When Cassie Mordaga dropped her 6-year-old Labrador mix, Jake, off with her new dog trainer, Steve Del Savio, two years ago, it was puppy love at first sight.
“I [found] him attractive, and I loved that he can handle my dog,” Mordaga, now 24, tells The Post.
Del Savio, owner of dog walking and training company Pack Leader Dogs in Hoboken, NJ, became smitten with Mordaga during their weekly training sessions.
“I thought this girl was really good-looking,” says Del Savio, 34. “I found myself having way longer sessions with her than with other clients.”
But it wasn’t until Mordaga’s mother, who showed up for a training session, saw the pair in action that it became clear the two were having more than a professional working relationship.
“My mother thought he was cute and asked if he was single,” Mordaga says.
Four months later, Mordaga moved in with Del Savio in Hoboken. Mordaga, who was still a student when they met, is now an active member of the Pack Leader Dogs company alongside her beau.
As if taking a cue from Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes in the 2002 rom-com “Maid in Manhattan,” some New Yorkers can’t help but fall for the help, whether it be a dog walker or house cleaner. And as more businesses and apps pop up across the five boroughs offering these services, the opportunities for potential romantic connections — and minefields — are also growing.
The attraction makes sense, Del Savio claims, because clients see these people as dependable and trustworthy.
“[Women] can see men who are able to control the dogs, and that’s a turn-on for them,” he says. “But they also get to see a soft side of us by caring for the animals.”
Angel Colon, a 35-year-old janitor with Busy Bee Cleaning Service, fell in love with a client two years ago while cleaning her office at the Educational Housing Services on the Upper East Side. A year later, they got engaged.
“Women like [cleaners] since it shows that a guy has good hygiene,” Colon, who lives in Parkchester, tells The Post. One evening, while he was emptying out the trash in her office, he asked her out for drinks. She said yes and the pair moved in together a year later.
But agreeing to a date — whether it’s the employee or the customer doing the asking — isn’t always a smart move, and can lead to some potentially awkward situations.
Take Amelia Dias, a 26-year-old cleaner and co-founder of Maid in JC. This past summer, when the Jersey City resident finished cleaning her client’s swanky downtown bachelor pad, she was expecting a hefty tip. Instead, the middle-aged customer asked to take her sailing on the Hudson.
“I’m from Rhode Island and he was making small talk and said, ‘You’re from Rhode Island, you must love to sail and I love to take people out on the water,’ ” Dias tells The Post.
‘It wouldn’t work out because I’d have to clean their apartments the next week, and I can’t just break up with them.’
- Amelia Dias
Though she reluctantly agreed, she cut the date short after he suggested skinny-dipping in the Hudson. Dias kept cleaning the client’s apartment, and the encounter provided a valuable lesson.
“I haven’t hung out with clients outside of work since then,” says Dias. She cleans with another maid to fend off unwanted attention.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped customers from trying. The millennial has been propositioned with everything from happy-hour drinks to squash sessions at the Harvard Club by wealthy clients.
“It wouldn’t work out because I’d have to clean their apartments the next week, and I can’t just break up with them,” Dias says.
But she says she’s still open to dating a guy with the “right” apartment.
“It depends on what kind of real estate we’re talking about,” she says. “Are we talking about sweeping views of Park Avenue?”
Meanwhile, Luke Finley, a 30-year-old cleaner and owner of Luke’s Cleaning, says women have hit on him, occasionally tipping him $50 for a $115 cleaning session.
“I have a Midwestern friendliness about me, and I guess that comes across as flirting,” Finley says, adding that he feels comfortable with the attention, but has only hung out with clients outside of work in a platonic setting.
“When you’re a guy, you always take that thing as a compliment,” Finley says. “I’ve never had a problem with it.”
But dating expert Simon Marcel Badinter says there could be a downside to hooking up with the hired help.
“Sadly, sometimes people still feel uncomfortable reaching out to someone within a different class and social circle,” says Badinter, host of dating show “In Bed With Simon” on FYI.
If you are interested in asking out a member of the help, Finley suggests keeping it casual to alleviate any pressure in case things don’t work out.
“If that situation pops up, you should invite [your employee] out with your friends first, so then the risk is lower and you can get to know each other from there,” he says. “There wouldn’t be as much pressure if [the customer] made it clear upfront and said, ‘Hey, I enjoy spending time with you.’ And doing something casual [makes] it not a date-date.”
But, for Dias, it’s simply too awkward an encounter to ever broach.
“If I went out with [a client] for happy hour, how would he introduce me to his friends? ‘Hey guys, this is Amelia, my maid,’ ” she says. “It’d be awkward.”