And the award for biggest coward goes to...

ME! Yay me!

So here's the situation. For my birthday my fabulous husband made the offer of paying for a housekeeper for a year to help manage the terrible state of the house. Now on one level this is a self serving gift, but who the hell cares, I was getting a housekeeper!!!

Our first hire was a very nice lady who came once or twice then seemed to disappear. She was impossible to get ahold of and I guess didn't check phone messages and kind of assumed she'd been fired after rescheduling our cleaning one too many times. Fine, she was a bit flakey, but the house had looked great after he cleaning. I was sad to see her go, but frustrated enough to quit trying to track her down and hire someone else.

Our second hire was a cleaning service, from what I can tell the entire service is made up of a man and his wife. They are very nice, but she speaks very little English, and he can be a bit brusque. At first they did a great job, then I started noticing they were slacking off a bit. I moved a chair in the living room and was nearly robbed at knife-point by a dust bunny the size of a small wildebeast. The kitchen floor didn't appear to be swept under the overhang of the cabinets, and other small things started dropping off the "wow, that's clean" list.

These changes were bad enough, but then we started a nanny share at our house, and our nanny was home during the day. She actually interacts with the cleaners and has not been a happy camper. I guess they don't like to be asked to keep it down for a sleeping baby, and generally don't like to be disturbed while working.

So we've come to the point now that I want to find someone else, but my cowardly side rears it's pathetic head. I hate upsetting people, and I really hate firing people. I should really just suck it up and do it. For the price we pay for our weekly service they surely can't be living on our payment alone. They also show up in a HUGE brand spankin' new Mercedes, so they probably aren't hurting too bad. And still, I can't just call them up, ask them to return the key and give them their last paycheck. instead I sit here, wallowing in my cowardice in my moderately dirty house, completely dissatisfied with a service I am paying for on a weekly basis.

And for this, I award myself the "biggest coward award".