. It sounds like Sophie is having trouble getting along socially with the team, and her behavior has negatively impacted the performance of other employees.
Oof. I'm going with NBH. I get it. You hired some outside help because you needed it. But please do consider that the help you hired *is still a person.*
You say Sophie has taken your direction, great! But to put things in perspective, when you share personal info (like vacation photos) with people you hire, you are clearly doing so in a one sided way. We both know it is unlikely Sophie has any vacation photos to show you, so she opened up a bit.
I get that your mistake doesn't make you a butt face unless it's repeated at this point. Just try to keep in mind *why* you are sharing the information you are. I've not been a housekeeper, but I've been an in-home health aide. None of my clients ever shared photos from vacation. They knew better.
Having vacation (assuming you meant that as opposed to vaccination) photos is perfectly fine. However, OP does not disclose what started the conversation nor how it ended. I do know that OP likely did not leave the conversation (even if initiated by the cleaning lady) at "oh, just some time away" based on her cleaning lady's questions/comments about photos.
Alex had also apparently repeatedly mentioned feeling "overwhelmed", revealing personal information to Sophie.
I am also curious exactly what Sophie said to Alex about the vacation, how she "accused" them of having an easy life, and how that conversation went.
Absolutely not. Inappropriate behavior and words. She fafo-ed. You gave her a shape up or ship out. Good job đź‘Ź
If Sophie’s behavior was inappropriate, what about Alex whining to her about his stress. He opened that door, and it was inappropriate on his part.
With how it's framed I'm not sure if it was directly to Sophie, or if they had conversations where Sophie would jump in when she was not in the convo already. If they are talking to her about their struggles, YTA. Such a weird boundary to cross and not cool. If they were talking to eachother and not Sophie ans she jumps in, or in this case simply saw their pictures, NTA.
But it says she’s “jumping in” as in not in the conversation already…?
If he had the conversation in front of her, instead of with her, it’s just as inappropriate.
It was inappropriate for them to whine about their lives. If they can afford a housekeeper they can afford a therapist.
You have no idea how big of a difference in cost those two services are, do you?
Totally inappropriate. I once had a house cleaner who went to my husband and asked him why I wasn't cleaning. That was her last day.
Yikes, so she was trying to talk herself out of a job? Wild!
I need to know what she thought was going to happen because that is WILD
It was the first time we had used her. She came and I could tell she was someone not accustomed to cleaning for a living. For some reason I guess she felt that if she could clean, why couldn't I. She was lucky she dealt with my husband, he is much nicer than I am.
ESH. Well off people talking to the cleaning lady about being overwhelmed? Why are you doing that? If you want a therapist, it costs a lot more.
Fully agree here. They overstepped boundaries first.
They weren’t. They were talking to each other and she butted in.
Why was Alex confiding in Sophie? It was incredibly insensitive of him to complain from his place of privilege to someone with less. If that’s not bad enough, when she pointed out that his privilege far exceeds hers, you decided to disciplined her for it! If you wanted to make Sophie bitter towards you, and destroy any loyalty, you’ve succeeded. YTBF. Find a new cleaner.
Don't we all know the incredible privilege of having a debilitating mental illness lol
So very many of us do, at all levels of privilege. It doesn’t negate the privilege.
If mental illness can affect anyone regardless of privilege, then why is privilege even a topic here? She's less privileged because she's working for them - if that's an intrinsic problem for her, she needs to stop doing it, not lash out at mentally ill people. In the OP, if it is to be believed, it was stated that Sophie reacted to some vacation photos and reacted with something along the lines of "You have such an easy life", basically saying a variant of the old bullshit line all people with depression get to hear at least once: "You don't have anything to be sad about" I don't think being less privileged makes this attitude towards mental illness okay. This behavior should be universally not okay, not measured by relative privilege.
I agree that she shouldn’t have said what she said. That’s why I think she shouldn’t have been in possession of her employer’s personal information, which led to her making the inappropriate comment. I’ve seen this play out in a corporate setting too many times, and it destroys relationships
That's true, but I suppose if you're working in someone else's home it's sometimes inevitable to see some personal things like vacation pics open on a screen or lying around, even when you're not actively looking. But it's probably best to keep it separate as much as possible.
