Comments

1
Spot on advice from Dan. Not sure what NOTE's friend is thinking. This guy obviously went searching for anything "interesting" in NOTE's apartment. Odds are looking under the bed wasn't the only space he searched. He probably looked in draws and closets too, so NOTE should make sure nothing is missing or out of place.

NOTE mentioned that this guy knew where her spare key was kept. If that is somewhere this guy could have access, then NOTE should change her lock and find a new location to store the key.
2
NOTE needs to get a keyless lock system like August or Kevo which can grant and revoke access privileges or, even, remote lock and unlock her door herself. There's no excuse to leave a spare key outside for strangers to access any more.

Even with that, though, the entire concept about letting a revolving stream of random strangers in my house to clean seems icky, dangerous and downright inefficient.
3
Oh look, the old "But the poor creeper will get fired because of your prudishness!" move. I regret to say I fell for it last June, the most recent time I was sexually harassed by someone in their workplace. Double regret because that someone was a TSA agent, but god damn I needed to get the hell away and onto my flight. Men's income > women's safety, every time.
4
I've been a house cleaner, independent, and I think the one thing any client should be able to count on is that nothing in their place gets opened unless they give the cleaner permission or directions to open it. "Look under the kitchen sink" does not mean "pull open the dresser and see if it's at the back of the second drawer". It's one thing to pull things out from under a bed to vacuum and then put them back, UNOPENED, and quite another to pull them out, fish around in them, leave suggestive notes, and do a follow-up. That shit's unethical and scary. LW should change her locks immediately and also change where she keeps a spare key for cleaners. Better yet, she should find a regular cleaning person she trusts and no rely on a revolving/random selection from a booking service. Yeesh.
5
I have to agree NOTE's "friend" is an asshole, and probably votes Republican if he made that kind of an argument. Kick his ass to the curb, and let him know that he should probably DIAF. I swear it's men like him that make the rest of us look bad.
6
The note is what makes it creepy; one thing to organize, but leaving a suggestive note? yuck

But I'm with @2 - right now, everyone who ever cleaned the place knows where the key is. When you have someone different every month, that's really unsafe. Get a box at least where you can change the code and put the key in the box.

But there is no way I'd want someone different every month. Are they bonded by the cleaning company or are they independent contractors? do they have insurance?

I use a cleaning company that has employees; usually the same one comes to my house each time and knows what to do - and what not to do - and if someone new is sent they are trained on my house. "Uber for cleaners" sounds really horrible.
7
Ditto @2, Get a keyless, programmable lock that allows you to issue temporary access. Side benefit, you'll never accidentally lock yourself out of your house again.

File a police report. Even though nothing will happen, you'll be on record in case this idiot comes around again. People without boundaries ought not be working in these types of jobs. Don't feel the least bit bad about reporting him to his employer.

Tell your so-called friend to fuck off. He's an idiot.
8
The kind of people who would get a cleaner fired for creepy snooping are the same ones who think Henry Kissinger should be indicted for bombing all those Cambodians. Who's next? Do you really want to live in a world where every raper and war crimer and Hitlerer is held to account? Where does that end?
9
The cleaning guy is a creep. The friend is an asshole. That is all.
10
@8, lol

