As I stated yesterday, when I introduced myself a little, I am a cleaner and not a manager of a cleaning company or anything relating to ownership of a company, though I'm sure I'm as welcome here as everyone else. Its good to see what is happening in other cleaning companies and the advice being offered.....but now I am in need of your advice.
I currently work with two young ladies. We work two hours a night cleaning some site offices. There is no supervisor on site, in fact there is no one from the cleaning company to report to unless we contact them via the telephone and rarely do we see anyone from the company. Any cleaning products we need we notify the 'site' that we clean and they supply the 'goods'.
We've been working together for over a month, we all started the job at the same time since the previous cleaners left stating it was too much for them. We all get on well but the younger one appears to be there for some other purpose other than cleaning and myself and my work colleague do not know how to deal with the situation.
When we first started we simply mucked in together. The younger girl (who I shall call Liz) often arrives late - 5 minutes - rarely on time. It also appears that myself and work colleague carry Liz, rarely does she simply muck in and often needs telling as to what needs doing. Liz often makes comments about wanting to go home or simply having aches and pains. She'll often start a task and then leaves it only to be completed by either myself or colleague. We have tried all we can to help her yet it doesn't help when she has had no previous cleaning experience before. I could go on about her mobile phone usage whilst working and other issues but it'd be far too long.
Within our first week Liz enquired as to whether she could get the sack for being pregnant. Since myself and colleague have little knowledge about employment law, simple commonsense told us that she couldn't which we stated to her. We thought nothing more about it until a day or so after when Liz told us that she was pregnant. This triggered thoughts in my mind, as it did my colleague when we heard the news. Liz simply stated it as fact rather than sharing some happy news. We tried to congratulate her but it was difficult because it felt like a pretence.
Days have gone by and she'll often make comments about her pregnancy. Sometimes it would appear to be sudden statements as if to let those around her, in the site office, hear about it. Obviously with this news we don't treat her any differently and she still is made to mop the floors and scrub the toilets as we do. My work colleague has believed for sometime that Liz had known she was pregnant before starting this job, I to have come to this conclusion and its odd that we're both having the same thoughts/assumptions even before discussing them with each other. Something just doesn't appear right with Liz.
Last week Liz told my 'colleague' that she tried taking her previous employer to court accusing them of sacking her because she was pregnant. We both still don't know the full facts other than this statement. She does have a baby of 18 months and hasn't worked since the birth of her daughter until now.
Obviously hearing this news we both have decided that she may be up to her same tricks again, perhaps hoping to gain compensation from our employer. She certainly has no interest in her work so we're clearly concerned. The company we work for is fairly new, though over a year old it clearly has a lot to learn. Myself and work colleague are also conerned for our jobs since this company could not survive this form of issue/situation.
How should we deal with this situation? Should we approach our boss and warn him of what we have been told. We're also unhappy that we're having to 'carry' Liz and it'll get worst when her pregnancy develops further.
What do we do?
With the risk of waffling further, I hope this isn't too long and its in the correct place for advice.
