I guess I have to resign to the fact that I just do not have luck with maids, whether full-time live-in maids or part-time maids. Ever since my supposedly permanent part-time maid stopped working for us, I have been searching high and low for part-time maids. I have and am still recruiting maids from road side stalls that I normally buy fruits from, from nearby coffee shops, from our condo and just about anywhere that I see cleaners or maids. I sound pretty desperate huh? Yes I am but now, after going through so much hassle and disappointment with more than 10 part-time maids that I have hired for the past 1 year, I have resigned to the fact that I will probably do better being a maid myself! Most of the part time maids stopped working for us as the timing was not right. I only want them to come from 6pm onwards to help me clean up after cooking dinner but the part time maids find the time a tad late.
Even my girls do not like part-time maids, especially Alycia who seems to have inherited my finicky and fastidious attention to cleanliness. She does not like anyone cleaning her room and touching her things except for me but since I am too tied up with other things, she cleans it herself now on days when the part-time maids do not come.
My encounter with this maid agent who supplies me with part-time maids last week was the last straw that made me decide that I should be the maid myself. In one of the sessions last week, her part-time maid broke my air conditioner cover while she was cleaning it when she dropped the cover. When I told the agent, she just said “oh sorry, I will check with my maid” and that’s it. I never heard from her again pertaining to this issue. The next session, which was yesterday, she sent 2 maids. One was an Indon and the other was a newly arrived Nepalese maid. This Nepalese maid could not speak English, Malay or Chinese. The only words that came out from her mouth was ‘sabun’ (soap) and ‘no’. When I asked her to iron clothes, she said NO and shook her head. I didn’t like to do sign language with her and the only response I got from her was a shake of her head, most of the time. The other Indon maid told me that this new maid does not know how to iron clothes, duh! And she took almost an hour to wash mess up the bathroom in the master bedroom. When the 2 hours was up, the second bathroom was not even washed and it was filthy as the 2 maids washed the mops and wash cloths in that bathroom. When the 2 maids left, I had to tidy up all the mess that the maids left behind and also to finish up the ironing as the other maid could not finish ironing our clothes! By the time it was 9pm, I was drop dead tired. I felt even more tired when the part time maids are here. This agent sends different maids each time and I have to repeat telling them what to do each time the maids come. I need to watch them most of the time to ensure that they are doing things the way I want them to be. Instead of saving time so that I can do other things, I am actually wasting my time supervising the maids, wasting my breath repeating the instructions each time different maids come, energy and MONEY on these maids.
After the maids left yesterday, I was exasperated and told the girls that I will only engage part-time maids once a week and no more 2-3x a week. I have delegated some tasks to the girls and they have all agreed to help out everyday. Alycia, who is my most reliable helper asked for a Ringgit each time she helps out. I acceded to her request as I think that she deserves the RM1. She told me about her desire to buy story books from the earned pocket money.
Oh yeah, the maids did not even have the time to wash Alycia’s school shoes yesterday! Sherilyn washed her school shoes on Saturday and Alycia’s dirty school shoes are still at a corner.
Thankfully, this rascal seems to like washing shoes and she claims that it is her favorite chore LOL! I’ll see how long this would remain as her favorite chore…
Thank God I have daughters who ‘love’ chores that I hate. Alycia seems to like washing the dishes, Cass seems to like wiping and keeping the dishes and the job that everyone else hates the most, which is bathroom and toilet washing, this health and clean freak mom loves it the most! There is still a silver lining behind every cloud, eh? 🙂
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