Here's the "Cut & Paste" version of it. The whole mess is still in the archives:
OK, I'm titling this, "An Idiots Guide to Hiring a Maid."
I publicly confess...I did almost everything possible, wrong.
We hired a maid immediately following our arrival here. I admit, we were caught up with the idea of having someone to clean the house and do the cooking. We knew with our living situation, we would be hard-pressed for child-care, so we justified this move in our minds on several levels. If we only knew then...
Within 30 days of her coming into our home her father "died." If you haven't figured it out by now, I have a real weak spot in my heart for family. She was a believable actress and we were naive. We paid for the airfare to send her back to the PI and allowed her a full month to assist her family in getting accustomed to life without the patriarch. Before you all jump down my throat for being an idiot, we had zero point of reference, and I spend the last couple years of my time in the military as the Mortuary Affairs Officer, so death holds a real personal place with me. Call me a sucker if you will, but live in my head for a while before you open your mouth.
Anyway, she comes back and all is well, right up to the point where we inquire about the well being of her family after the death of their elder. "It was a miracle. He had been lying dead for three days and when my sister and I got home and spoke to him, our presence shocked him back from the dead.” (It was only then that we found out that her sister's contract had conveniently run out immediately preceding this familial calamity, providing the perfect timing for an all-family gathering) “He arose and the family had a huge celebration to mark his arising from the dead.” (The writers of the next Bible need to be getting this down.) Needless to say, our pre-sleep conversation was not relaxing in any way, shape or form. (Mistake #1, not retrenching her 5 seconds after the end of the conversation.)
Time passed and we chose to forget it, justifying it in our minds with the fact that she is married and has two children living back in the PI(unbeknownst to MOM, and ourselves for a while). All the while her hubby is working while their family’s maid raises her children in her absence. Family. Life is not fair to everyone and sometimes you have the opportunity to make a difference in another’s life. She was our opportunity. (Mistake #2 – believing we were “doing the right thing.”)
We overlooked several of her tardy returns from her Sunday off, and even chose to let it be when the dining hall floors went unswept for several days in a row, inviting a colony of ants to set up housekeeping. Choose your battles, we thought. Then, when we got to the point that we were consciously avoiding bringing up cleaning shortfalls in favor of promoting, what we thought, was a greater good, the camel folded. I sat her down and discussed our situation with her in as objective a manner as is possible when addressing the most personal of subjects…the day-to-day operation of your life. In return, I received a flow of tears, an extremely sullen attitude and a day later, a request to transfer employers. Not wanting an unhappy $5000 liability, we granted her request, allowing her 30 days to find another family. Her (token) efforts in finding an alternate employer were unsuccessful, and we talked ourselves into granting her request to stay as our boys think the sun an moon revolve around her. (Mistake #3 – continuing to put up with substandard performance based on the ideal that we are somehow making life better for her children in the PI.)
Fast forward to May of this year. We just shut off the light and are awaiting the sandman 8 hours prior to our plane’s departure for our first family trip home in just under a year. The phone startles us out of dozing and I answer to the sound of a man’s (obviously) long-distance voice. “I need to speak to ******* (deleted to protect the innocent children of her family’s name) as her father has passed away,” initiates the conversation. “Who is it,” my wife poses me?” “Someone looking for *******. Apparently her father has died…again” (all the while the phone laying on my pillow with the transmitter uncovered.) I amble down the stairs to her air-conditioned-guest-bedroom-with-attached-bathroom-converted-into-maids-quarters-as-we-feel-the-“maids-room”-only-qualifies-as-a-broom-closet door, and knock to inform her of the phone call. I return to bed, to discuss the situation with my wife. We decide that if she is smart enough to not knock on our door, she will survive yet another assault on our generosity. (Mistake #3 – Not taking her to the airport with us in the morning and putting her conniving butt on a plane back to the PI)
The straw that broke the camel's back relates to our trip to Oz. I told ******* a month and a half prior that she was expected to go with us. She replied initially that she was happy to go. Then, a week later she asks me how long the plane flight is. I replied "7 Hours." "Oh, I cannot fly for 7 hours...I get sick." Having been through Aerospace Physiology while in flight school, I knew this was a load of crap. She is just fine on the 3 hour flight to Manila, but when she wants to stay in Singapore to be with her friends (boy), suddenly she is unable to fly. I told her that this excuse wouldn't be accepted and that we expected her to make the necessary arrangements to accompany us to Oz as part of her employment contract.
The abridged version of the story is that she went to an OB whom she managed to talk into giving her a medical travel restriction covering the dates of our travel following a "procedure."
After all of the crap she had perpetrated on us, I had enough and took all the necessary documents to MOM and they agreed that the travel restriction could not stop me from cancelling her work permit. I did so.
When the morning came for her to go, she refused to leave on the grounds that she was medically unfit to travel. She threw an absolute fit, and acted in a way we had only imagined possible. Luckily, we had the forethought to sequester the boys at a neighbor's house so they would be spared the trauma of this eventuality.
By 0800 I was forced to call the police and get them involved in sorting out this mess. When they phoned the Doctor to clarify this travel restriction, he folded, saying that he only restricted her travel for 24 hours to allow the anesthetic to wear off following the "procedure." This "procedure" was done on the 10th, this was the 14th. Needless to say, she got on the 3:05pm flight to Manila, with full police escort.
Before anyone tries to hang me on humanitarian terms, this is only the briefest of abridged versions of this story. We treated our maid as well as a family member, possibly better as even I don't get paid a monthly salary.
If you are going to hire a person to become part of your family...don't. If you are going to hire a person to perform domestic labor on your behalf, choose mightily carefully. Interview many, and be excruciatingly sure that the one you hire is the only possible choice. If that person clicks so well that you accept her into your family, great...but don't go looking for it.
PS. We have subsequently found out that her "procedure" was an abortion. Apparently that little man that turned up at the airport in a last minute attempt to persuade the policemen to let her go was her boyfriend. I bet her husband and children in the PI would be shocked to find out all the things their Catholic "wife" and "mother" was doing with her spare time here. God forgive her.
