Your Mother Does Not Work Here, Please Clean Up Your Mess

21 October 2009, Wednesday

My kittos think that messing up their house is their birth right!!! Haaa... Hence, this notice that I put up at home since I sacked my maid one and half weeks ago. Kids being kids (even though they are no longer kids) assume that messing up the house is acceptable, as their maid, ooooppps, their MUM, can clean up after them!!

I am not only a stickler for punctuality, but also very fastidious and finicky about cleanliness.  The slightest mess in my house will trouble and disconcert me. Everything will be have to be spotlessly clean and neat and tidy (on that count, I take after my late mum).

Not one of my bunch of boys who's still in my nest (my only daughter is in UTM, Johor) takes after me. Messing up their room, their clothes, their bed is something they enjoy doing.....

And, now that I'm without a maid, the above notice serves as a strong message to these lazy bums that I'm a MUM, not a maid. In any case, I did not have an iota of regret sacking my schizo and whacko maid, actually good riddance to her.

Of course, having a maid lightens my burden immensely, but I can't have a maid who's downright rude and abusive to my father in-law.

So on 16 October 2009 (co-incidentally my 50th birthday), my husband and I trotted to a maid agency in Kampung Pandan, an agent which was recommended my my eldest sister, Kak Pah, who sympathised with my plight after having heard about my zany and eccentric maid.

And upon meeting the CEO (she's very friendly and approachable; and the agency is well established; they not only recruit foreign maids, but also other foreign workers for other industries), I was told that I could test out a maid, Endang, who was rejected by her previous Gwailo employer.

As I was quite desperate, and after having discussed with my husband, we decided to give Endang a try. Upon meeting, Endang, I agreed with the CEO's comment that she's a tomboy. She had even told me that Endang's very stubborn. We were told that Endang had run away from her previous employer as she could no longer tolerate the incessant verbal abuse flung on her on a daily basis.

After we brought her home, and after having briefed her on her duties, she settled in. After a few days, I realised that despite being very docile and meek, as opposed to her tomboyish appearance, she was far too slow and too forgetful to be an effective domestic help in my house.

She was somewhat a scatter brain and tended to be scatty, absent minded, slipshod, and dreamy. She had a tendency to forget to lock the grille, switch off the lights, and keep food in the fridge (several dishes turned bad after she failed to keep them in the fridge).  She couldn't even keep up with the daily household chores (like cleaning the mess made by my lazy bums at home). If she worked on something, she would spend ages on that one particular chore, and tended to ignore other chores.

But what alarmed and terrified me most was what she related to me when asked why she ran away from her previous employer. Her employer was a Caucasian who had once stayed in Indonesia for 15 years. And the couple were both very fluent in Indonesian, and now residing in Malaysia.  Now that explained the incessant verbal abuse she received from the employer, in a language which was supposed to be music to her ears, her mother tongue.

The night before she ran away, the lady employer had hurled abuses at her and had even pushed her head repeatedly. And the next morning, after recalling what had happened the night before and all the abuses she had been receiving for 29 days, she became very angry.

In fact, angry was an understatement. She was actually fuming, hopping mad, and beside herself. As she became more infuriated and enraged as she could no longer tolerate the abuses, she grabbed a kitchen knife and was ready to plunge the knife into her employer's heart.

With deep resentment and hatred in her heart, she walked to the staircase, and as she was heading towards the employer's bedroom on the upper floor, tightly gripping the knife in one hand, suddenly she thought of Allah, and slowly the knife slipped from her hand, and fell to her side.  And that was when she decided that it was better for her to run away than to be a murderer. (Had I known this earlier, I would not have considered her at all). Hmmmm.... another pschotic and zany maid landed on my lap!

And another incident that alarmed me was her admission that she preferred everything masculine. She wore men's clothes, men's shoes, even men's underwear (she even showed me the boxer shorts she wore!!). And some amusing remarks she made personally to me after my husband left for work made me anxious and nervous.

So after having weighed the pros and cons, (more pros than cons), my husband and I decided to send her back to her agent yesterday.

Thus, as of today, I'm without a maid again, SO KITTOS, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, PLEASE CLEAN UP YOUR MESS, AS YOUR MOTHER DOES NOT WORK HERE!!!