I used to clean houses for a living. I did not need to be told how to use discretion, because I'm not a creep. The condom in the trash bin, the poopy underpants in the teenager's laundry (I did everything, including laundry), the semen-encrusted sheets. All these things were cleaned up and never mentioned. And if a client told me to leave the door to the third bedroom shut (and if there were no weird/scary noises coming from inside), I left it shut.
This guy goes beyond every boundary and should be fired immediately. God, I am so creeped out...
The "tidying" of the sex toys! And the note!!! ewwww
11
Good advice from Dan and everyone except that LW should call police.
What a creepy situation.
12
LW needs to fire her friend.
13
And yay "disruptive" new business models! Who needs bonds or insurance or background checks or benefits or any of that bullshit liberal regulation stuff! It's the Wild West all over again! When's your IPO? Are you a unicorn yet? What could go wrong?
14
IOW, Dan nailed this answer.
15
I fail to understand how filing a police report, is a waste of time. Isn't not bothering to do so actually promoting "today's rape culture"?
16
Don't get an August. It's terrible technology. Returned mine within two weeks. Was never sure it was actually locking the door, which is a real problem for a remote lock.
17
I have no idea what your friend is on about. It's not being 'sex negative' to freak out about a complete stranger violating your privacy. You didn't ask him to sort the sex toys. He didn't stumble on them by accident, he had to WORK to get them. You're not 'wrong' for wanting your housekeep to keep out of your dildos. Ditch the service and the friends.
18
Yeah if she stays friends with that guy, dollars to donuts within the year he's going to be telling her that refusing to have sex with him is actually very sex negative, and also not exactly feminist.
19
This is what happens when you try to save a little bit of cash. NOTE, spend the extra and hire a regular cleaner you know you can trust to respect your privacy.
20
Also, no one has mentioned this, but NOTE needs to directly tell Mr Creepy Cleaner that what he did was unacceptable and that she'll be reporting him to the service and the police. He needs to be told he was out of line, even if the service and/or police do nothing about it.
21
@6 "one thing to organize," yeah, no, it is still creepy to organise the sex toys - only people with some form of developmental disorder would struggle to see that some things are by default private unless a direct invitation is made.
22
@9: An asshole and also likely a creep.
23
@21: I don't know a ton about Autism but I'm fairly certain that it doesn't amount to also leaving notes that suggest you know what the person is into afterwards after you violate their trust and safety.
24
@20

I don't think she should contact him at all, except maybe to reply tersely one time that he may not contact her again if he does, period. Anything else kind of invites further questions and explanations about what he really meant or how sorry he is or why she is being so weird about things and so forth.
25
@15
Agree with you.
Totally don't understand accuracy or logic of
"(They suggested I file a police report, but in today's rape culture, how in the hell would THAT help?)"

Anyone can explain that one? Like no one cares about rape? (Seriously?)
26
Yikes, LW, you need to reconsider your idea of what a friend is. That dude/dudette who told you all that BS is NOT YOUR FRIEND!

Listen to Dan and previous posters, change your locks, put up a security camera for a little while, so if the creepy creep ever comes by you'll have enough to get a restraining order. Get a PERMANENT cleaner, the robbing-the-poor-and-desperate parasites who run Uber et al. will NOT vet the people they send to your home, since that would cost money!

Meet with your house cleaner, ask for their references, call and talk to the references and make sure that they are real (and not just friends of the cleaners). DON'T EVER LEAVE YOUR KEY OUTSIDE!!! Leave a spare key with a neighbor or friend you trust, and maybe schedule your cleaner to come just before you leave for work so you can let them in, and put a lock on your door that they can lock automatically when they leave without a key. Do this until you get to know your cleaner better. Tell the cleaner that you don't want them to bring anyone else into your home. Fire them immediately if you find them going through your drawers, desks, computers,
closets, medicine cabinet etc.

Trust yourself, not your "friend". You DON'T have to be GGG and sex positive to random creepy creeps !!!
27
For people saying to file a police report--what law did he break? The guy's an absolute creep and should be fired, but I'm not sure what he did broke any laws.
28
@4 -- Absolutely correct. It is just common sense. I used to clean motel rooms. You would clean the room, move the luggage around, but you sure as hell didn't open the suitcases. Same thing here.

I think the friend missed the main point. It isn't about what was in the box -- it was the fact that the house cleaner was snooping around. What if what was in there was old, sentimental pictures. It's none of you business creep -- it is a closed box, don't open it.

It would have been different if the sex toys were just sitting on a shelf next to the bed. A little tidying up (without the creepy note) would have been just fine. Some might have found that out of line (don't touch my sex toys!). That would be a case where the friend would be right (relax, it is just a vibrator) but this is very much different. He violated her privacy when he opened the box. The fact that he took it a step further shows a wanton disregard for her privacy. She did the right thing and her friend is just wrong.
29
Before you 'delete' the full-of-shit friend ... (about whom I fully agree with Dan on this) ... you could perhaps try to education him on what 'violation' and 'safety' and even, oh I don't know, 'respect' mean. If he doesn't take these ideas receptively, then delete him. But try education first. You could start from a first-person perspective that "these actions" cause you to "feel unsafe". If he is deaf to these things, he's likely a dangerous person... he is maintaining rape culture (although the word 'rape' might be too inflammatory in this context and he might shut down completely if you tell him he's that. But he still is.)

