Sequel from my domestic maid tales, "Lipstick-Jungle Maid".
Lily was my men-crazy maid. She had worked as my maid for about 3 months, with hardly much work to be done as we hadn't brought back my father-in-law home, when she first ran away. We wanted to be sure of her capabilities and competencies in handling my father-in-law besides doing the daily chores.
In June 2010, I held a kenduri (feast) at my house. As my eldest sister insisted on cooking for the kenduri, I sent Lily to her house to help her with the preparations. According to my sister, she hardly helped there. She was more interested in chatting on the phone in the maid's room.
And Lily begged my sister to allow her to use her phone as she claimed that her husband wanted to send his photo via MMS. And 2 messages came with it which clearly showed that it wasn't her husband but one of the strings of boyfriends she has amassed since she started working in Malaysia.
For someone who's married, she has no qualms about betraying her husband with all the love messages she exchanged with her boyfriends. It really stumped me as I believe strongly in the sanctity of marriage and all spouses should be faithful to one another, regardless of whether you're staying in the same house or working elsewhere or out of the country. But she broke all marriage rules.
When she was away at my sister's house, I decided to spring-clean my kitchen. To my horror and shock, I found that she lied to me all these months. As my house is prone to mice (at that time), I had repeatedly reminded her to clean the back area of the washing machine and dryer as mice love to nestle in such places.
And I was in for a nasty shock. The back are of the washing machine was full of mice poops and you'd not believe until you see it for yourself. The back of the dryer had never been swept (probably for the last 3 months since she started working for me). It was full of rubbish, probably those mice had made a nice home for themselves. See for yourself to know what I meant.
And to think she claimed that she cleaned these areas every day. What a liar!!! And on the day of the kenduri, I was busy preparing other food stuff, so my poor husband had to clean up the mess. Anyway, what are husbands for???
And I thought I had enough shock for one day. I wanted to clean the toilet as I noticed that she's not thorough. She is a real lazy bum. She only cleans for the sake of cleaning and the floors and walls are still filthy. As I entered the toilet I could smell something stinking, like a dead fish. I followed the trail of the smell and to my horror, as I took out a couple of towels Lily had used to wipe the floor, underneath the towels in the pail was a squid. And I recalled that the last marketing I did was a week before. My gosh!!! She had left the squid in the mop pail for a week. It was no wonder the toilet had a stinking odour!!!
And when she came back from my sister's house, I really gave her an earful!! How can I hold back, knowing how she had lied to me all these months, and knowing how filthy she was. I had been busy with teaching and my translation projects to bother about checking. And I had believed her because I thought she could be trusted.
Prior to this, I had seldom scolded her except when she made mistakes. In fact, I have never raised my voice at any of my maids before. Hence why they had stayed long with me. But with Lily that day, 21 June 2010, to be more precise, I almost lost my cool. She was saved from further hankering, ticking off and rebuke from me simply because the guests had started arriving at my house by then.
But what astounded me most was the fact that she managed to sneak out of the house whilst everyone was busy (this was later told to me by my daughter after my sister's maid mentioned to her), she had gone to the public phone opposite my house (probably to make her plans for her getaway with her boyfriend).
That evening, after everyone had left, I had helped her with the cleaning up, and I went up to retire after I had left instructions for her to complete the cleaning up (there were a couple of pots and pans that were still unwashed), and of course there were tons of rubbish to be thrown away (which I had presumed she'd do the next morning).
When I got up the next morning, I had called her from upstairs but there was no reply, so I knocked on her door., and still there was no answer. When I opened the door, to my utter surprise she was nowhere to be found. She had scooted off. My son had mentioned that she was found hovering around in the living room at 3 a.m. When he asked her what she was doing, she had mentioned that she wanted to throw away the rubbish. That was just a ruse on her part.
When I walked into the kitchen that morning, she had left the condition as it was (before I retired for the night). The pots and pans were still unwashed. The floor had not been swept and mopped and all the rubbish were still lying in the kitchen, in several heaps, untied!!! Anger couldn't begin to describe my feeling at that time.
Runaway Maid, Twice Shy - The sequel.
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