Category: Maid

My Cambodian maid only speaks a smattering of English.  She doesn’t know the word “squat”.  Each time she brings Alycia and Sherilyn to the loo to pee when we go out, she will say this to them “sit” as she motions them to squat at the squatting toilet bowl.  I have been trying hard to correct her by telling her that she should say “squat” instead of sit but she doesn’t seem to remember and till today, she still tells the girls to “sit” on a squatting toilet bowl.   I just hope Sherilyn will not sit on the dirty public toilet floor or toilet bowl the next time kakak tells her to “sit”.  I better make sure I am always around to supervise her when she brings the gals to the loo when we go out.

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….. can really ‘kaik sei ngor’ (can really anger me till death).   Though she’s hardworking, some of the things she does can really kaik sei ngor. 

She tries to be efficient by putting the dirty clothes into the washing machine whenever she sees them in the laundry basket, even if there were only a few pieces of clothes… and she put 2 full caps of laundry detergent into the washine machine with only a few pieces of clothes.  Can you imagine how much suds there were in the washing machine?  I even had to ask her to rinse the clothes with water again after the cycle had finished.   Though I had told her to ask me first before putting any clothes into the washing machine, she had forgotten again today and did the same thing.  There were so much suds inside the washing machine that some suds were seeping out from the door of the washing machine.

She removed the plug of the kettle from the wall socket when the switched was turned on.

She used the cloth that we wipe our dining table to wipe the fans and windows.

Though  she’s stick-thin, she can eat like a sumo wrestler.  I think her previous employer must have starved her.  She’s lucky that she’s working for us coz no one ever goes hungry in our house.

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My mum has just left with my brother for Ipoh. I’m now all alone in the house with the gals.  The gals wouldn’t want to nap when granny was here though they were really drained out.  After granny left at around 6pm, they were so tired that I don’t even have to force them to nap. They willingly went to the mattress on the floor and dozed off.  This spells trouble for me as they would nap for at least 2 hours and wake up at around 8pm, which means that they won’t want to go to bed until at least 11:30pm or 12 midnight tonight. 

My maid agent has promised to send the new temp live-in Cambodian maid to me tonight.  Though I am happy that help is finally at hand, I am still worried that her attitude sucks.   I still won’t mind if my maid is slow but has good attitude but if her attitude sucks, she will really piss me off big time.   Another problem with temp maid is that after training them well, they would have to leave when the new permanent maid arrives and I would have to train the new maid from scratch all over again…. and that’s really tiring and time consuming. 

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This week will be my maid’s last week with us.  Can’t imagine life without her.  Though she’s got her weaknesses, she has nevertheless been quite a good and efficient maid.  I can leave many things to her like handling the kids and cooking and that has given me some time to do my own work.  With a new temp maid coming,  I know I won’t trust her with the kids and cooking.  I guess I’ll just have to close one eye to the new temp maid’s inefficiency and not stress myself up.  As long as the house and toilets are fairly clean, laundry done daily and dishes washed up, I can’t ask for more… though she’s going to cost us a bomb at RM1,200 per month!

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My maid will be leaving on Sunday next week.  My maid agent has just told me that my new maid can only arrive earliest end of Chinese New Year, which means that I will be maid-less for at least 1.5 months to 2 months. These maid agencies are just so good in enticing you to get a maid from them in the first place with all their empty promises and when you have paid the hefty sum, they start giving you excuses when the maid can’t arrive on the expected date. Gosh, I just don’t know how I am going to cope without a maid.  Most of the maid agencies that I had called only supplies part-time maids who come ONCE a week. 

If I am not pregnant, I think I will still be able to cope with the househouse chores but at 6-7 months preggers, I don’t think I will have the stamina to mop the floor of a 2.5 storey house over 2,000  square feet in built-up area everyday with 2 high-demand and whiny toddlers.  It will drive me up the pole.

What I plan to do after my maid has left us is :

1)  Send most of our dirty clothes, bedsheets, towels, etc to the laundry. Only kids’ clothes to self wash in washing machine.

