ShaydDeGrai

Overreacting? It's _just_ a MOC...

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My family has a cleaning person who comes by about once every two weeks to help reset the household to a tolerable state of chaos (between pets, a young child and two parents with full time jobs, it can be hard to keep entropy in check without bringing in reinforcements periodically).

The cleaning person knows that my home office / Lego room is a "no clean" zone.  I deal with that space myself and she is not to enter.  However, sometimes I display my MOCs in other areas of the house or in some cases even let my daughter play with them (with supervision - my daughter can do as she pleases with her collection but knows ask me before playing with my creations (just as I ask her permission before touching her MOCs)). SO I was very surprised when one of my MOCs disappeared from its display  space in the living room.  I was even more surprised to find about half of it mixed in with my daughter's parts bin.

I questioned my daughter and she had no explanation; the MOC had disappeared on the day the cleaning person had been there so I asked her as well, she also claimed ignorance.  So I checked the nanny cam footage to see if it had happened to catch anything and I find that the cleaning person's assistant had jostled the table.  The MOC (a monster truck - mostly System, not Technic ) had rolled off the table and been reduced to its technic frame and a few bigger chunks (the parts I found in my daughter's bin) and several hundred smaller fragments.  The cleaner then put the recognizable parts in my daughter's toy bin while the assistant swept up the loose pieces and threw them in the trash (probably over hundred dollars worth of parts).

My gut reaction when I discovered this was to charge them for the parts and then fire them for lying about it, but my wife tells me I'm overreacting.  Accidents happen (our marriage survived the utter destruction of the Death Star II and a smashed star destroyer (which was barely held together with magnetic train couplings in the first place) which she, herself had tried to blame on the cat).  She says good help is hard to find and I should just let it go.

I, however, can't help but think that yes, accidents do happen, but "good" help takes responsibilities for their actions, and doesn't try to frame a little girl for their own carelessness.

I'm a bit torn, should I let to go?  Should I confront the cleaner with the fact that I know what happened and that she lied?   Should I risk my wife's wrath and be in the market for another cleaner (in fairness, other than this incident, she's very good at her job compared to others we've had; her assistant is more ... meh),  Maybe I'm just older than dirt and getting crankier by the year, but it really bugs me that they tried to both cover up the accident and make it look like my daughter was to blame (the MOC was clearly not the work of a preschooler, so if you're going to sweep half the MOC into the trash, why salvage the other half and mix it in with my daughter's parts then claim complete ignorance of the whole affair? )

I'm sure I can't be the first person to get upset by a smashed model/MOC and a poorly executed cover-up.  Would anyone care to share their experience?

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The fact that it’s Lego is not the problem here. The fact that the cleaning person recklessly destroyed your property, then lied about it, is. As the saying goes, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. You should absolutely do something about it.

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If this person makes a mistake regarding your LEGO and then get away with it, he/she will definitely do the same again with something else, even more "serious" (electronics, jewelery, you name it). And what if someday she does something potentially dangerous to your kids?

The proper reaction is maybe not to fire this person, but at least make him/her understand that this is a breach of trust, and this cannot happen again. Also try to compensate the loss with something, like a few hours of free work, for example.

Edited by Celeri

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Oh man. You cannot trust this person! If it were me, I wouldn't be upset about a house cleaner destroying a MOC by accident. These things just happen. Lying about it and throwing parts in the trash is completely unacceptable. That's a serious breach of trust. In some scenarios, I might give an employee another chance. Considering this person is coming into your home, I would fire her immediately. I don't think you're overreacting at all. This is your home!

If this woman works for a cleaning company, you should tell them too. They might give her another chance, but I wouldn't.

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If the cleaner had owned up to breaking it then all would be well. Lying is not something you can trust.

For the wife: What if you had an heirloom broken? A Ming Vase or something else with high value, or even simply something like a serving platter that had been in the family for generations and had that kind of value? Would that being swept up and thrown out be acceptable? Not to mention lying about it. 

Putting it in the kid's bin doesn't look like a frame-job, just ignorance: LEGO outside of you office has to be the kid's toys right? Sweeping it up and throwing it away is plain bad though, they are still useable parts. 

