I had a rude surprise a few months ago and I have to lay it at the feet of my clients.
I see clients in my home. Based on where the massage room is, my clients use the bathroom my husband and I use. I have the same things in the bathroom everyone else does -- toothpaste, cotton swabs, aspirin, dental floss, etc. I also store medications I am not currently taking in the bottom drawer of a rolling cabinet.
A few months ago I went looking for a prescription for Ambien for my occasional insomnia. Couldn't find it. I was very frustrated with myself for putting it somewhere I couldn't find it when I was sure I'd put it in that drawer in the bathroom. My husband also looked. He was the one that noticed that not only was the Ambien missing, so were prescription pain meds left over from surgery the previous year.
The only way they could have disappeared is if someone who had been in the house took them. The only people who'd been in the house (and bathroom) were my clients.
This just knocked me over. In hindsight I realized it was a fairly obvious risk. Of course, I've since moved all prescription medications out of the bathroom.
I've always focused on the bathroom being clean and presentable, that I had enough toilet paper and hand soap, and that the towels were clean. I'd forgotten that the bathroom represents an intimate intersection of my private life and my professional life.
It bums me out that a client stole from me and stole something I needed! I had a spurt of new clients about the time the meds went missing. I've chosen to believe it was one of the new clients, one of the ones that didn't return, that took the meds. It saddens me too much to think one of my regular clients may have done this.
I tell myself they may have needed the meds themselves and couldn't afford them. I know that's rationalization on my part.
It has made me take a look at my home massage room with new eyes. Where else might my personal life and my professional life intersect uncomfortably? What, if anything, can I do about that?
In a variation of a common TV commercial: what's in YOUR bathroom?
Ack. Just...ack. I'm sorry someone did that, and I don't think you were in the wrong to expect people to not steal your shit.
ReplyDeleteCindy - how hard would have been to write "stuff" instead of "sh*t", Foul language in a public forum should be used conservatively. But it's your right to use whatever you want.
ReplyDeleteVery disturbing, and thanks as always for writing about it with balance and honesty.
ReplyDeleteI can only hope that this person stole the pain meds because they needed them, and then took the Ambien to allow them to sleep with their guilty conscience.
ReplyDeleteHaving a home practice, I've always been uncomfortably conscious of having turned the private space on my personal bathroom into a public space. One of the things I do to delineate this now shared space, as much for myself as the clients, is to provide guest towels. And they are labeled "guest," and laid on the corner of the wash basin. This leaves no ambiguity about which towel they should use, and after reading this post, I realize that from my point of view it reminds them that they are a guest in my house (and that I expect them behave appropriately and to wash their hands).
That's a great idea. I may have to invest in some guest towels.
ReplyDelete