The Maid’s New Trick

My maid pretends to be ignorant of many things, but she’s quite smart when it comes to shirking her duties! Today I wondered how she got done with her work so fast. I was busy with work so I just let her go and didn’t check to see if she’d done everything she was supposed to. Just a few minutes later, I went outside to check on the clothes, and I realized that the majority of the clothes hanging on the line were completely dry. She left them up so that she didn’t have to wash that many clothes, due to lack of space of course. In doing so, she successfully avoiding all the ironing and putting away the clothes. She must really dislike washing clothes, because one of her other favorite tricks is to leave soaking wet clothes on the line so that they don’t dry for two or three days. Because they take so long to dry, she claims she can’t wash the other clothes because there’s no space. Leaving dry clothes to fill the space is a new technique.

Here’s a pic of our maid, although her eyes are closed cause she was staring into the sun and a bit confused about how the camera worked. It makes her look blind in the picture, which my husband sometimes thinks is true when he sees how she washes dishes and cleans, but she’s not. I couldn’t get a bigger picture because she was a bit embarrassed to have it taken. It’s too bad, because even though she drives me crazy she does have a friendly smile!

Why do I have so many posts about the maid? Most Pakistani ladies spend hours complaining about their domestic help. I guess I need to vent somehow!

The Maid’s Punctuality Progress Chart

Months ago I gave up trying to use negative reinforcement on the maid. I told her that if she arrived late, I’d cut her salary. She was still late so much, that I couldn’t bear to cut her salary by the amount she’d merited, or more accurately de-merited. I would cut it by a little and she’d make such a big deal out it I just lost my resolve. For the past 9 months, she has been asking me for a raise, and my response is always that when she starts coming on time, she can have a raise. Well it’s been a year now and she just has not been able to come at a consistent time. Now I’m trying something new.

I have a chart on the wall with a calendar of December. If she comes within 10 minutes of the set time, she gets 10 extra rupees. So, if her target time is 3:00, and she comes between 2:50 and 3:10, she gets a bonus. If she does that everyday for a week, with 6 working days, she gets 60 extra rupees. If she comes on time every working day, she basically gets a 10% raise.

There’s now a big calendar on the door opening to the terrace where she does the laundry. She can’t read numbers, so I’ve color-coded it. If she comes “on time”, she gets a +10 in green. If she comes late, she gets a big red “X.” At the end of the month I’ll total up her bonus rupees and add them to her salary.

When I explained this to her she was looking at me as if I was from the moon. She seemed to think it was quite funny that she would have a little punctuality progress chart in our house, but she’s happy that she’s already earned 30 extra rupees by being on time three days this week. Let’s see if she continues or just gives up! I think if she manages to actually come on time all the days in a month, I’ll add a bonus on top of the bonus, although I may be too shocked to believe it.