Maids have the rough task of cleaning up people's messes. While some jobs might just include folding clothes and dusting, other jobs entail some pretty brutal and nasty things...
When It Rains, It Pours
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“Once I was readjusting basement ceiling pieces because they were just slightly off, and about 20 used needles came showering down on me. That sucked.”
Leaving It All Behind
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“I cleaned out college kids’ apartments between rental periods one summer. The worst was the apartment with vomit in the fridge. The weirdest was the super rich exchange student who just left all her stuff behind. We had to call and double-check the unit was actually empty. I got a designer backpack and a fancy hot water boiler (keeps up to 2 liters of water at perfect tea temperature indefinitely) out of it, though.”
A Bloody Mess
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“I worked as an in-home caregiver, which for this particular family was basically a glorified maid. I walked into the house one day and found a note: “Phyllis went to hospital. I drove with her. Please clean the bathroom. -John”
I walked into the bathroom and it was COVERED in blood. Turned out Phyllis had slipped while climbing out of the shower and clocked her face on the counter, smearing/spraying blood all over the place. I went to visit her in the hospital and she had raccoon eyes and some serious bruising to the rest of her face.
Another time, another family, I arrived to find that my Hospice patient had had an “accident” in the bathroom. Which really meant that he had an explosive GI bleed all over the place; there was bloody s— a good 2 feet up the walls. I handed in my resignation that day.”
Bursting Your Bubble
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“So this happened about 5 years ago.
I was cleaning a house and the client had a massive array of cleaning products under the garage sink, I was weirdly excited to get to work….. but when I looked for the only product needed I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere in the house and couldn’t find it…… no lemon pledge…… what kinda of monster doesn’t have that.
I almost fainted.”
A Look Into The Past
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“Working as In Home Supportive Care (cleaning lady to old people) to this nice older lady (70ish). One day she asked me to help her clean out top closet shelves; requesting I hand her the papers before throwing them out so she can make sure they’re not important…one of the papers was a print out of her and some guy doin’ the dirty. She calmly looked at it, smiled and put it away.”
Finding Death
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“My mother is a maid, she told me once she found a bed with the covers folded around the pillows to look like a dead body. On a similar note she also found a guy who died on the toilet a few months later.”
GROSS!
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“My grandma ran a trashy, crime ridden apartment complex in my home town. A woman/resident had been reported missing, so my grandma and her staff went to check out her unit. She had died suddenly in her bathtub days before, with every door locked, and by the time people came to pull her out she had decomposed in the water so bad that her skin, and various other layers, were sliding off as they pulled her out. I heard it was quite a struggle, and an unforgettable smell.”
It Was Alive!
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“It was behind a kids dresser, some kind of pinkish red shiny mold that looked like it was crystalizing somehow. I don’t know what it was, but it was alive.”
Every Third Day
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“Not a maid, but I cleaned at a University. I regularly found two 1.5 liter bottles filled with piss. Every third day, in the same trash can in the same toilet. Like… what the f—. HOW AND WHY??”
Haunting My Dreams
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“I was a casual once a week cleaner for a rich family and I’d spend a few hours there going through the house. The weirdest thing I ever found was one of the first times I was there there was an out of place bookshelf. Of course I clean every item in the house and eventually there was a book attached to the wall with a metal arm goings-on into the wall which I presumed was a lever. It was just like out of the movies as the shelf went into the wall then moved to the side.
It was used as a pleasure room with kinky ‘toys’ spread throughout the room, I entered and the musty smell was overwhelming. I looked at the wall opposite me and there was a large book on a stand, I assumed it was just some interesting book they enjoyed but it said, “Make up stories for free karma.” After I read this my heart dropped and my eyes were open. This strange room has influenced my life ever since.”
My Eyes, My Eyes!