2)  Don’t cook – lunch to eat out or eat simple food like sandwiches and dinner to cater from the kids’ former nanny.

3)  Do some of the light household chores like toilet and bathroom washing myself.  Leave the floor and stairs moping and windows cleaning to a part-time maid.

4)  Blog less and earn less for 1-2 months.

5)  Close one eye to dirt and dust and at the same time, learn to increase my tolerance to a not-so-clean house.

6)  And lose some sleep.

Meanwhile, if there’s anyone who can recommend an agency who can supply part-time maids on a DAILY basis, would be glad if you could give me the contact number of the agent.

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After yesterday’s episode, my maid has been extra nice, extra jovial and extra patient to everyone today.  I guess sometimes these maids need to be threatened a little and shown that we mean business and let them know that we are not afraid if they leave us.  When hubby asked her to leave our house with her Nepalese boyfriend, I really thought she would pack her bags and leave but I was wrong.  She kept saying she wants to stay and continue working till her contract expires mid of next month. Or maybe she wants to continue staying because of her boyfriend? She knows she  can’t elope with her boyfriend  just like that.  She still needs us to renew her work permit and her passport is with us.  I don’t know and I just hope that she will not cause any more problems till her last day. I just want to send her off in a good note and bid her a proper farewell and not like how we sent our 4 previous maids off.

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I caught  saw my maid walking out of the house to meet her friend boyfriend (she maintains he’s only her regular friend) for about 3 minutes yesterday afternoon.  When I asked her, she admitted that her friend passed her a letter and asked her to go out in 2 weeks’ time as he has a day off.  I advised my maid to be wary befriending men, especially a foreigner whom she barely knows.  I told her that there is no ending in their relationship as he will not follow her to Indon when she returns and she can’t stay in Malaysia either.  I also told her stories of young Indon maids who had been impregnated by men who later did not own up and washed their hands clean.  It would be so embarrasing to be sent home in that manner.  I told my maid that as long as she works for me, I will not allow her to go out, especially with men.  This is also strictly against her contract with the agent. 

Many of my readers had commented that I am being too liberal with my maid.  From my experience with 4 previous maids, I find that being too strict with them and giving them no freedom at all only made matters worse. The result : my 1st maid charmed us tried to charm us with her urine (which I drank), my second and third maid stole our handphones and brought their boyfriends back to sleep and sneaked out at wee hours in the morning. 

Like all human beings, the more we are prohibited from doing something, the more we would want to do it.  So by giving them a LITTLE  leeway, I find that the maid (as with all human) would be happier.  I always put myself in their shoes. I would never be happy working for a boss who is always breathing down my neck, who does not give me any freedom and who does not allow me to talk to other people.  It’s like being treated like a slave.   I totally agree that these maids cannot be treated too nice or they will climb over our heads and even tell us off and try to be the boss of the family.  But being too strict is not doing any good either and in my previous case, it back-fired. 

I wonder how employers with maids who have worked for them faithfully for many years deal with their maids.  I would love to hear from these employers.  Do you allow your maids to go out and how do you handle them so that you, your family and your maid can live harmoniously together?

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My maid caused a big stir and commotion last night when her Nepalese boyfriend tried to talk to her from outside the gate.  I was about to take my shower when I heard a commotion outside our house.  I peeped at the window and saw a group of about 4 guards apprehending a man.  I thought the man was  acting suspiciously outside my house, thus the reason why the guards apprehended him.  The guards were apparently very furious and kept shouting “bl**dy hell, you stay away from here, don’t let me see you again!”   Minutes later, the guard saw me peeping from the window upstairs and said this “you be careful, this Nepalese man was talking to your maid. He wanted to climb into your house.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you when your maid runs away.  We will be making a police report.”  

I was really flabbergasted.  How on earth did my maid befriend a Nepalese man when we don’t allow her to go out?  I called my maid and questioned her.  Initially, she denied knowing the guy and said the guy wanted to talk to her.  When I asked why the guy wanted to climb into our house,  she denied that.  She kept saying “Madam percaya saya tak, guard tu bohong.  Lelaki tu tak panjat pagar”.  I just told her that whatever it is, just don’t cause any trouble to us coz having a stranger climbing into our house compound is a serious matter and I definitely do not want to get startled when I see a stranger in my house. 

