I have met many people over the course of my life. Having a wide and varied resume in the service industry including hospitality, retail, bartending, food and beverage service, and ultimately cleaning houses. They run the gamut from sedate to fully insane. I’m not kidding.
In the usual vocations of public-facing service work, we’ve all heard and experienced bits from every kind of customer. But doing work as a housecleaner, you meet people in their sanctuary–their homes–and I can honestly say that I saw people as they really are.
I worked for a hoarder whose elderly father hired me to help her. Her house was so cluttered that she literally had to climb up into her bedroom and onto her mattress which lay over a 4-6 foot pile of stuff.
Conversely, I worked for a very kind, and very self-aware, woman with OCD. I could never get things quite clean enough. She hired and fired me a few times but at the last she had concluded that it was her and not us. “It’s an illness. And I hate it.” she said.
Most everyone else is blurred into obscurity as part of the job. But there are a few who stole my heart.
As a cleaner it’s really hard to not feel personally involved with some clients. It’s usually the ones that were home while I was there cleaning. They would chit-chat with me as I scrubbed the kitchen or dusting the living room.
Patsy was one of those clients. She was a sweet Southern belle from North Carolina who had come to Colorado to live near her daughter (who was a friend of mine). I worked for Patsy sometime during the 2008-2010 recession. She had a number of health issues that finally prevented her from keeping her own tiny house which, as a Southerner, she was mortally embarrassed about.
I always tried to make her the last house of my day in case we got carried away talking and giggling. Left alone, I could get through her place in just over an hour. If she was home, it took two or sometimes three hours. We always had things to talk about–cooking, our children, men, and politics.
Patsy, though Southern, was a died-in-the-wool Democrat. She loved and believed in people and was kind to everyone–until they crossed her. She could slay with her sugar-coated drawl and and razor-blade words–without a single profanity–while she smiled and tilted her head charmingly. Then she’d make her exit without a backward glance.
My very favorite Patsy story was when she said she overheard “two old biddies” (as she called them) talking at a nearby table in a restaurant complaining about how “all those immigrants just come up here and take all the jobs!” Patsy got up from her table and went over to them and asked,
“Excuse me. What job did they take that you wanted?”
The women were aghast! Flustered they asked her to repeat the question. And she did, then she walked back to her own seat and sat back down.
Every time I think of that story, I want to stand up and cheer!
She was really smart–something the men of her generation never acknowledged or… let her get away with. She dutifully, as Southern women often have, stayed in line. Something, I daresay, she sometimes deeply regretted, but given her era, it was probably best for her safety.
Eventually, the altitude of the town she lived in was causing her health to decline further and she was forced to move back to North Carolina where the rest of her family still resided. I asked her daughter about her frequently who kept me abreast of Patsy’s shenanigans. I also friended her on Facebook, though she didn’t post often.
She so inspired me that I named the main character of my first cozy mystery* book after her because of her spunk and sass. In the book, Patsy Taylor is a housecleaner who is inadvertently left to settle the affairs of her dear friend and client who passes unexpectedly due to cancer. Her friend was a career civil servant who was financially savvy and had no children or known heirs. Patsy catches two police officers trespassing in her friend’s house and sets about to find out who the dirty cops are.
Sadly, Ms. Patsy died just this past week. She was well into her 90’s and still sassy. She will live in my heart forever and is deeply missed.
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*Just a Housecleaner is available only on Kindle Vella until it’s published in Spring 2024. Watch this site for a release date.
AWill Writing 