Use a condom May 10, 2008

“Where did you go? Why did you simply bring my child out without my permission? Did I give you permission to go out? You’re really brave, huh!”

And I saw yet another lady scolding her maid for bringing her son out to the post office without informing her earlier. Undeniably the maid is in the wrong for not informing her employer earlier. Earlier when the maid wasn’t there, I was sitting at the table beside said lady. She was with her daughter and son (both toddlers) and her husband. The son didn’t want to eat, and was being a real pain in the ass wanting to drink some iced coffee, etc. The daughter was also being a pain in the ass, and I can hear the father threatening to beat her. Mother was handling the son.

Then the maid showed up with the other son. Frazzling the mother’s already frazzled nerves, the mother proceeded to scold the maid in public. The maid was seen with a clearly unhappy face. The logical thing would be to side the employer, as the maid was clearly in the wrong. But the way the lady scolded the maid really irked me. It was like she was talking to a lowly life form which didn’t need her respect. Kind of reminded me of the way my mother scolds me at times.

The lady then asked the maid to go get two bowls from the char kuey teow’s stall. The maid asked her employer where the stall was. The employer said back sarcastically, “There’s only one char kuey teow stall here.” (The dialogues were all in BM, btw.)

The maid obviously didn’t know where is it, so she said she didn’t know where the stall is. Which is understandable if you’re a foreigner and you don’t know how a char kuey teow stall looks like. =.- Employer told her to go find it herself.

Anyway, the maid found the stall. Moving on to next story. The lady’s daughter was wandering about. Said lady was in the toilet, so the dad was shouting at his daughter not to wander around. Also understandable, as the coffeeshop was a busy place, and somebody might just kidnap the daughter, or the daughter could wander into a stall and burn herself on some stove, etc. Mother comes out and straightaway slaps her daughter. On the arm.

My point is…you care for your kids. Doesn’t mean you should talk down to someone who works for you. If you’re so afraid that your maid is going to kidnap your kid and run away, don’t hire one in the first place. If you think you need a maid to help you out in taking care of your kids because you can’t handle too many on your own, make your husband wear a condom the next time he gets horny.

Happy Mother’s Day.