Mister Sexy Cleaner is a full-on creep and person you are completely right to be creeped out by. Ye gods. Your friend is full of shit.

This "Uber for Hoovers" sounds like a perfect way for freaks to invade people's personal space. Best not to be on the front lines of new technology... digital, or social.
Also, hide your house key in a new location, obvs. And good luck finding a reliable and considerate housecleaning service.
30
@8 - haha!
@20 - Yes. Direct confrontation is important in this society. Something that is strangely lacking in some ways. The impact is longer-lasting (IMHO), even if not immediately apparent.
@24 - If the creep says ANYTHING in reply, simply ignore him. Do it via throwaway email address, alternate phone number. You can email-to-text.msg. Various options.
31
@29 - Ahem: "try to educate him.."
And by "freaks" I mean "true gross perverts"... I misused the term. We freaks need to stick together for sex-positivity and cultural liberation.
32
Wonder what the note said.
33
I wonder if the friend would have felt differently if the cleaner had left a note inside a box of financial records saying, "Hey, since you have such a sweet nest egg how about you take me on a trip?" I mean, if you won't show everyone your bank statements you must be ashamed, right? It's funny to see how quickly people swing from "anyone who uses networks to store private sexual content deserves to be hacked and exposed" to "hacking and exposing my financial data is wrong". Maybe this is a similar case.
34
But does he do windows?
35
@34

Probably--with her sex toys.
36
I can't decide whether he's a thief or not, because it would take an exceptionally stupid thief to leave a note saying, "Hey, I went through your most private stuff." But it should be clear that he ransacked your whole place for interesting materiel. Neatly, to be sure, but nonetheless, you can be quite sure he went through everything. You probably better look for missing valuables.

Might be wise to look for cameras, too.

Friend is a moron, and needs an intervention. Even discounting (purely for the sake of argument) the possibility of the cleaner guy being a predator, leaving a suggestive note for your client is incredibly unprofessional and astronomically out of bounds for a cleaning service. That's true even if he leaves it on the dining room table, let alone tucked neatly into your stash of intimate gear. So what if the poor, hapless prankster got fired? Awww, poor him. He deserves to be fired, instantly. Also as much public shaming as you can heap on him, to save other victims from his bullshit. He needs to find a different line of business.
37
caution&daring @25, I think the point of citing "rape culture" is that if she filed a police report she would face the police questioning and scolding her while the jerk would face no consequences. The incident would be seen as her fault for making poor choices.
38
Here's what's rape culture: A man with the assumption that any woman who has sex with someone, a woman who is sexual in any way including privately, must automatically want to have sex with him. Some rape-culturey men make exceptions for women who belong to other men, i.e. are married. Some don't.

BiDan brings up an interesting point. If NOTE tells Creepy Cleaner that what he did was unacceptable, would that be an educational move, a strike against rape culture, or would Creepy Cleaner see that as a challenge, "oh look, she's interested in me enough to write!"? I'm considering it might be seen as the former, but my fear of the latter is great enough for me not to recommend it.

If the friend defending Creepy Cleaner were female, I'd say she's the one who stands to be educated-- with the caveat that what the guy did was creepily inappropriate, not prosecutably rape. Since the friend is male, I'd give one more go at explanation, then drop the friendship.

(This is sent by Crinoline. I'm not sure why posts from that account are no longer showing up. I've signed in again, now as Fichu.)
39
Rape culture is that it's so hard to come forward about rape, so much harder than that to get a case to trial, and so much harder even than that to get a prosecution, that rape is de facto legal. If you can get away with something upwards of 95% of the time it might as well be legal. The criminal justice system does not treat rape as a crime in any meaningful sense, and indeed, I'd argue that it's not equipped to do so. That minor change in perspective a few decades ago from viewing rape as a property offence against someone's husband or father to seeing rape as a traumatic violation of consent has never been fully processed by our police or judicial system. Nothing that occurs in that system is at all useful to anyone who's been sexually harassed, assaulted or raped, and nor is it intended to be.
40
@26: "...the robbing-the-poor-and-desperate parasites who run Uber et al. will NOT vet the people they send to your home, since that would cost money!"

