CBL EP #143-The Maria Perez Story-A Wrong Address, A Life Lost and What Must Change

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 1:12

Welcome to Cleaning Business Life, the podcast for cleaning business owners who lead with purpose and professionalism. In today's special episode, Jamie and myself wanted to discuss a heartbreaking story making the national news with the tragic loss of a fellow cleaner named Maria Perez in Indiana. This conversation isn't just about the news, it's about what it means for our industry, for safety protocols, and for every cleaner who walks into a home each and every day. Join us as we talk about how to protect ourselves, our teams, and each other moving forward. Let's dive in. Hello everyone. This is a special episode of Cleaning Business Life Podcast, and we are going to talk about what has happened in the news. I'm looking for the actual name of the article. There's several. What is it, day three, four, five?

SPEAKER_00: 3:08

Yeah, we uh this is to be continued, and we'll do a follow-up on this. Right. But what we want to talk about also is the important is the safety and the importance of making sure that we get those addresses right. And you know, I I don't know who owns this cleaning company.

SPEAKER_01: 3:34

Yep, they have it named whoever it was.

SPEAKER_00: 3:36

Yeah, and I don't know if they will, but this has been going around in our community, our cleaning business community.

SPEAKER_01: 3:44

Or just impacts us all. It's not just a Indiana. This this is gonna change safety in the industry, it's gonna change how we interact and engage, it's gonna change how we announce ourselves when we arrive on property. I and it's gonna impact whether this cleaner company was running 1099s or W2. This is gonna make a big impact in everything. This poor lady should be an ultimate price.

SPEAKER_00: 4:09

It really should, because this is heartbreaking. Definitely uh watching her husband cry for and demand justice, and because this person apparently just shot through the door, she was accidentally going up to the door to the wrong house and didn't even enter, carrying her stuff, going up to the house, and this person just she was trying the keypad or the the doorknob or whatever, and they shot through the door and killed her. I mean, it was a dead-on shot and to her chest. I will say the area that we live in, and this is just me specifically, we've always had to have it's like living out in the wild, wild west out here. There's a lot of out in the country. I've had to have my husband take me way in the beginning on on a walkthrough, like, I don't know, man, you gotta get can you go with me? And I'm like, okay. So he'll but since then, because since I've gotten W-2 employees and with Jabber, I take and I let the client know, hey, I'm going to either screenshot from Zillow or wherever their address, and usually they'll have it online, a picture of their house. Or if I'm still doing walkthroughs, or whoever I send out to do a walkthrough, I have them take a picture of the house. As a matter of fact, I took some yesterday.

SPEAKER_01: 5:56

So like a little bit of a protocol on what everyone should do for safety going forward. Because I I this this as I mentioned is going to affect everyone. I believe that taking a photo of the property, matching it up on, and it's not going to be current because Google is constantly updating. I mean, we all see the cars, the autonomous cars with nobody. They're here right now. That's great. Right. Just to put the body in the road, you know, the whole thing. And I know it's a bad joke at the moment, but there should be some sort of protocol that you give, whether you have 1099s or for safety reasons or W-2s, that you should take a photo of the entrance of the home or have the homeowner take an entrance of the home, you load it into your driver account. They can see what the house looks like if they have a pumpkin or not a pumpkin, depending on the time of year. And another protocol that should be obvious, and you guys have all heard me talk about knocking on the door and announcing that you're there because people get a little frisky right before the cleaner comes. And that's a vision that you never want to see the couple that you're servicing on the couch doing their thing, and it will be burned into your mind forever. So you would just open the door if you had the key or the keypad, and you would just announce housekeeping or I always make it funny too. Housekeeping. Right. Like, you know, it just to make people aware of what's going on. And sometimes we get caught up in what we're doing. I mean, I spoke to a cleaning business owner the other day who her cleaning text walked back in because the the homeowner had announced some deficiency in the cleaning. So they went right back and they already had they had already walked in before they were gone like five minutes, and then the homeowner was caught with no clothes on. I'm like, well, if you complained, you're gonna come back, right? I sent you a text, I called you, hey, they're on their way, and they walked in, and then there was a weird, awkward silence. But I I think there should be an announcement, and it should be. I would like to believe it would be obvious, but I'm I'm beginning to wonder if it's not obvious to everyone. And just for safety protocols, I I think that you know, hey, I'm at property, blah, blah, blah, blah. And and I know everything's we have like.

SPEAKER_00: 8:08

You know, I assume any more that really quickly that you can uh I won't say really quickly, it took me a long time to realize that I was assuming that the everybody knows that. And it's not just because you know something or you've been uh for instance the a home, you know, that the the house that we did which is huge, Google Maps or Apple, whatever was taking me to a place that I was like, there's no house here, right? It wasn't right. So I literally had to get out and point, take a picture and say, keep going, upload it into Jabber. So you can't assume that people know these things just because you do.

SPEAKER_01: 9:09

Right. And it appears that this was and poor Maria was 32, she's a mama four, has just migrated to this country from I want to say Guadalajara. I'm I'm I'm I might be incorrect in my country country identification. So if I'm wrong, please forgive me. It's not my intention to misinform anybody, and so it could have just been that it was a first-time cleaning. It appeared that it was a husband and wife team. I didn't know if they wore uniforms, not uniforms. I have a lot of questions because the story isn't adding up, and I don't want to make an assumption about anything until they release the rest of the statements. I've heard lots of chatter in the background about this and that, and there's a lot of stuff going on. And I know people were really upset. I know we, as cleaning business owners being in this industry, are very upset at the loss of one of our own, but I wanted to address safety protocols for your crew. Because if this person who is operating the cleaning business and poor Maria was a 1099, it's a whole insurance nightmare because Maria should have her own insurance because she's a 1099. But if the cleaning business owner chose not to do that, then it falls back on the cleaning business owner themselves and they can get sued and or have to go bankrupt. I mean, there's a whole it's a whole spaghetti.