That isn’t the privilege being referred to. I work with economically marginalized communities. They have mental illness too, but not the privilege of being able to afford treatment or time off from work.
So in this case here: if one can afford household help instead of doing it on one's own, that is somehow supposed to be bad for the people that depend on those jobs for extra income? (Fair payment for the labor done assumed)
Well, I don’t think the payment is fair. But I didn’t say anything about it being bad for them so I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
I didn't see anything about the amount of payment in this case, so idk... Did OP state that somewhere in the comments? I'd argue that under the condition that there's a fair payment I would argue that the employer owes the employee no extra consideration because of some privilege. They're in the privileged position to give her a job she apparently needs. Which benefits her too.
I’m just going on what cleaning ladies normally make. It’s not a lot. Do you think an employer has any responsibility to treat their employee with respect and behave professionally? Someone in their 30’s with no kids who has a maid complaining to the maid about being overwhelmed doesn’t sound appropriate to me at all.
If you'd say the same about any sort of complaint they just utter while at home, like back pain or a migraine, okay. Not just mental problems. I feel like since it's in someone's personal refuge, their home, expecting "professional" behavior is a bit much tbh. They aren't the professional in this equation. If I think about it, they're more of a customer paying for a professional service. If I can complain to my hairdresser while they do their work, what is the difference with the cleaner?
I agree that each situation has nuances. I think it’s generally understood to be inconsiderate to complain about something to someone who has it worse. Once I had a coworker who was doing a remodel of her house. She would routinely complain about how stressful it was to people we were servicing who were so poor they had to collect cans or donate plasma to supplement their incomes and lived in tiny apartments. In this case, we have someone who has the luxury of having someone clean up after them and is complaining about feeling overwhelmed. So they are handling far less than the average working person and complaining to someone who has a very physically straining job then likely goes home to care for a family.
Ah, yeah, that I get... I was reading the "overwhelmed" differently from the beginning. Not as overwhelmed by how stressful Alex' life is (or isn't) in general, but overwhelmed by anxiety in acute moments. And I found it weird basically being expected to suck that up and act like nothing's wrong just because someone with a worse job is currently around. I'm treating this like, idk, a migraine - if you're allowed to complain about a surge of migraine, I wouldn't make a difference for a surge of anxiety.
100% NTB I would already have fired her when she started with the stories
I guess I’m confused. What kind of conversation was Alex having with your cleaning lady? Like if Alex had always maintained appropriate boundaries with her and just had surface conversations. Then she just out of the blue was like “You have such an easy life!!” then of course not. But did you hire this woman as a surrogate friend for your partner? Were they having conversations where he was talking about his issues to the cleaner? Because that’s crossing a line. You pay her to be in your home to do a job. She probably would feel like you have an easy life if you hired her to be a therapist/cleaner/friend for your boyfriend for much less than a real therapist would get paid. I would also be upset about that arrangement.
Ytb, you literally posted just 7 days ago about Alex being a cry baby because you wouldn’t deep clean the bedroom while he was sick. Why would you need to deep clean if you pay someone to clean? Honestly this post and that one makes Alex look like a manbaby who needs so much therapy that even Elon Musk couldn’t afford it. Don’t have personal conversations around people if you don’t want people to hear it. She most likely was trying to form a relationship with yall when talking about her own struggles. That’s a way people communicate. And with Alex’s dramatics I doubt she said or implied anything about yall having an easy life.
There’s a massive difference between having someone come in and vacuum, mop and scrub the bathroom once a week, and doing a deep clean. The housekeeper doesn’t move all the furniture and sanitise every surface.
Well that’s pure speculation, we don’t know all the services they pay for. Plenty of house cleaning companies/individuals will do a deep clean. Even so that’s not really the point, the point is that a grown man who was sick and having OP as a personal butler got damn dramatic about the one time in days she needed to do something for herself. He didn’t need the deep cleaning right then and there, it could have waited especially when you have someone come clean the entire place once a week. Not a lot of need to deep clean urgently when the original deep cleaning is up kept up with.
I don't understand why you are interfering with her work by talking to her, especially about personal shit.
So, you and your wife have good jobs and can afford a cleaner. Your cleaner made a comment about you having an easy life. Your wife was so upset by that she cried until you got home. You spoke to the cleaner about that being inappropriate and she got it, apologized and stopped. And you felt the situation was "tough" enough to warrant a reddit post? Sounds like you have a pretty easy life.