Uber runs background checks on all of its employees. Yes, background checks cost money, but so do lawsuits.
41
Interesting note in the letter: "I saw no reviews in the app..."

Not to Monday-morning quarterback, but I would have left a review before deleting the app. A single one-star "OMG this weirdo left a love note by my vibrator! " would go a long way toward preventing repeat incidents.
42
@39 (thene): "If you can get away with something upwards of 95% of the time it might as well be legal."

The most common reason rape doesn't end in conviction is because it isn't reported to the police in the first place.
43
@42 - I've never known anyone who's reported a rape or sexual assault and not regretted it deeply.
44
Sexual issues aside, the idea of random strangers with access to your home, and plenty of time to check it out privately, seems a bad one. He tidied your sex toys - did he also copy down the number from your credit card bills? Your passport? This whole thing seems like a really terrible way to get a clean house.
45
I'm only a lawyer in California and I'm not trying to dole out real legal advise, but I suspect that what this "cleaner" did actually was a crime. The suggestive note and the rearranging of the sex toys will likely be understood as a sexual threat. Simply being invited into a home doesn't give someone carte blanche to go through things. If this was in the recent past, she might want to consider contacting the police. I do criminal defense work and it's awkward for me to suggest contacting law enforcement generally, but someone with boundaries that poor will likely escalate over time. If she feels comfortable telling the story a couple of times, it might be worth it.
46
Brash young man, who things all women are like the ones he sees in porn.
Always gagging for it.
47
ClashFan @27: How about sexual harassment?

For those who are wondering what "today's rape culture" has to do with why she won't report the crime to police, what @37 said. "Rape culture" means that there's an assumption the victim deserved it somehow, that their story (genderless pronoun intentional) is always suspect, that they possibly enjoyed it, and that anything short of stranger-in-a-dark-alley violent attacks are at least partly the victim's fault. (And sometimes even those -- we've all heard "she shouldn't have been walking by herself at night" and similar victim-blaming excuses.) "Today's rape culture" suggests LW does not believe her report will be taken seriously, so why bother. And the sad thing is that she's probably right. But she should still make the report so the police have a record of it, in case this creep does something even worse in future.
48
The wisest course of action would be to change the locks and get a reliable dependable, person to clean - not a service that sends randos. Lay the ground rules on what is to be cleaned versus what is to be left alone. (i.e. clean the kitchen and bathroom, dust and vacuum everything else.) And while I wouldn't go so far as to lock up the toy box, I would secure any personal data that might be lying about (bank statements, business cards, extra checks, etc - although most of those are on computers these days) and put a password on the computer. It's a big deal to let someone in your house, particularly when you're not there.
49
It's not JUST that he cleaned up her box of toys (which would have required work to find) and that he left her a note, it's that he messaged her directly with his contact information. Along with the first two, it's all but impossible to see this as anything other than him soliciting her for sex.

Somebody I hire to do a job, be it fixing the plumbing or cleaning or what have you, will find their ass fired and a terrible review on Yelp, Angie's List, and every other service I can think of.

LW, was the friend who gave you that awful advice a cishet man? I bet it was. It's not as common for straight cis men to have creepers come on to them as it is for women of all stripes to have men come on to them. He's talking from the point of view of somebody who never had anything like that happen to him, therefore, stop being such a prude! If it's not somebody you want to kick to the curb over that, show him Dan's response and this string of letters and show that it's not just you who thinks what the cleaner did is creepy, inappropriate, terrifying, and gross, AND, if he brings it up again, shut the conversation down. Otherwise, yeah, DTMFA.

Finally: things just like this are 50% of why I refuse to use Uber, Lyft, AirBNB, or other such apps. The other 50%, of course, being that they are rent-seeking parasites.
50
@27: I'm pretty sure that a law being broken is not a requirement for filing a police report. Having something like this on record could help the police identify a trend (possibly toward something worse) if he continues this behavior, rather than his next incident being seen as an isolated act of poor judgment.

Maybe the police will only humor the LW and promptly throw it out, but that's up to their judgment, not hers.
51
slinky@49 I'm a cis man and personal experience or not, anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that what this prick did was way over the line. You don't personally have to be screwed by a gorilla to realize that it probably wouldn't be a pleasant experience (apologies to all you gorilla fetishists.)

