While hiring a domestic helper can ease the burden of daily chores, sometimes the help doesn’t quite meet expectations. What does one do when caught in that situation?
A Redditor recently shared his woes, seeking advice about his domestic helper, whom he described as “lazy and unable to cope with work”.
“Hired the maid for seven months now. First three months was okay, but the following months she got [increasingly] worse/lazy,” he revealed, going on to list several incidents where she didn’t meet his standards.
According to the employer, the helper is “perpetually stuck on her handphone”, often watching YouTube, scrolling Facebook, or making calls. “Work 30% phone 70%,” the OP quipped. They added that it was their first time hiring a domestic helper and they wanted to be “humane”, presumably by not restricting her phone use too much.
Addressing the helper’s inability to cope with work, he wrote: “Whenever it comes to bathing, feeding, playing with the child, she seems too tired or exhausted. This often leads to heavy lifting being done by my mother, wife, and myself, while she just sits and watches others do her job.”
When asked to organise the fridge, with the employer often finding rotten food inside, the helper “does not do [it] and rather watch her videos”.
You’d think that with all these issues, it would be a no-brainer for the OP to replace the helper. But in his case, things aren’t so straightforward.
He revealed: “Problem is, wife and both grannies want to retain her simply cause they felt the child likes her a lot. This has become quite a frequent point of conflict internally, because I strongly disagree with retaining a disobedient (even at the baseline) helper.”