SPEAKER_00: 10:28

This is just assuming the we we're letting you know this because this obviously can happen.

SPEAKER_01: 10:37

Oh my gosh, in the blink of an eye.

SPEAKER_00: 10:39

Yourself and your company. I mean, if something like this were to happen, uh we uh we could lose everything, right? You know, we could lose everything just because and we have in California, as a legal business owner, you are supposed to have a violence in the workplace, and this is a considered a violent document it, and you gotta have meetings, they have to sign off on it like once a month. Hey, just you know, just a meeting of just even if it's like five seconds, you know. This is what it what you need to do. You gotta call, you gotta give them a protocol, they have to have a protocol to follow. And this is I'm talking strictly W-2s because everybody knows that's what I run with is W-2s. Um, and Shannon can tell you more about the 1099 side of things.

SPEAKER_01: 11:36

And this is why I'm passionate about making your and I won't work with anybody who won't do it. If you don't have any skin in the game, you're not going to invest in yourself enough to actually build something sustainable, right? Like your own. I don't have a problem with it. But you, as the responsible business owner, need to buck up and make sure that your cleaning techs are insured, especially for instances like this. And you're like going, well, workmen's comp wouldn't cover it. I go, Workmen's comp isn't gonna cover it, but they should have their own insurance because they are their own entity. Poor Maria. I I have lots of questions. And the, and I'm gonna be a little graphic here. She, it was awful. I saw some of the footage afterwards, and we know that Shannon cannot go on Reddit. I'm not allowed unsupervised because I cannot handle when you tell me something gory, you have to give me the light and fluffy version because I just can't, I my psyche, I have such a vivid imagination, I just am not good with the information and it bothers me for a long time. But just the the filtered media feed that I saw, I mean, they show the fireman squirting off the porch in the driveway. So this poor person bled out right then and there and died in his arms.

SPEAKER_00: 12:57

I mean, can you imagine in his her husband's arms?

SPEAKER_01: 13:00

In her husband's arms, how horrific that must have been trying to stop the blood, not knowing how to, I don't know if they had a cell phone, not I mean, there were so many things that went wrong with this.

SPEAKER_00: 13:09

I would love to know. Did they open up the door and say, Oh my gosh, are you okay? Or they just sit there. The conversation. I I would like to know, is there some sort of mental situation with this person? Has this person had some sort of something going on in the past with the is it a man? Was it a man?

SPEAKER_01: 13:33

I'm assuming so.

SPEAKER_00: 13:35

We don't know still. I just I again I we don't want to assume, and it at the end of the day, it don't matter. What matters is there's four kids out there that have lost their mom and a husband that I mean, if you listen to him, it's it's true the the love of his life, right? And right now, right the second as we're talking about this, they are mourning, and we as biz cleaning business owners stand with these people, and I know that everybody that you guys all do too, because I see it all over on your feed. I cannot tell you how many people sent me, and and we're talking my neighbors, clients, friends, everybody inside of my inbox messenger showing me this, and I I I you know let this be the reason why that I want to do everything that I can to protect my company, my people, my everything. My heart's just breaking for this family.

SPEAKER_01: 14:52

Definitely. So in the state of Indiana where this transpired, there is a law called stand your ground. So if the homeowner says I was protecting myself, it's you're you're standing your ground, then they also mentioned recently that this was going to be considered a homicide, but that didn't imply, and this is all speculation, so please do not ream me later if I get it wrong, because we're still in the beginning phase.

SPEAKER_00: 15:20

Well, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 15:20

Um that it just because it was labeled as a homicide does not mean there'll be any criminal intent further on. But this the fact remains being a gun owner myself, this person was irresponsible. It's not shoot first, ask questions later. I know that parts of Arizona and parts of California where Jamie are, we are considered the wild, wild west still. But there's a difference between, and I didn't, I don't want to make this a debate between gun ownership and non-gun ownership. There's a difference between gun ownership and being responsible and non-gun ownership. I I don't like it. Jamie said, I don't know if this person had all of their marbles. I don't know if there was a crisis beforehand. I don't know if they were being harassed by somebody, and that's why they were so touchy.

SPEAKER_00: 16:03

There's a lot of things in the story that we don't know. Right. I don't think it matters. No. I don't think it matters that the there uh there's some sort of neglect here, uh negligence here. Yes, at minimum.

SPEAKER_01: 16:19

We just have to wait to see what the end result of the investigation is. And and and I'm hoping that the right thing happens for the family, families involved in this whole fiasco. But again, I just wanted to come out here and talk, and and we'll definitely touch base about what happens to Maria and her family.

SPEAKER_00: 16:39

Yes, we will. I I want to keep everybody updated. Well, as and as much as everybody else keeps us updated, please reach out and share to us anything that you guys find out.

SPEAKER_01: 16:54

Like if she gets a GoFundMe account, please let us know. Jamie and I will hop on here and we'll do another little podcast and the GoFundMe so that she so that we can get some reach and that they can genuinely get the help that they need in this unfortunate time. Oh my goodness, it's too sad. It's too sad.

SPEAKER_00: 17:13

I don't smile and laugh. That's a nervousness and and just I don't know what to do other than just like but we wanted to just really share this with you guys.

SPEAKER_01: 17:25

So I'll put the links in the show notes in case you didn't see any of the posts, so you can come to your own pass this on to everybody that you guys are associated with in the cleaning business industry so that yeah, keep us posted.

SPEAKER_00: 17:44

We want to do another protocol ourselves to protect ourselves. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 17:56

We love you.