Anyway, I  quickly called hubby to inform him and I also told my hubby not to be too harsh on our maid coz we don’t want her to be full of vengeance and hatred towards us.  When he came back, he queried my maid again.  After using some reverse psychology and some humor, my maid finally admitted that the Nepalese man is her boyfriend whom she had befriended when she went out to dry the laundry and water the plants.  They see each other everyday.  They have also been exchanging love letters.  We told our maid that we will not stop her from seeing her boyfriend but she can never bring the guy into our house and she cannot go out with him.  After all, she only has a remaining of 1.5 months to work for us and she can do whatever she wants thereafter.  Long story cut short, we managed to have a heart-to-heart talk with her and she confessed many things to us.  We also told her that we had found out that she’s been passing letters to another guard, to which she was really shocked to know that we had discovered her dalliance with the guard. 

What I don’t understand about these Indon maids is how can they be in love so easily with so many men whom they barely know at the same time.   There was a similar case with my 2 previous maids when we found out that they had dalliance with several men at the same time!  Maybe they were all stricly platonic relationships and they were just trying to find something fun to do to kill loneliness and stress?  I don’t know, I just hope I get to analyse their behavior better, understand them better and know how to tackle them better so that all these problems will not recur with my future maids.

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When I brought the gals out to the park yesterday evening, my neighbor who was inside her house rushed out from the house waving to me as she was making some gestures with both her hands.  She had wanted to inform me that she had seen my maid and the security guard on patrol passing love letters a moment ago when my maid was watering the plants at our garden.  I can’t believe how fast and professional my maid can do it without my noticing it as I was already watching her very closely from inside the house the whole day.  I guess she must have jumped on the opportunity by quickly placing the love note on top of the pillar of our porch when I went to the kitchen for a short while.  Anyway, there’s nothing much I can do as my maid has not done something really wrong. I just have to be on my guard and make sure she doesn’t run away with this guard or bring this guard home at 3 o’clock in the morning, just like what my previous maids did.  She’s leaving in mid January 08 and I think I’ll just have to close both eyes to this hanky-panky business as long as it does not affect her performance.

No. of times viewed = 170

My maid asked me yesterday if she could go out with other maids in the neighborhood during the Hari Raya holidays as she has been invited to follow. I could have just said a big ‘no’ to her but I told her to ask Sir (my hubby). Based on experience with my first maid where I had no choice but to leave her alone at home, she has had the time and luxury to go out with other maids when my hubby and I were out for work. Consequently, she turned out to be really rebellious, lazy, kept asking to go out more and one day upon the advice of my neighbor’s maid, put some ‘charm’ and urine into my drinking water which I drank.

It is also the advice of the maid agent never to give this freedom to the maid, unless we are ready to face the consequences. It is also stated in the maid’s contract that they are not allowed to go out during their 2 years’ contract with the employer.

Later when my hubby was back, he told our maid that she can’t go out with her friends during the holidays. He told her that we can bring her out for a feast but going out with her friends whom we don’t even know is a big NO. My maid was obviously very upset with the decision, moreover my hubby told her off rather strictly. I think she later wept in the bathroom. Later, I told my hubby that he should not have been too harsh with her with his words. Feeling a little bad, my hubby then offered my maid an alternative, that is for his staff to drive her out for a shopping spree. She happily agreed and off she went to the new Giant at Bukit Jalil with my hubby’s staff and his wife who is an Indonesian an hour later. My hubby even paid for all her shopping expenses, totalling RM150 for clothes and shoes. That’s our Hari Raya gift to her. Tomorrow, we will also be bringing her out for a feast.

To those of you who have a maid, do you give your maid a rest day in the week though it is stated in the contract that no rest day will be allowed? For those of you who allow your maid to go out, do you see any negative impact it has brought?

No. of times viewed = 454