Proving that I will not shy away from answering even the most taxing questions, here is question 4 in full, followed by my response.
Our cleaner has been underperforming and it's come to the stage where I need to either kill or sack her. Which would be the least traumatic for me, and how exactly shall I go about doing it?
I live in a first-floor flat, with no lift, if that is relevant. Please do not involve chains of any kind in your answer as they give me nightmares. I will do exactly as you advise, so make sure you give a good constructive answer that will be easy to implement.
I fear that you are approaching this problem in the wrong way. Clearly the difficult part is the confrontation, the stating of the unacceptable level of work, the tears (from you), the recrimination, etc, etc, etc.
Had you considered merely faking your own death? This would achieve the outcome of firing the cleaner without any confrontation whatsoever and, unless you take your fakery to a frankly unnecessary level, no law-breaking is required either. When you next expect your cleaner to arrive, nip out just before her arrival and put a message (perhaps on a Post-It) on the door with a friendly informative message on it - perhaps the following:
Please do not enter this flat today or ever again because I am dead.
If your cleaner lives locally, such that you may see her ever again in your life, and if you have any shame then you may need to move house, possibly to a different country. However, you should be able to just brazenly butch it out.
Good luck!
Alternative answer - blame the credit crunch and thereby weasel your way out of an awkward situation by firing her and lying at the same time. Say you're worried about job security and need to cut back on expenditure. This will work better if you talk to her in a room which has no expensive gadgets in it. It also works better if you haven't just bought a state of the art television, fridge, vacuum cleaner, etc.
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