Illustration by Louise Zergaeng PomeroyI have had the same woman come once a
week to clean my house for the past 10
years. Several times a year — amounting to
between 10 to 15 percent of her scheduled
days — she gets a migraine and cancels
for the week, always at the last minute.
She is a one-woman operation, so there is
no one else to come in her place. I realize
not having someone come to clean your
house is not the world’s bigg est tragedy,
but it does leave me in the lurch with either
cleaning projects left undone or a scramble
to get done things I had not planned on
having to do. I don’t believe she is lying
to me about feeling unwell. And it is, of
course, reasonable to expect people to
be ill once in a while, but is there such a
thing as too often — i.e., can I let her go
and fi nd someone else that would be more
reliable because she gets sick too often?
Name Withheld
I grant that there’s a big difference
between your situation and that of a larger
employer. The large employer can plan
around the possibility of intermittent
illnesses among workers, with a policy of
allowing sick days and adapting to infi r-
mities by redistributing the workload as
needed. (Employers of 15 or more, along
with public accommodations, must also
comply with the Americans With Dis-
abilities Act.) When a sole employee is
unexpectedly away from work, for what-
ever reason, there is often no one but
the employer to take up the slack. If this
woman were providing child care, say,
her being absent every eight to 10 weeks
might be a serious problem, because it
could mean you had to take time off on a
regular but unpredictable basis, too. How
easy this would be to cope with would
depend on your occupation.
But having a housecleaning canceled
in a random pattern, fi ve to seven times
a year, does not strike me as posing that
kind of challenge. You have known this
woman for a decade, and you voice no
complaints about the work that she does.
You do not say that these absences are
a recent development; perhaps she has
always had to cancel in this way. She has,
it would seem, settled into the reasonable16 2.13.22 Illustration by Tomi Um
expectation that you can handle these
occasional unscheduled absences.
In a more equitable society, with a
more fi nely woven social-safety net, some-
one with a frequently disabling migraine
would be able to secure employment
more compatible with her condition or
to qualify for disability benefi ts. (The main
public programs require total disability,
have various eligibility requirements and
frequently reject migraine suff erers.) In
ours, we end up having to depend on the
good will of others.My husband and I recently bought a house
in a lovely town in Mexico. We plan to
stay there during the winter months. We
went there for a month this fall to begin
furnishing it and met the staff of the
management company that maintains it
when we are not there. Th e housekeeper
and I got on particularly well. She did such
an amazing job and was very pleasant.
Over the month we spent in Mexico, this
woman and I talked a lot about her
children, and the issues of sending them to
school during Covid. Once, she brought
her 11-year-old daughter by the house and
introduced her to me. Now that we are
back in the U.S., I hear that her daughter
has cancer of the knee. Mexico provides no
assistance to the poor in terms of cancer
care. Th e hospital wants 30,000 pesos
for each chemo treatment (about $1,500),
and they are talking about more than- Th is woman earns about $15 a day,
so a $1,500 bill is impossible for her
to ever pay, let alone 10 times that. When
we expressed dismay at the situation,
our management company reached out
to us to see if we could help out.
We donated money for the fi rst
treatment, but said we could not aff ord
more. While this is sort of true, it is not
entirely true. We have enough money
in our savings to pay for her treatments
but are not prepared to pay out more
than $20,000 for this child. I feel very
guilty, even though shelling out the whole
amount would really deplete our savings.
What is our ethical obligation here? I
am sure we will give more money as time
goes by, just not thousands of dollars.
Name WithheldThe situation you describe is indeed
appalling: In the wake of a botchedMy Housecleaner Is
Sick a Lot. Do I Have to
Stick With Her?
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(Include a daytime
phone number.)Lex writes: I host
a podcast with my
friends Dan and
John. A listener
asked which of us
we’d each prefer to
be haunted by as
a ghost. Dan and
John immediately
named each other.
They feared endless
‘‘dad jokes’’ were
I to haunt them.
This was hurtful.
Please order them
to consider being
haunted by me.
————
I don’t really believe
in ghosts, but I
know they are not
your bros. They are
either annoying,
like poltergeists, or
vengeful, like the
girl from ‘‘The Ring.’’
Good news! You’re
both. Now that you
know that Dan and
John like each other
and hate your jokes,
not even death
shall stop you from
crawling out of their
TVs to punish them
with corny puns
forever. Because
I didn’t fall for your
attempt to trick
me into stealth-
marketing your
podcast, I’m probably
on your grudge list
now, too. Oh, well.
See you at the end of
my bed wrapped
in chains someday!Bonus Advice
Fr o m J u d g e
John HodgmanThe Ethicist By Kwame Anthony Appiah