“Why do I always get the lousy maids?” one pampered friend had moaned in the past. “She can’t do anything. I’ve got to
teach her every single thing. So bodoh one!”
Helloooooo! If she was all that smart, she’d be your boss. You’d be working your butt off for her, not vice versa.
And after the bone chilling (feel free to further qualify that with “horrifying”, “gruesome”, “Stephen King like”) incident of the maid trying to kill her boss up in Penang, I say, better to have a bodoh (stupid) maid, than a psycho gleefully plotting to finish you off with whatever sharp instruments she can lay her evil hands on.
Here’s another thot. Should you be the sort who has absolutely no sharp instruments around, GOOD LUCK! You can bet your last sen she’s going to bludgeon you with something blunt until her mission has been accomplished. Ugh!
But that’s not the reason why I started on this piece. I wanted to write on “bodoh maids”.
What exactly do employers expect when they hire a scrawny maid from Indonesia / Cambodia / Vietnam / India / Sri Lanka?
Don’t these temperamental employers know that some (I said some, not all) of these hapless maids come from terribly isolated villages? You know, places that require you to get onto a boat, go to the nearest village, wait for half a day for an ancient van to fill up with passengers before heading out to a bigger town. I kid you not.
So, when one of these maids hand washes filthy floor mats in the same pail as your stylo office clothes, don’t scream bloody murder. “Maidless” me can only imagine your frustration.
During that first incident, how about trying to keep in mind that the “bodoh maid” comes from a place where they probably cannot even afford to use well-worn clothes as floor mats. Every item she sees may be a luxury, making her treat them all alike. Plus, don’t you think that in her home, the focus would have been on survival with nary a thot on hygiene?
In cases when a foreign maid diligently shoves three day old food back into the fridge instead of chucking it into the dustbin (aka the Malaysian way), try to look at it from her perspective. Your homesick maid may be crying on the inside as her mind turns to her family going without food. Scarcity in one’s life makes one treat things taken for granted by others with much respect.
I could go on with more stories of maids doing unexpected / idiotic / bodoh things in Malaysian homes. I just wish that the next time these over demanding employers would take a minute to view it from the uneducated maid’s perspective. It’s all about perspective, isn’t it?
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