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There’s nothing wrong with living in a clean house. Honestly, that’s wonderful, but when you live with a parent who is OCD about cleaning and the other parent was in the military, cleaning the house would probably be a bit more extreme than in the average home.

In this story, a college student was helping her mom clean the house during her summer break when her dad kept criticizing her cleaning and telling her she missed a spot. He wasn’t helping clean at all. He was just watching her clean.

Eventually, she decided to take him up on the offer she knew he didn’t really mean and see how he’d do if cleaning the house were up to him.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

You can clean the house better?….fine

So this story is a few years old. I was in college at the time and summer vacations had just started so I was home.

Now I love both my parents very much and I am very thankful for all they have done for me. I’m a doctor because of them but that said they can be……..tough to deal with.

Now I need to tell you that my mother has a big ocd in that she really really wants the house clean. But she can’t really do it herself so we have a house maid who comes every day vacuums the house mops the floor and dusts off everything

Now back to the story.

She helped her mom clean the house.

As I said I was home for summer vacation and it was at this time that our house maid got pregnant and had to leave work. So my mother cleaned the house herself.

So when I arrived I got the job. I vacuumed the house and mopped everyday while she dusted the counters etc.

So now my father is a retired army colonel and has nothing to do. The man has worked in the military most of his life so is definitely a strict dude but me and him have a nice relation.

But he definitely does like to poke and tell me where I miss while cleaning.

This would get really annoying.

Now this happens everyday with him constantly telling me that ” if you can’t do it well then don’t do it at all. I’ll do it”

Now I always shrug that off as I know he doesn’t really mean it and if I stopped he would never do it himself.

But after like a week or so I finished vacuuming and was about to mop when he called me (quite loudly) to the kitchen and showed me that how badly I clean ( there was dust behind the refrigerator) then he told me to move the fridge and vacuum behind it.

I did. And then went on to get the mop.

She finally took him up on it.

He watched me like a hawk the entire time I mopped. Making sure I don’t miss a single inch.

At the end the same line “if you can’t do it well then don’t do it at all. I’ll do it.”

I was finally done and said “fine”

He stood there for a solid minute like he was contemplating was has just been said realising that he would have to really do it tommorow. But not to back down he said “GOOD!” I’ll show you how it’s done

Her mom wondered what was going on.

Next 2 days no cleaning was done and when my mom saw the dust that had built up (there is construction happening in the neighborhood) needless to say she was mad and asked me why was the house like that?

I explained everything and then she smirked and said that she will talk to him.

Next day my father tried to clean the house and got visibly tired so I offered my help but the proud man doth require no assistance .So I just watched as he slowly slowly made his way through the house looking more defeated after each room.

It sounds like her dad learned his lesson.

Finally when everything was done and clean (I really wanted to just go in each room to nitpick but the poor man had suffered enough) he got sooo tired he went to bed and fell asleep.

Needless to say he never said anything about my cleaning the entire month (then my mother got a new temporary maid for the time the old one was at leave)

But this my story about malicious compliance and how I got my father off my back.

That worked out well! I’m glad her dad actually went through with cleaning and stopped criticizing how she was doing it.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Every day is a lot.

Oh, the puns!

I think he learned his lesson!

This person shares what they found surprising.

As far as the last comment, three people can do the work quicker than one, and really it was only two of them doing the work. The dad was just watching. So, two people working together can get the work done faster, and hopefully a professional housecleaner would be able to work swiftly since she’d literally be a professional and have a lot of experience cleaning. The more you do something the quicker and better you get at it.

Her dad definitely had to eat his words! I’m glad he learned to keep his mouth shut, but I wish they’d convinced him to at least help with the cleaning.