Dear Mary…
Q. My wife and I are actors, and therefore we are at home most of the day. We have a Brazilian cleaning man who comes for three hours at a time three days a week. Our problem is that for a full half-hour of each of these sessions he occupies the downstairs loo. Since we are paying him £10 an hour, we feel it’s a bit off to have to pay £5 for him to stink the house out. Can you tell us: 1) is it a Brazilian custom to go to the loo for half an hour at a time? 2) how we can tactfully tell him that we would appreciate his doing his business in his own home before coming to us?
Name withheld, London NW1
A. I am no expert on the time-and-motion (so to speak) query that you raise with regard to the Brazilian race in general.
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