While I won't say that thieving will follow, someone who realises they have gotten away with something might start stretching what they can get away with. 

My family know to leave my builds alone without permission or careful handling. That said, accidents happen and mostly anyone who has ever broken something did own up to it: Dad bumped a shelf and something fell, he told me right away so I knew something needed fixing. Another occasion was a freak accident of domino effect where a thing tumbled and nudged something else that eventually meant a car rolled off a shelf, my brother told me when I got home "If it was a set I would have fixed it". All was well. 

It is the lying that is bad, that is certainly not good help. 

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On 7/15/2022 at 5:36 PM, Celeri said:

The proper reaction is maybe not to fire this person, but at least make him/her understand that this is a breach of trust, and this cannot happen again. Also try to compensate the loss with something, like a few hours of free work, for example.

I would go 100% along this line.

I would also have a talk with them. In a relaxed environment. Explaining them, what LEGO means to you. I don't know what the financial situation of these folks is; but I assume that LEGO is not necessarily on their regular shopping list. They may not value what you value.

Lying ... fear ... covering up ... trying. Bad. But - give them one chance. People have to learn what this means - for them and to you. The full breadth of it. With an hour or so of conversation. And then laying out the consequences: There is no second time, this will be tolerated. Because it means so much to >you<. They probably need to learn or feel that.

Tough.

All the best,
Thorsten

     

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Determine the cost of the damage and lost parts. The cleaning company should be bonded and insured to cover damages.

Always use parking brakes or wheel chocks when working on vehicles.

 

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If they lied about that, when a simple apology and handing over a pile of parts could have helped overcome what was presumably an accident, then they will also lie about stealing money or jewelry or clothes or other possessions.

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They might be ignorant of the value of Lego, but lying and framing a little kid?  Absolutely no.  Fire them. 

I once had a house-sitter when we went to Brazil for three weeks. He was recommended as the good kid of a good friend's friend.  When we got back, a cursory inspection seemed fine, so I paid him & he went off happy.  Next day, we discovered that instead of walking the dog, he let her poop all over the entire living room carpet. A few small things were broken.  And then when I checked the turntable on the stereo, I found that one of the sound-isolation legs had been replaced with a wooden drawer knob that just happened to be the right height.

He'd cleaned up the carpet the night before we came back, but he never did own up to the broken stuff or the drawer knob. I wanted to demand my money back--what I paid him would have just barely covered the cost of the turntable--but my wife said no, it would have caused trouble with the friend.  I wouldn't have gotten my money anyway--I'm sure he either drank or smoked it all up immediately.  We moved the next year, and I found still more evidence.  A little bit of care and a smidgen of honesty would have made all the difference, but he kept his mouth shut, took the money & ran.  This is what happened to you, and will happen again if you don't deal with it.

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All things aside, as someone that is trusted to work in homes, without the home owner around, some very high end ones at that. If that person were in my employ, I would without hesitation, let that person go, period. May sound harsh but trust is huge in my business and can make or break you. Maybe at least contact the company that employs them and see what they say. 

Having said that, accidents of course happen and are forgivable, trust on the other hand is very difficult to gain, once lost.

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I'm wondering, from your nanny-cam footage, if you can clearly see the cleaner and assistant both being totally aware of what the Lego was before it met its end... If your cleaner wasn't there when the accident happened and just saw parts on the floor then sure she might have just seen parts and put them in your daughters box. If the assistant had already cleaned up some then the cleaner might not have known the difference. I suppose, benefit of the doubt here, it's also possible that the assistant was totally unaware of what Lego is and how it works, and simply assumed it was permanently broke and so cleaned up the pieces...

Ultimately I would still expect your cleaner to have let you know if something was broken, wether it be Lego, a TV or a simple drinking water glass/photo frame. I think you need to have a calm conversation with your cleaner to find out why the decision was made to put Lego in the trash, and why no one told you about the breakage. If the explanation you receive is not satisfactory then you can decide how much further to take it from there. You have to at least have the conversation (and thereby make them aware you have nannycams!). 

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