By Allan Hall
Last updated at 5:07 PM on 11th January 2011
Germans are squirming over a tell-all book by a Polish cleaning lady which exposes her employers as tight-fisted, filthy homeowners who set traps to check work is completed.
'Under German Beds; A Cleaning Lady Reveals All,' by Justyna Polanska, is climbing the non-fiction charts after its release this month as Polanska reveals the dirty little secrets of the hypocrites she worked for.
She tells of the judge who kept cannabis plants confiscated by the police that she had to dust.
Or there is the policeman who stormed a building site to arrest moonlighting workers and insisted she work for him on the black market.
And numerous other employers - every one of whom did not want her to declare her earnings.
Drudgery: A Polish cleaner's tale of her live working in Germany has become a bestseller (picture posed by model)
For 11 years she kept her silence, but now Germany's dirty laundry is being well and truly aired in public.
Justyna - a pseudonym - came to Germany to earn money and was shocked by what she saw. 'I thought everything was above board and so orderly, but nothing could be further from the truth when you look under peoples' beds,' she said.
The things she saw included the mummified remains of a missing hamster, half a roast chicken, dog mess, two freshly pulled teeth and rotting milk cartons a year old.
One woman rubbed the lenses of her glasses regularly with excrement to check up on whether or not she cleaned them. A judge stuck single strands of human hair across his desk drawers to find out whether or not she nosed around in them.
Germany, which has taken on the role of Europe's headmaster of late to tell Greeks to pay their taxes and the Irish to live within their means, has the reputation of being above board in most things.
But all of her employers told her to keep mum about what they were paying her because to declare it would mean they would be hit with contributions towards her medical and social security expenses.
'No-one but no-one employed me legally,' she said. 'I picked up around two grand a month in the hand, a sum I could never have got in Poland.'
If anyone saw her cleaning she was always told to say she was a friend helping out.
She said single men were the tidiest clients and single females 'by far the most chaotic'.
She went on: 'The best people to work for were those who had worked hard themselves and had achieved their goals. The worst were the new rich; no words of hello, no glass of water on a boiling hot day.
'One such family sat down on their sofa with glasses of chilled lemonade on a hot day to watch me washing their windows as if I was some fascinating animal in the zoo.'
Some people tried to give her Christmas presents of food was past its sell-by date - or of stolen bathroom mats, napkins and toiletries from old hotel stays.
Kinky men were another job hazard. 'Do you wear red underwear and possess a large bosom?" enquired one who offered her 30 euros for five minutes cleaning in high heels, stockings and a red basque. Others sent her naked pictures of themselves.
She added: 'I thought Germans would show me more respect. But I was truly amazed at the things I saw and experienced.'
I totally believe this lady. I was hired by a family when I was 19 to be an au pair and when I arrived they made me clean their house. They had this obsession that I clean six bathrooms all the time. The husband and wife were both doctors....the wife always was hitting on me. She would walk around naked on the weekends (when her husband was at home)..She had no boobs and no body. Nobody believed me when I said I landed up in hosptial for bronchitis (the two doctors I lived with thought I was faking)...I worked for a few more families and then left...I had enough. Don't let them be your boss...Be the German's boss...
- Cynthia, former Aupair, Toronto, Canada, 12/1/2011 03:03
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