Last month we found a domestic helper. Let’s just call her “Y”. Explained to her what I needed and wanted also gave her a week of ‘probation’. A dear friend of mine told me about her ‘1 week probation’ that she’s been using for years with her domestic helpers. No string attached, if within that one week I’m not happy or vice versa then I’ll just pay her for that whole week. Simple as it sounds I had a hard time…

First, adjusting to have someone, a stranger in your house daily is pretty weird at first. We never have any domestic helper before although when I grew up my mom always has at least one lived-in helper. Secondly, it’s not easy to trust someone that fast.

A week passed and she seemed ok when it comes to the cleaning but I do notice how she interacts with Little A, there’s just something that doesn’t click, you know. At first I thought it was just because Little A would get frustrated from her not understanding his mixed language (he speaks both English and Indonesian but sometimes he mixed them).

Then on the 9^th day, she came and asked if she can have half of her monthly salary upfront, said she needed to pay rent. Told her I must speak with DH first about this. He, who also never has any experience with having a domestic helper, urged me to help her. I was wary tho’ because I don’t think that’s a very good sign when someone who just started working for you asked for their salary upfront. But I caved it not wanting to get into an argument with DH over this.

Since then I continued to notice the lack of enthusiasm when she had to deal with Little A like say when I had to get on the phone, when we went out to run some errands, which is one of the reasons why I needed a domestic helper. Just can’t help but comparing her with Ipah (my mom’s helper) who is just all over Little A. You can tell just from one glance that Ipah loves him, meanwhile Y was completely cold with him. My imaginative minds starts to wonder what’s going to happen when the two of them are alone…

In early December, not long after she went home, her husband sent me a text message asking what’s going on, why did Y came home from my place crying and refusing to talk? Honestly I was like “WTH???” but kept my cool when I replied saying nothing’s wrong, she was completely fine and nothing’s going on. He replied and continued to pester me over it which made me furious. I tried calling her cell phone but she didn’t answer so I texted her if she’s having some kind of problem that she needs to take care of, she doesn’t have to come to work. She quickly replied and said “I’m so sorry. Someone cut my purse on my way home and stole everything. The money I suppose to send for my daughter was stolen too and I was so upset when I got home.” That just made me so uncomfortable! If it was me, the first thing I would do if something like that happen to me would be to tell DH not cried myself and got mad at him, right? Logically, that’s how I see it but who knows what’s going on I just have a feeling that she’s going to try and ‘borrow’ money to cover for what she lost.

Okay, it may sounds like I’m being mean and cruel but I would gladly and happily help out people that I know I can trust and have been working for us awhile. There’s just something that doesn’t feel right about the whole situation with her and her husband messaging me felt like a ‘conspiracy’ way to make me believe her story.

After a discussion with DH, he too thinks that was probably a ‘conspiracy’ the way her husband pester me. He left it all up to me on how to handle this so I made up my mind and told her 2 days later that we have to let her go. I felt such a huge relieve after that (first time ever I had to fire someone!).

You see this is one of the many of common thing here, some people sees you are married to a foreigner then they’ll assume you have money trees growing in your backyard! Some will try to take advantage that’s why finding the right person to work for you is quite a challenge. It takes two to tango, even when it comes to this department.

Let the search continues…