And, for everyone railing against Uber etcetera, Technology often forces survival of the fittest, sometimes with unfortunate social fallout. I'm sure there were a lot of scribes pissed at Gutenberg when he invented the printing press, just as horse people were all up in arms when the automobile came along. Adapt or die.
52
@29: Someone that smug isn't likely to listen to reason. Do nothing or distance yourself from them, but they don't need "lessons" from persons they feel better than.

@30: Direct confrontation is also overrated and works a lot better in persons' heads in fantasy scenarios.

I'm never a passive-aggressive person, just a realist. When persons are broken and patronizing or otherwise not good for me, I just expect less from them in the future. I can't make them less shitty.
53
@51: "And, for everyone railing against Uber etcetera, Technology often forces survival of the fittest, sometimes with unfortunate social fallout. I'm sure there were a lot of scribes pissed at Gutenberg"

Yes, and every quack is just like Einstein or Gallileo.

Your analogy is quite poor.

"Disruptive" tech industries are deregulationist and anticonsumer, antilabor. If you're fine with that, great, but don't pretend that these startups should be welcomed without additional concerns being addressed.
54
I too want to know what the note said, and whether the content of the note is what made her friend say she was being sex negative.

She says it was sexually suggestive, and we have to take her word on that. In which case the guy was a creep. But, what if the note was something like "i find these types of toys are best used with XXX lube or YYY oil." With the addition of the "late night" text, it's still creepy.

NOTE, most good cleaners move furniture when they clean. I hired one once and they cleaned under EVERYTHING. I can think of a few situations where an unlocked box would spill open. Next time you hire a cleaner, either tell them not to clean under your bed or take your toys with you.

Is still kinda bad. But, I want to know why her friend is all "that wasn't terrible." Bevause if it was as bad as she says it was, it is bad.
55
And yea for @13's comment. some things (many things?) should not be uber-ized; cleaning is one of them. Get a cleaning company that pays its workers full time wages and benefits, that has insurance and is bonded, and that you know you can trust.
56
If this guy was going to rape her, why leave clues? If he knew where the key was, better to avoid suspicion, so he could sneak back one night.
This guy is deluded. About women. Leant about them from Porn.
57
@42: And why do you think it is that people don't report it?

LW: If your major city happens to be Chicago I can recommend a stellar cleaning lady. Small businesswomen running her own company, not being paid a subhuman wage by some tech douche. Plus, I never knew that really clean tiles feel like silk on your feet before I hired her!
58
@38: I had to reset my password after Slog's recent server update. Your problem may have something to do with that.
59
How did he get her phone number???
60
I echo the suggestion that you get a regular cleaning service. Even if the crew assigned is not always the same, they are bonded and insured, and the company supervises them and values you as a client and so will listen to you if you have a complaint. Like anything else that is a repeating service, you just get better service if you have a little bit of a personal relationship. Even the shop that services my car treats me a little bit better because I am a regular customer. And that is a lot less personal than letting someone into your home!
61
@51...yep. My point was, in my experience (as a cishet woman), if somebody is going to give you a bullshit answer like that, it's a cishet man. Gay men and trans men understand what it means to have somebody holding a hammer over your head like that (outing and violence, including sexual violence).

Notice I didn't use the phrase "common sense." There exist plenty of cishet men like yourself who have more than half a teaspoon of critical thinking skills and empathy and understand. There also exist more than plenty who do not, or who, like the hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-friend, have critical thinking skills but just cannot connect the dots about how predatory people can simultaneously never bother them AND be a huge threat to other people. I spent the better part of 6 weeks in December and January educating one such person, a coworker, about sexism, discrimination in the workplace, and cultural mores that contribute to both still exist in 2016. It wasn't until he had blatant, irrefutable evidence of sexism in his face where he could see it and where everybody else could see it that he was willing to admit it existed. He is a very intelligent, very sharp minded individual and it took a metaphorical hit over the head with a hammer to believe the women telling him something.

