After years of hiring (and firing) house helps, I am pleased to finally realize that I know exactly what I seek (or rather what I do not want). My agent has made mistakes twice, bringing me the wrong girls. She must think of me as a picky customer, or what else can explain her coaching a house help to lie to my satisfaction? As I sit here, writing this, I am looking at a 21-year-old young woman struggling to hold a leso she tied around her tiny waist, wondering how to act like the mother she claimed to be. On the other hand, I wonder if my agent has the slightest idea why I want a mature woman to work for me. Doesn’t she take time to understand her clients’ needs? I could have told her had she asked, and as I slowly talked Jackie into confessing the previous night, I realized the poor girl was not to blame.
Fake qualifications
You thought people only fake papers? Jackline told me the age depicted on her ID was a lie! She insisted she was 24 when her ID reduced her age to 21. She also claimed to have a nine-year-old daughter. “Ah! Jacky,” I exclaimed curiously, “Did this tiny body really carry a child?” she never bonded with any of my children as a mother would. In fact, she constantly avoided them, and that was my first red light. Any mother would at least have some experience working to maintain a home. Jacky was clueless and relied heavily on my help. She followed my instructions to the book and said she did not like anything she didn’t know. This would certainly not work; not with my 13-year-old, Pesh, who needs support as a growing young woman, or my 9-year-old Raine, who is a military version of myself, or even Ella, who was just five but a bold young girl who knows herself a little too well. My girls need a mommy figure, someone they can lean on as they would me. This girl would have it rough, given her naivety!
So, I called my agent with the hope of replacing Jacky, but promised myself never again to get house helps from her. Whatever she thought of me, I didn’t seem like the kind of client she wanted to keep.
