But it's hard to keep a maid in Indonesia. When my kids were small, two of them, were 4 and 1, we were renting a huge house with tile floors that required a lot of mopping. The kids made a messes, and we'd go through maids really fast. One in her late teens just disappeared and left the gate open. I assume she wanted to leave while we weren't there. Another stole my really cheap cell phone and my really cheap watch and left after one night.
If they'd have told us they were leaving, we would have told them how we felt about it, but we'd have paid them for every day they work.
When my kids were older, we had a one year contract with a maid we got through an agency. She did really well for three months. My wife and I were both pleased with her. She cooked, cleaned, and was pretty good to the kids who couldn't really understand her.
She would talk to herself a bit. But we were overall happy with her work. She was widowed or divorced and her children were grown. We didn't owe her days off according to the contract, but we'd let her take a day or so off out of the house every month. After three months, she told us she thought we'd agreed to giving her a 20% raise every three months. In several years, I would have had a second job to pay her salary at that rate. The contract said 10% after a year. It was a holiday when we had the discussion, and we were going to let her visit relatives if we went out of town, but our kids got sick, so we asked her to stay and take a day off some other day. We went to visit someone who was sick, and left the kids at home. Our daughter called us and told us the maid wasn't around and the kids were hungry. I was upset for her leaving the kids. The oldest was a teen, though, but he doesn't cook anything. We got footage of her leaving the elevator with a big plastic bag. My wife said it was bigger than the bag she came in with. I don't know about that. She could have bought some stuff on her trips.
We contacted her relative, who said she hadn't come by. He suspected she might have run off with a man. My wife said it seemed like she was flirting with the guy who painted our walls.
Anyway, my wife thought she might have been to nice with this maid. She said a lot of the Chinese are strict and bossy with their maids and they stick around forever. Maybe if you are tough with the maids, that makes them 'know their place' and stick around. If you aren't strict with them, maybe they leave you. (This sounds almost like 'game'.
). We are thinking about getting a maid, so I'm wondering about this.
It seems like a lot of guys here are in their home country thinking about living abroad. What about you guys who've had maids before. Does being strict with them help them to stick around rather than other strategies like paying above market, giving days off that other maids don't get, and just being nice to them?
