Goodbye, Old Help

We fired our helper this morning, new one arrives tonight.

(And to the reader I got to know thru my blog who emailed in a recommendation that had been circulated at another school, thank you!! Too bad we’d signed the new one just before or we would’ve jumped to snap up your recommendation – it’s not very common for helpers to get good employer references.)

So Rockstar helped with the JD walking this morning…

And had his before-school sandwich on a park bench…

JD returned the favor by walking the Rockstar…

Then, The Talk…

Me: (deliberately casual) Jie-jie’s going home to Indonesia, she left this morning while you were sleeping, so she couldn’t say goodbye

Rockstar: <gets really still> WHY?

Me: <so reasonable> She lives in Indonesia, just like Grandmum lives in Malaysia. So she’s gone home. I told you before, she works for us and periodically she goes home to see her little girl?

Rockstar: Oh. Yeah.

Me: We have a new jie-jie coming to work for us tonight.

Rockstar: <hopeful> A… boy?

Me: Sorry darling, a girl.

Rockstar: <theatrical disappointment> WHY...

So… the new Jie-jie will cook for us? Does she make scrambled eggs?

Me: You can ask her. And you have to tell her what you like, ok? Noodles, broccoli… You can’t expect her to know what you like if you don’t tell her…

Rockstar: Y-eah… She’s not a boy….. Mum!

Me: What?

Rockstar: I use the boy’s toilet in school!

Me: Uh… Excellent!

I believe our previous helper had a relatively cushy life with us – when we travel she has our 1,500 sq foot apartment in Bel Air all to herself for weeks. She went swimming in one of the Bel Air Club pools (until they banned helpers from using club facilities), not always on her day off. She was inflexible about shifting her days off (despite us paying her double wages to shift around because of our long trips abroad) because she signed up for hair dressing, guitar and computer lessons.

We fired her because of the serving-expired-food-repeatedly thing. But not so much because she couldn’t seem to learn to read expiry dates despite being taught repeatedly (yeah and she’s apparently taking computer lessons!) – it was because not only did she claim to have understood each time we taught her, she would discourage us from checking the food ourselves by vehemently insisting she had already done so. That last, we will request Immigration and her agency in Hong Kong inform any prospective future employers.

I took some flak for being so soft on our helper for almost 2 years (bet some of you were reading about her swimming in swanky Club Bel Air and going You’re Pathetic, Aileen!!) But she took care of my home, walked my dog… Because she took care of something dear to me, I wanted her to be happy. I would always go to as much length as I could to make someone doing something important for me happy.

One of my greatest fears is regretting my own actions.. I needed to be positively, irrevocably sure they had it coming before I could hammer anyone. Regardless whether we blackmark her, I’d like to see her find another employer who was openly fine about her reading her papers or magazines frequently during working hours. (Seriously – I didn’t care as long as she did the job fine. She increasingly did not do the job fine.)

I hope she really misses working for us. That should be her greatest punishment.

It’s amazing, the extent to which kindness can be taken for weakness.

Bel Air has a very strong helper community. They’re always walking the dogs or the children together at the park, texting each other… And yes, another mum assured me, they also politik among each other. We don’t expect too much from the next one because there’s no way we can keep her from socializing with the rest of the community when she walks our dog, and picking things up really fast.

Here’s an eg of their savvy: Once when we were at the clubhouse, Rockstar and I were messing on the music machine. To get us off the machine so she could park the little girl in her care there without waiting her turn and apparently go in search of the girl’s brother, the helper first filled out the booking register for the machine (which most mums never do, we just walk in and use whatever’s available or wait our turn) then came up to me and very politely explained they had booked the machine we were using for – oh wait – right now. And then the little girl very politely apologised and thanked us.

So we live here, and that’s going to happen, and all the while I’m thinking WHERE did the little girl’s parents find this helper, so I can hire mine from there too…