The Cleaning Couch
Last Saturday, Nick arrived from Perth to stay with me for 1 night. I had known about this for a couple of weeks along with the consequent that I had a *lot* of cleaning to do. The last major clean I had had done was close to the peak of my Premium SMS-inspired mania in April 2016 — thanks Mum!
My problem with cleaning isn’t doing it, per se. It is starting it (too late because of procastenation) and finishing it (too early because of distractions). The first weekend went by and I deferred all cleaning to the next and last weekend before Nick arrived. Which would have been ok (maybe), but last weekend I came down with a bad cold and spent the next 4 days in bed.
So Thursday comes around, most of the cleaning is still not done and Nick is due to arrive, with his university-aged daughter, on Saturday morning. I mention my predicament to colleagues who suggest I use AirTasker to arrange a cleaner. I like the idea, but I realise that what I want to hire is not a cleaner, per se, but a cleaning coach — someone who can help me clean, by taking control of my executive functions, deciding the order of, and how much time I should devote to, each task and making sure I don’t sit on the couch and start conducting urgently needed Internet research about some question that has just occurred to me while I was sweeping the front courtyard.
So, I draft this ad:
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Cleaning Coach
I have a friend from Perth coming to stay on Saturday and there is a bunch of cleaning I need to do.
So much to do, so little time, so many distractions.
Your primary goal is to spend Friday night helping me get my cleaning done. Not by doing it, though you are welcome to help if you want to, but by keeping me on task and wandering about the place telling me what needs to be done next.
In return you get paid and can drink beer and eat pizza. As tasks go, they really don’t come much easier than this.
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I then refined the task to indicate that the task was from 18:00 on Friday for a period of at most of 4 hours for a payment of $80.
Within 2 hours I had 6 offers of help. 4 from females, 2 from males.
In whittling down the offers, there are a number of criteria I could have used such as “previous reviews on AirTasker”, “those most on board with the coaching concept”.
If I had used the latter as a criteria, I would have had to have chosen Darcy J., a male who had written “I will be the most fun task master you’ve ever had”.
I didn’t use either of those criteria.
I figured, what the heck, I’ll sort in order of “cuteness” and then roll a one-sided die. On that basis I chose Karla C. Her pitch had been: “Hello! Im available to do what you want when ever you want! Do you have the stuffs to clean?”
I felt slightly guilty about this selection process, but I figured if I played a completely straight bat there was exactly zero-harm done and I could spend 4 hours on Friday evening being a cleaning slave to a cute woman who would be thoroughly amused by the concept of getting paid to boss me about to do my own cleaning. There are undoubtedly other ways to build raport with members of the opposite sex, but I am pretty sure this one is mine.
I figured that if Karla C. asked me why I chose her, I would tell her: “I sorted the list of offers, and rolled a die — you were the lucky winner.” There would be no need to explain how the list was sorted or how many sides the die had.
So as the day unfolds, I am getting quite excited by the prospect of cleaning my apartment which, I assure you, is a novel concept to me. I pitch the new business idea to my colleagues including the EGM, Elizabeth: bemyboss.com — outsource your executive functions. They love it!
Towards the end of the day, Karla C. messages me and asks if she can bring a friend. I have no objection, although the thought of having two bosses isn’t quite as exciting as having just one. (Or, is it?). They both arrive a little late. Karla C. is Chilean (South Americans yay!) as is her friend, Mattias, a much taller dude.
I welcome them both, of course.
As they start cleaning, it dawns on me that they haven’t groked the concept at all. Which was bad for my social experiment, but truly excellent for actually getting shit done. In truth, of “starting”, “doing” and “finishing” cleaning, while “doing” is the bit I am best at, I am not really that good at that either.
During a beer break I verify that Karla C. really had no idea what she was signing up for. She had assumed “Cleaning Coach” meant “Cleaning Couch”.
That niggling feeling I had about using cuteness as my primary selection criteria? Completely justified in terms of what I desired — coaching, but ultimately irrelevant in terms of what I needed — cleaning.
The cleaning was done in about 2 hours.
