Help!

The first year we were in business I did all the housekeeping myself. My husband pitched in a lot with the laundry and prepped breakfast with me almost every morning, but housekeeping was pretty much mine alone. In some ways it was necessary. I learned a lot about what cleaning products worked best, the most efficient way to clean our showers (and which soaps I dreaded finding in them), how to fold sheets in such a way as to minimize the number of trips I had to make around a bed when I put the sheets on alone and so forth. This was all to the good, but it was a very long summer.

Since then I've tried to get help at least a few days a week with cleaning during the busy season. Some years I've had pretty good luck with consistent help but most years it's a moving target and I find I have to hire and train three, four or even five kids over the course of a summer. Some have only ended up working for a week or two.

Last year I had two local highschool kids working for me. One of them is unable to continue this summer because her family is moving right after school gets out at the end of this month but I thought the other would be with me all summer and perhaps for the next couple of years until she graduated. She's a great worker and pleasant to be around and I was planning to train her to do a lot more, even to make her my assistant. Alas, it is not to be. On Wednesday she failed to show up for work and despite my pleas to call and discuss the problem and her future employment with me she has maintained radio silence. Her mom says she's embarrassed, but she (the mom) understands that two days is long enough to wait and that I'm done.

I'm sorry about loosing her; she's had some difficulties at home over the past month but until this week has been very reliable about showing up for work. An apology and a plan for getting here in the future was all that was required but I guess at sixteen embarrassment is still considered a terminal illness. I'm also sorry that I now have to start from scratch finding help and training them. This is going to be a busier than usual June and now it's going to be that much more difficult.