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“Used to work in a hotel and one day as I was inspecting rooms one of my attendants approached me asking for help cleaning. Wasn’t a busy day so I said f— it I’ll clean down the 4th floor hall way East wing. SO I get to my first room open the door and walk into the kitchen, boom 15-20 buck naked people probably mid 30s to 40 just doing lines of blow or what be it on the granite counter. They see me and I just declare I didnt see anything guys enjoy your time, heres my card if you guys need your room to be serviced.”
Causing Quite A Fright
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“My wife is a forensic anthropologist and I occasionally helped with the projects. One project we worked on was excavating a very old cemetery so the DOT could widen a road. Their Task was to excavate the burials, do analysis and photograph the bones and other artifacts, they were then re-interred at another portion of the cemetery.
They had to do all the analysis and photography of the remains in the hotel they were staying at. So they booked a room that was their “lab”.
They put tarps down on the beds, dressers, etc and laid the bones out so they could work. I guess while they were out doing more excavation one of the days, the maid missed or ignored the “Do not disturb” sign, and got quite the shock to see multiple sets of skeletal remains laying on pretty much every flat surface.
Police were called. But thankfully knew of the project and put two and two together pretty quick, so not much chaos, but probably gave the maid quite the fright.”
A Burial Ground
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“Owned a property management company.
Elderly customer called and said his porch stunk. Maid crew showed up, looked under the porch in the crawl space, and saw about 15-20 dead cats. Apparently his house is where cats went to die.”
A Horrible Nightmare
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“My cousin worked as a maid at a s—– hotel for a summer in high school. We were teasing her that she was going to have clean a bunch of nasty stuff. I made a joke about someone giving birth in the bathroom. A couple weeks later she walked into a room that was trashed and in the bathroom she saw a baby doll on the floor. She thought for sure it was real. I got an angry text for scaring her. Weird thing is the people who stayed in the room didn’t have kids with them.”
Disappearing Without A Trace
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“I’m not a maid, but I do have to clean out rental truck from time to time (or I did before I switch positions in the company).
I’ve cleaned some nasty s—, but the one that sticks out the most was an abandoned truck. It was spotted by someone off the side of a tiny highway in the middle of South Carolina. They brought it to my store so we could remove the belongings and hold them in a storage unit while they looked for it’s owner.
To my knowledge the owner was never contacted. We followed up on alternate contacts and still, nothing. We sent letters to their last known address, and to the address they claimed they were moving too, but never a word.
The thing that was weird about it was, it was a family’s entire life in that truck. Beds, clothes, toys, jewelry, a wedding dress, photos, TV, video games, EVERYTHING. The truck was packed from top to bottom.
I’m not one who really believes in paranormal stuff, but being in that back of that truck was… weird. I still feel unsettled thinking about it.”
Boo!
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“A very, VERY scary looking Halloween prop that was a dead little girl with milky white eyes on a swing hanging in their dark laundry room. I screamed and cried a bit when I saw it. Took a pic (totally not allowed to do this) but sadly my phone very recently got corrupted and I lost all my pictures. And yes I think they set it up on purpose.”
A Bloody Massacre
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“This was 20 years ago. My mom was a house cleaner in a very affluent town. She had a client whose house she would only go to clean once every few months, per his request. A single divorced man and his teenage son. The man was very irritable and would mutter mean racist things under his breath. He had one room of the house that he never let my mother go into until one day.
When she opened the front door of the house she noticed a red smear on the floor leading from the front door, down the hallway, to the locked room. She and the girl she was working with that day were confused and asked him what it was. He said the dog got bit and made a mess. She had never seen a dog in the house. He needed everything bleached immediately.
She opened the locked door and saw a small empty room. Blood EVERYWHERE and a smell she will never forget. She excused herself to throw up and told the man she would not clean that room. He got mad and said, “F— you! Son, clean the f—— room.” The son looked annoyed and said okay. My mom and the girl basically ran out of the house and never returned.
At the time, she was too afraid to call the cops since she didn’t know what to believe or want to put her family in danger.”
