I have now employed my 4th maid, and she has given me good enough reasons to attribute a blogpost to her.
She joined my family on 5th Dec with no working experience, so it has only been slightly over a month she has been with us. One would think that no brand new maid would dare to slacken or do anything funny within her first month. Not this one though. She should be given an award for her boldness and acting ability.
I wonder if her boldness is common for Filipino maids as she gets advice from her experienced relatives. She is on the phone with them almost every other evening...so maybe they taught her how to deceive her employer. Or maybe it is just her greedy nature.
Thankfully my family has yet to suffer any huge loss to our knowledge, but her little dirty acts are suffice to raise my blood pressure.
Within the first few days of her arrival, I accidentally saw her eating off the skin of the orange while she was cutting it up for me. I brushed it off as an unhygienic act but didnt think of confronting her.
When my mum-in-law unexpectedly returned home one day, she caught my maid rummaging through the biscuits. My mum-in-law did not mention anything but my maid subsequently spoke to her about it - she claimed she liked the biscuits my mum-in-law gave her and was looking at the brand earlier so that she could buy for herself in future. What an ingenious reason.
There was once when she finished her jam and did not inform us. As she has the bad habit of not telling us when her foodstuff has finished, I wanted to wait a few days before passing her the jam. She still had butter anyway. But my mum-in-law cautioned that she may end up consuming our jam instead. So I strategically positioned my jam jars in a certain way that evening - true and behold - the next day one of the jam jars was in a different position. Sighz.
There was once my mum-in-law asked her to cut some fruits. Right under my family's nose, my mum-in-law saw her keeping a slice of the persimmon under all the fruit peels. It was only when my mum-in-law decided to cut the fruits herself that my maid told her she had accidentally left out one piece under the fruit peels - wow what an accident.
The final straw came two Sat ago when my family was out and I could not access the video camera remotely. I suspected my maid had turned off the camera - which was exactly the case. The camera was still switched off when I got back and she promptly received a harsh reprimand from me. She explained her feet had accidentally hit the switch while she was cleaning the grilles. She got frightened when she switched the camera on again because the camera was revolving non-stop. I actually believed her story.
It was only on Sunday evening when A and I pieced the real story together. Because we found a piece of our cookie missing - we had counted our cookies the last time we ate them (yes we have to resort to such measures! ) and surprise surprise, there was now one less cookie . I questioned her (nicely), even reminded her she is a Catholic and should not be lying, but she was adamant she did not eat the cookie.
But the facts are obvious. She has turned off the surveillance camera while we were not home and helped herself to the cookie which was placed right next to the camera. I am not sure what else happened when the camera was switched off. In retrospect, the odds that she could have accidentally switched off the power switch were one in a thousand. Given the chunkiness of the camera plug and the location of the powerpoint and power switch, it would require more than an accident to switch off the camera. She might as well crashed my camera and said the camera fell off the table by itself.
I could close one eye if she only stole my cookie - it was not her first time anyway. Or maybe we really miscounted. Perhaps she did switch off the camera by accident. But for both incidents to happen at the same time is too much of a coincidence. If she is bold enough to switch off the camera, I cannot imagine what other tricks she would come up with in future. She is a liar, a thief, and a very audacious one for the matter. I certainly hope other Filipino maids have more integrity and pride in themselves than the one I have hired.
So I am off to hire maid no. 5, and we have decided that our experience with this Filipino is so horrendous we are sticking to Indonesian maids for a long time. All I want is a honest and hardworking maid - is that so difficult to find?
PS: Over the weekend, I noticed that a bottle of snacks which my family has never opened did not look as full as it should have been. Further, the scotch tape that was used to seal the container was pasted in a messy manner and had bubbles all over. I don't want to speculate but there is a huge likelihood someone had opened the container to taste its contents and tried to seal it back unsuccessfully. A thinks it was probably done before we alerted her that we knew she stole our cookie. We may be wrong of course, but we just do not trust her anymore. I want to give her a piece of my mind and send her back now, but A prefers to wait till the new maid arrives. She frustrates me so much I can't wait to kick her out of my house soon!
