No, no, she did not run away with a man or what. She went back to the maid agency and refused to return.
Actually the maid had planned for this for a few days already. On Wednesday, she asked me to help her to check if there was any more values in her EZ-Link card. She told me that she had not used the card for 6 months. She said it was bought when she was working with her previous employer and she wasn't sure if it was still usable. So i checked it for her and there was still SGD9+ of value.
I was somewhat suspicious of her motive in asking me to do this. I even wondered if my landlady knew that the maid had an EZ-Link card. Furthermore, the maid had been complaining to me about how she could not stand my landlady's daughter and she had never seen such naughty kid before (referring to the elder one). I sensed something not right, but then i was so busy with work that i forgot to inform my landlady about it.
My landlady told me that on Thursday, she actually saw the maid had all personal belongings packed in her luggage. She asked the maid why she packed all her stuff and questioned if she wanted to run away. The maid then said that if she really wanted to run away, she could have done anytime that when no one was at home in the afternoon. My landlady then did not probed further.
Then this morning, the maid woke up early and started washing all the bed linen without my landlady telling her to do so. She then told my landlady that she would like to finish up the laundry and would not go to church with them. My landlady then left the maid alone at home and went to the church with her kids.
My landlady received the call from the maid agent when she was having lunch after the church service. The agent told her that the maid had returned to the agency and refused to come back. Through the CCTV that my landlady had installed at home, she saw that the maid left the house just about two hours after they went to church. And the amazing part is that she left the luggage here, sealed and pasted with a piece of paper detailing what are inside the luggage.
Then what followed in the afternoon was chaos. My landlady wanted to settle this by bringing the maid back here and then cancel her work permit tomorrow, but before my landlady could go to the agency, the maid had already gone to a shelter home. My landlady then decided to just leave her there and has been making calls to friends to ask for advice.
Seeing my landlady was so busy and yet the girls were complaining about being hungry (it was dinner time), i offered to bring the girls to dinner at the mall opposite the flat. As much as i dislike babysitting and do not know how to deal with kids, i thought that was the least thing i could do to help.
My landlady still holds the passport of the maid, and i am not too sure how she is going to settle this issue. And a bigger question now is who's gonna take care of her kids while she is at work. Her mother had just gone back to Malaysia after staying here for almost half-a-year, helping her to look after the girls. She couldn't possibly ask the mother to come back again, because the mother had actually been complaining about how bored she was when she was staying here and had nothing to do but stuck in the HDB unit for the whole day. Looking at her predicament, i could only say that it is really tough to be a single mother with an irresponsible ex-husband.
There were actually a lot more stories about the most recent two maids but i am not in the gossiping mood. Uh huh, two Filipino maids had been to this household since the previous good one left. The last one stayed even shorter than this recent one, as she was caught being dishonest by hiding mobile SIM card in her the package of sanitary pads. My landlady's conclusion now is that Filipino maids are too simply smart and difficult to control.
Anyway, it's back to maid-less days again. Oh boy, i'm gonna see messy house again.
Labels: life