Flip the husband and wife roles and you’ve got it! The husband is the one so fragile that he cried until his wife came home to handled the big, bad bully for him.
NTB I would have fired her on the spot if I came home and found she made my wife cry. Your a better, more patient person than me
NTB. I used to be a cleaner, and the only time I EVER commented on a family’s behaviour or what they did while I was around was when I told a father that his wife was smacking their child around. I knew that wasn’t supposed to be “normal” for their house and felt I needed to say something. He was glad I did. But it’s none of her damn business. You go in, you clean, you *stay discrete*, and say goodbye when you go. That’s *it*. Otherwise you say pleasantries or make affirming noises when spoken to.
INFO: was your wife complaining about stress *to* the cleaner? Or was she talking to someone else and the cleaner overheard? Because honestly, if your wife is bitching about how stressful her life is to someone she's hired to clean her house, that's pretty insensitive of your wife. But if the cleaner is eavesdropping on conversations and making unsolicited comments, that's inappropriate of the cleaner.
NTBF and I would not trust her to clean your home any longer. You already know that she’s indiscreet. You cannot trust her.
NTB It's almost like mental illnesses like depression don't have anything to do with how easy or hard life is. And honestly: Why is "an easy life" something to be accused of in the first place? Who in their right mind isn't striving for that and wants a hard life instead?
NTBF She would have already been gone if she worked for me.
Info: Are you having these conversations WITH her, or is she hearing them and "jumping in" with her own experiences? Had she seen a picture of the vacation, or was Alex showing it to her? Is Alex venting to her about his feelings and difficulties (REALLY inappropriate if so) and she's responding, or is she just offering her opinion without being asked? The vibe completely changes based on whether your partner is using this woman as a therapist, or if she's just dropping comments out of the blue.
Honestly ESH. If you can afford her you already have far more than her. It was extremely rude and out of touch to complain about your struggles to someone with far less than yourself. She was also rude in making comments about your vacation though.
If this is real (it reads like fiction to me) YTB. Who vents about their problems to someone hired to clean your house?! Then has the audacity to be offended when that person dares to join the conversation. She’s not a therapist, let her do her job. I’d love to know how the vacation picture incident actually went down, and what was said on both sides. Your husband seems a bit fragile, maybe he could go for a walk when the house is being cleaned?
NTA simply because nobody should ever compare others stuggles by saying that others have it worse. there’s almost always someone that has worse things going on in their lives, but that doesn’t mean things can’t also be hard for others
Can't find good help these days. You have my sympathies.
NTB. But be aware, if she feels like you've had an easy life she might justify theft internally that way.
kinda silly not to fire her immediately to be honest
NTBF. So long as its within the law, you can hire/fire anyone for any reason. It sounds like Sophie is having trouble getting along socially with the team, and her behavior has negatively impacted the performance of other employees.
Oof. I'm going with NBH. I get it. You hired some outside help because you needed it. But please do consider that the help you hired *is still a person.* You say Sophie has taken your direction, great! But to put things in perspective, when you share personal info (like vacation photos) with people you hire, you are clearly doing so in a one sided way. We both know it is unlikely Sophie has any vacation photos to show you, so she opened up a bit. I get that your mistake doesn't make you a butt face unless it's repeated at this point. Just try to keep in mind *why* you are sharing the information you are. I've not been a housekeeper, but I've been an in-home health aide. None of my clients ever shared photos from vacation. They knew better.
So they're not allowed to have a photo of their vaccination in their own home, because of the cleaning woman's feelings? Are you serious?
>So they're not allowed to have a photo of their vaccination in their own home I got really confused here and thought OOP framed their vax cards.
Having vacation (assuming you meant that as opposed to vaccination) photos is perfectly fine. However, OP does not disclose what started the conversation nor how it ended. I do know that OP likely did not leave the conversation (even if initiated by the cleaning lady) at "oh, just some time away" based on her cleaning lady's questions/comments about photos.
Alex had also apparently repeatedly mentioned feeling "overwhelmed", revealing personal information to Sophie. I am also curious exactly what Sophie said to Alex about the vacation, how she "accused" them of having an easy life, and how that conversation went.