We had a helper which we hired way back 2018 from our trusted maid agency. She was in her early 20s and failed to apply abroad that is why she tried her luck locally with us. Quiet and obedient, she did her work diligently and was trustworthy. She was our all around maid paired with our yaya.
She always had plans of leaving to pursue her dreams of studying but we were always able to convince her to stay because her plans were always half-baked. After a year of work, we allowed her to go home to her province and we even paid for her plane ticket back and forth. When she returned, she returned happy and energised, and resumed her work with us.
She was timid but was always in and out of love. A single mother who's child is being taken cared of by her in-laws, she was free to be in relationships. And she did. While she was with us, she had around 3 or 4 boyfriends if we aren't mistaken. In fact, her last leave with us was for a vacation with her boyfriend. We allowed her because, why not? We just informed her that when she was done with her vacation, she can come back to us and she did come back.
By the time she returned, we already hired someone in her place from our trusted maid agency since she was gone for a month and work at home doesn't stop. Good thing our grandmother, our neighbour, was in need of a helper. So we referred her. We and our relatives live around the same area and she already knew everyone then. Adjusting wasn't a problem and she transitioned fine.
Her new employer now was our grandmother, a centenarian who was still strong. Our mom, uncle and aunt were the ones who checked on her work regularly. A different relationship from when we were her employers.
We feel that this is where the problem came about. Having different family members to follow, our previous help found it difficult to follow all of them at once. Like how the bible passage said that we can't follow 2 masters, we strongly feel that this made it difficult for her to work for our grandmother.
Our relatives wanted what's best for their mother and the house, which was normal, but these wants weren't coordinated between them and as a result, the helper was blamed for not doing this or that. The worse part is that nobody took responsibility and therefore the issues weren't cleared up.
In the end, our helper decided to leave instead, in the middle of this pandemic, because she can't handle them anymore. And as much as we wanted to help her with work, we aren't her employers anymore. Because of what happened, our grandmother was left with no one to immediately assist her because her children didn't live with her in the same house.
The lesson here is that we can't have our helpers be confused on who to follow at home. If relatives or loved ones have a say with their work, it's best that they course this through the helper's employers. In this case, it would have been easier if there was only one relative in charge. This would have been the right way to do things. This could have saved their working relationship.
It's not easy to find trustworthy helpers nowadays, especially those whom you've invested time and effort to understand and know. As much as possible, these relationships are worth saving, especially now that there is a pandemic. For our previous help, we are sorry for the things that happened and we wish you well moving forward.
Just sharing our experience so that other families would learn from our mistakes.
Sincerely,
Housemaids.ph Client
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