Moldy Milk
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“I once worked for an older woman who really should not have been left to her own devices anymore. The first red flag was when I cleaned her bathroom. There were petrified poo droplets everywhere, with a trail of splatters from her bed to the toilet.
On a later visit somebody came to the door while I was cleaning and she demanded that I hide in the back. I heard a nice sounding man come to the door and deliver something. When I got the all clear to come out of hiding she asked me to help her put some milk away. Opened the refrigerator and it was full of empty goat milk cartons. I suggested we throw some away to make room for the new milk and she explained that she saves them to keep her milk in. Some of these were full on moldy, no wonder the poo splatters! I tried to talk her into at least washing the old containers before putting the new milk in them at which point she got mad and said she would just get someone else to help her. As far as I could tell that milk is all she really ate.
I still regret not making an effort to get her some kind of real help. In my defense, I was only 20, desperate for work and didn’t want to be a rat.”
Barbaric Behavior
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“I was an ESL teacher back in the day. When we had VIP’s or overflow we put them in off campus housing. Since the off campus housing was not part of the college where the ESL school was we had to find our own cleaners. So the ESL school paid us $30 an hour to clean these off campus housing units. 99% of the time there were no issues. The Japanese kids would leave the place cleaner then we gave it to them and the Chinese kids would leave tv’s/ printers/ fax machines and other electronics they could not fly home with so that was neat. Well one time we got a group of Spanish teenagers. They were the sons and daughters of some of Spain’s government officials. There were only in the country for 6 weeks but these kids managed to destroy several apartments. The boys left used condoms, smeared s— on the walls. Puked and pissed in some of the cabinets and on the carpets. The living rooms in all the boys units were full of stolen bikes and a few kids power wheels as the s— bags were stealing shit from permanent residents at the condo. The girls left bloody feminine products all over the place and stuck them to walls, put in the microwave etc… We even found a US flag with a turd on it in one of the girls rooms. The girls even stuffed the air vents with left over food and trash. Absolutely barbaric and disgusting was how these Spaniards left the off campus housing. It took several days to fully clean everything up.”
Dirty Secrets
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“The weirdest thing I ever found working as a chamber maid in a popular seaside touristy area,was in the bosses sons bedroom, who I now and again had to clean for, he wasn’t known for having a girlfriend or having any women back in his room, yet I found one morning a woman’s bra, bursting with this delicious secret I couldn’t wait to tell my work colleague and great friend, cleaning a floor below mine at break. Oddly enough, much to my surprise, she didn’t seem interested at all, yet usually she was full of laughter and dirty innuendos which passed our day pleasantly. Two days later, the hotel grapevine at work, and it gets back to me, it was my workmates bra and after my revelation, she had been seen using the fire escape door after retrieving it.”
A Safe Haven
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“I once had a job at a tanning center, where I would clean. It was my first job and I was around 14. It was in a neighborhood where there were lots of drug addicts, lots of crime and alcoholics. From time to time I would find used syringes, some would have pooped in the trash cans and one time, a drug addict used one of the tanning booths to sleep. When I would fine the syringes and the sleeping people, I was advised to call my boss, who would then arrive and take over the situation. I wonder till this day why I kept working there for that long.”
Young And Dumb
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“I was on a cleaning team with two other people and we went to this very nice house in a trendy area of Atlanta. It was my first visit as I was the new person. The house belonged to a married couple, both were lawyers I believe. In their home office as I was dusting I came across some framed photos on the wall that caught my attention. It was the married couple kissing while wearing Klan robes with the hoods pushed backwards to show their faces with a burning cross in the background. I think my brain froze in shock. In that job I dusted a lady’s vanity with lines of coke set up on it. She was pissed but I was honestly clueless that it was actually coke. I thought it was baby powder. (Oh, to be that naïve again!) Making up beds there were times toys or condoms would roll out with the sheets. Usually I would just stop right there and leave a note on the bill stating it was a health caution and I wasn’t touching it. Seriously, I just wasn’t paid enough to pick up someone’s used condom or dirty/used toy.”