cleaning

So I use a company called Maid Brigade to clean my house. When I came back from Brazil, I brought a stone dolphin and went to set it on the table beside the Waterford crystal dolphin I bought in Bermuda in 2000. Except it wasn't there. I looked all around, noticing that some things on my little display table had been rearranged, but I couldn't find it. I called Michael Bryant, who owns the Manhattan Maid Brigade franchise. I told him about the issue, and he said he'd ask the lady who does the cleaning.

That was two weeks ago. Since that time, the cleaning lady has come once again. She left me a note stating that she was not alone during the visit when the dolphin disappeared. She also stated that she saw the dolphin, but she didn't take it. When I asked Michael what progress they were making towards recovering or replacing my dolphin, he told me he'd spoken to the second worker, who "said she didn't take it." (I guess it's common for thieves to admit when they steal?) Despite his verbal assurance that the piece would be replaced, I started to get a little uncomfortable and decided I'd file a police report.

Oh. My. Goodness. I went over to the 25, my local precinct. Some hairy little redheaded man named Reid talked to me about the incident. I asked him if I could file a report, but he wanted to play detective, telling me what he could and could not deduce from the timeline. He continually questioned why I didn't call 911 the minute I suspected my cleaning lady had taken something. I told him I didn't consider discovery of a theft after the fact to be an emergency. This guy then looked me in the eyes and told me he couldn't take a report. He told me to go home and call 911. I said "but it's not an emergency. Isn't that an abuse of 911?" He said "No, absolutely not."

So I went by Dunkin Donuts and stuffed my anger (four DD donuts, btw, put so much sugar into my system that I literally couldn't get out of bed the next day). Then I came home and called 911. When the operator asked "what's your emergency?" I apologized, told her it wasn't an emergency, but that I'd gone to the precinct to file a report and the officer had sent me home to call 911. She was incredulous, too.

But it worked. In less time than it took for me to go to the precinct and listen to officer Reid lie to me, two very nice officers appeared at my door. I told them the situation, they came in and took the report. We actually had a nice time chatting about travel and history, until they got a report of shots fired somewhere on the East side.

So by this afternoon, I should have a complaint number. Not that it will help to recover the item, but somehow formalizing the report makes me feel a little less violated. And I've decided that Maid Brigade isn't a company that can come into my house for any reason any more. The agreement with them was that this one lady I trusted would come in. Now I'm hearing that they had a second person in because they were training them. I don't know if a court of law would find their behavior liable or negligent in any way. I just know that they brought somebody into my house and my only piece of Waterford crystal disappeared.