This is the one that got it all started.
Not once, but twice I have encountered my well meaning but basically inept cleaning lady carmen on her way out the door reeking of my scented lotion and/or perfume.
I am not mistaken.
I have an absurdly accurate sense of smell and always have. In boarding school, if my roommate had eaten tuna at lunch, I would return to our room several hours later after crew practice and be able to identify the scent as I entered. Just a few weeks ago, I tracked down an unused veggie burger we had brought along to a fundraiser bbq in the event that my 9.5 year old vegetarian daughter needed a dinner option. They offered veggie burgers, we never used it so it fermented in a backpack in my husband Tim's closet for about 5 days while I steamed about his obsessive running and it's resultant smelly shoes. OK, so maybe these aren't the best examples of my olfactory prowess, but take it as truth, I can smell things.
Here's the rub with carmen. without her, our apartment would devolve into abject squalor. with her, it's a sort of clean and often disorganized place that on monday and thursday afternoons looks half decent. The trick is that on tuesday mornings and friday mornings we inhabit a world of some sort of sick clothing musical chairs. tim cannot find his running shorts, mary's underwear is in annie's drawers (mary is 5 and weighs in at 40 pounds, annie it 9 and having started life at 10+ pounds, tops the percentile charts). Annie's light blue "girls rock" t shirt is in tim's drawer and I could swear that my lace hanky panky thong ended up with mary's carters one time. And it's not really that clean. The toaster oven always has crumbs under it and the fridge handles are still sticky and the dust is appalling. and I could go on and on. but she makes a big point of chatting on the phone whenever I am at home working to her son or daughter or someone who needs money and has some sort of crisis, and when my friend up the block fired her, she sobbed. I just cannot bring myself to do it.
I put this dilemma on facebook and got something close to 35 pieces of advice about what to do. off of facebook, people have sent emails with similar stories - the "it could be worse" scenario of someone who's bed smelled like their nanny's perfume at the end of the day. ugh. give her the same perfume for christmas with a note saying "I noticed you like mine". purchase stunt perfumes from the pharmacy and put them on the dresser on the days she comes. or, just say something. this last option, of course, is not possible in my world. last monday, I was leaving (late, naturally) for a meeting downtown and carmen came in to take out the approximately 70 pounds of laundry that had appeared over the weekend as I was putting cover up under my eyes. A stronger person might have said "carmen, which one is your favorite?" and made a sweeping gesture over the silver tray with the perfume bottles on my bureau. Not me. I just went on about my business.
I think I will just make sure I am not home when she's on her way out.
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