As for Uber, Lyft, etc, I know that with a taxi driver I have some risk. I also have somebody who is licensed, bonded, carries insurance to make sure I'll get fixed up if we're in a wreck, and where I have a fighting chance of getting some legal recompense if something goes wrong. I also know that if I call a cab, I'll pay a set fare, where it can't jump once I'm booked, and where I have a way of identifying who will be driving me. There is a reason all those things exist. There are some things about getting the medallions that need to change (cost, barriers to entry, etc), BUT, again, effectively setting up a guild happened for a reason.

The sharing economy has its advantages. It also makes itself much less expensive by taking out the safeguards and stopgaps that other industries put into place for a darn good reason.
62
56- "If this guy is going to rape her, why leave clues?"

Because rape is about instilling fear, not about getting sex without being caught. True, actual physical rape would instill even more fear, but this guy might be satisfied (for the moment) just with the idea that he's made a woman deeply uncomfortable while thinking about him, and he's getting off on that.
63
@62: And it's something terrible that he might be able to legally get away with as well, so long as he's not directly threatening life or property.
64
@62.he's a psycho, then. Leaving clues to his intent, his mobile no so police can find him, and he loses his work over it.
It is creepy, I agree with everyone here on that. I just read him as supremely arrogant, rather than dangerous.
65
Lava @64: I agree. I don't this guy is a rapist, at least I don't think his plan was to lay some groundwork so he could come back and rape LW later. I just think he's a horny dude without any clue whatsoever about what appropriate boundaries are.
Does this mean he's also the sort of dude who's likely to not take "no" for an answer when he is on a date? Almost certainly. Which is why it's useful for the police to have his name on file.
66
I don't think she should "confront" the creeper; further contacts is probably the opposite of what she wants, and I don't see it leading anywhere good.

She should file a police report, though, even though it in itself won't be taken seriously, if it's the first one the guy has. The cops basically won't take that kind of thing seriously until the third or fourth time they get a report from different people, but then they do. No reason not to start the process. And for all you know, maybe the guy already has a string of complaints against him, and this will be the one that makes them take some kind of action.

But even worst-case, it'll mean they'll already have a note with his name on it next time someone makes a complaint.

And she should do what she can to get him fired, because holy shit, that's not someone who should be allowed into people's homes.
67
@64: " I just read him as supremely arrogant, rather than dangerous."

Immediately? Perhaps not. But certainly potentially. I mean, this is not the only person who has a "box". Consider how many persons he's done this to.
68
I'm unclear why this "friend" of LW's is advocating for some stranger's cleaning gig at the expense of her security.

Seems like this friend has it ass-backwards, and I don't think it's LW's job to "educate" this person (the friend, not the creepy cleaner) about Personal Boundaries 101. She's already got this whole gross situation to deal with and is probs pretty busy to begin with, hence the housecleaning, right? Unless this friend is super important for unmentioned reasons, I wouldn't invest the time in explaining to them that this cleaner was being creepy and gross, and that their initial reaction was to normalize and minimize something that isn't normal.
69
Agree with all. Change your locks; don't store a key outside of your apartment; stop using the über for Hoovers and get a bonded regular cleaner or service; did I say change your locks? CHANGE YOUR LOCKS!; dump the jerk of a friend; keep a hidden motion-activated nanny-cam in your apartment in an area that all must pass through; AND remember that you can't be too cautious. Prepare for a worse case scenario. You can't anticipate every undesired outcome for having unattended stranger(s) entering your home but at least you can have some semblance of peace of mind.
70
@68: Some people just have a "WELL, ACTUALLY" patronizing Devils advocacy where they go out of their way to fixate on less defensible positions. it's a masking insecurity with feigned superiority thing.
72
@71: The difference is immediately apparent whether someone is driving a conversation in interesting ways or explaining a concept and just being a puerile shithead. They're not even a pseudoskeptic. #notalldevilsadvocates
73
And this particular scenario wasn't an opportunity to show empathy for either party, they just snarked that someone who had their privacy violated through sexual harassment was "sex negative".

Can you not see the rather tangible difference in the letter?
74
I think it is natural for a housecleaner person to go "under the bed" - they clean stuff that most people forget to clean all the time, after all. I think leaving a "note" about it was completely, totally out of line however. Arranging/tidying something and then being discreet about it is like the gold-standard of housekeepers. Of course they're finding your porn stash, lube supply, etc; part of their job is to keep their mouths shut about it.

