Maid Me Mad

Things have been going pretty well with the maid until the other day. At 5:00 p.m., I sent her to fetch Aleena from her play date at her friend McKayla's house.

McKayla spent most of the winter break in the United States. For the first two weeks, each day Aleena asked me "Is McKayla home yet?" It was cute for the first three or four days, but you can only be amused by trying to explain that we had ten (or how many ever) days left.

In any case, I asked Nalin to send Aleena up to my room when she returned. I wanted to read to her and have her work on her reading workbook. Nalin came up and told me that the maid was back, but Aleena was not. A bit puzzled, I looked for the maid who was in the kitchen, working on dinner. I asked the maid what happened. She told me that Aleena didn't want to come home, and fussed a bit, so she had returned without her.

Soon the look of utter bewilderment on my face was replaced by severe annoyance. While I did not raise my voice, I let the maid know in no uncertain terms that I was angry with her. I explained (again) that the children were not her bosses. If I told her to do something, and they refused to cooperate, at a minimum she had to call me.

Not only did she not do what she was sent to do, but she didn't even tell me that she had failed. If not for Nalin, I wouldn't have known Aleena wasn't home until thirty minutes later.

So fresh off of yesterday's poor performance, the maid outdid herself today. Around nine this morning I was going out on my bike. She said that she was going to the market that morning. I told her that I didn't have my key. She said "don't close the door". I told her that she could close the door, but not to lock the door. Then I asked her in Thai if she understood. She nodded yes.

On my way back home I passed her about 3 or 4 minutes from the house. When I got home, I discovered that she had locked the door. At this point I wasn't annoyed or angry, I was just plain pissed off. I tore off after her to see if I could catch up with her and get the key, but it was too late.

Fortunately for both the maid and myself, I was able to climb through a kitchen window to enter the house. I was fortunate because I didn't have to wait outside for an hour and a half until she returned. She was also lucky that I didn't have to wait outside for an hour and a half, because I would have fired her on the spot.

By the time that I returned, I had calmed down a lot. I explained to her that she had locked the door on me. She said that I told her that she could close the door. I agreed, but reminded her that I explicitly told her not to lock it and she said that she understood.

I think that my new way of dealing with her is going to be to make her explicitly repeat all instructions until she repeats them. Sometimes I think that people here think "do you understand" (spoken in either Thai or English) means, "would you like me to stop bothering you?"