Also agreed, the "sex-negative" talk is inane, just because you don't want to fuck in public doesn't mean you are sex negative.
75
In addition to reaching out to loca media, LW should be sure to leave a negative review in the relevant app stores. The service may not be fully to blame and background checks may not have turned anything up on this guy but a little pressure on the service is deserved.
76
@70, I just copied and pasted this comment to my memo pad, so I can enjoy it again. I had a friend who was married to a "Well Actually.." person for many years and other than "asshole" I couldn't figure out how to define what was happening every time we had a discussion. Thank you!
77
I 'm pretty sure I know which app this lady is talking about, because I am an "independent contractor" for it. (We don't just do cleaning, by the way, but all sorts of stuff. Check out my profile at...just kidding.) It's company policy that any employee who hits on their clients or tries to arrange a business transaction with them without going through the app gets terminated. So I hope they fired this guy. If this lady is in California (where I am), she should be aware of a state supreme court ruling which decided that Uber drivers are employees and not, in fact, independent contractors. If she hires a cleaner and they behave inappropriately, she should react exactly the way you would if a waiter felt you up: by going to their boss and telling them what happened. Good on her for doing that anyway. With any luck, this cleaner is no longer employed by the app. I'm sorry this lady had this experience. I've cleaned people's houses before, and I would never go open anything or root through their belongings without their express permission.
78
I just want to break this down: There's an app on your phone whereby you search unverifiable profiles of total strangers. These strangers, whom you never meet, are given full access to your home when you are not there. And they leave before your return. You don't know where they live, or who they really are. And the thing you are worried about is he saw your butt plug and hit on you? Wow, someone should tell rapists and murderers and thieves about this! If they only knew how much time they could save, what, with the stalking and breaking and entering!

Then, because this is 2016, we have to worry about the feelings and financial well being of the total stranger you gave your house key to who then organized your buried sex box. (And by the way, you don't need to bury your sex box. It's your home. If kids find the sex box you say, "These are my private, adult things, and your parents will be glad to tell you all about things like this.")

Topping it all off, (Trigger Warning!) confusion over what is a crime and what is not a crime. No, it is not a crime to organize sex toys for someone who gave you a key to their house. Nor is it a crime to leave a suggestive note for said person. It is not a crime to text that someone. And it's not a crime to make that someone feel funny inside and grossed out. And thank the gods for that because I am grossed out and feel funny quite a bit.

Like babes in the woods...
79
And by the way, I don't believe that friend exists except in the mind of this advice seeker. This is their alter ego self being confused.
80
Creep spotted.
81
And @79, what is this psychobabble gibberish? If you're trying to appear superior to others you should probably make some fucking sense.
82
Seriously, if you're more worried about what is explicitly legal versus what is right you're a pretty bad person.
83
spot on advice except this IS an act that was made permissible in that man's mind by rape culture. rape culture doesn't just mean women have to fear being raped, it also means that women fear their bodies, personal space, and sexuality being encroached upon by people who feel entitled to them. and that is sadly the culture.
84
@78: "No, it is not a crime to organize sex toys for someone who gave you a key to their house. Nor is it a crime to leave a suggestive note for said person. It is not a crime to text that someone. And it's not a crime to make that someone feel funny inside and grossed out."

No, but all of the above are a stellar way to go out of business in a goddamned hurry, because all of the above, while arguably not illegal, make your customers loathe you. For good reason. It's slimy as hell.

Are you the contractor, or the friend?

85
Nah, they're just some basement-dwelling loser.
86
Holy shit. I didn't have time to read all the comments, so I'm sure this has already been said, but PLEASE stop using this service or anything like it. I am very sorry for what happened to LW, and do not mean to chide her for having been put through this creepiness, but from a business standpoint (I run my own one-woman cleaning biz) these services are not saving you any money or doing you any favors. Ask friends and colleagues, find someone who's had a trustworthy, independent cleaner for months or years. Most of my work comes from word-of-mouth reference, if I fuck up one house I put my entire livelihood at risk. I don't so much as open a bathroom drawer without permission. And please change your locks. Maybe, once you find a cleaner you trust, provide them with a key and don't have a spare out where anyone could get to it. Oh, and your friend's a dillhole. Yuck!

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