Measure Your Conscience
Problems of Poorly Treated Local Security Guards and Foreign Maids
Written by Mrs. Money
Early morning, a security guard called me out loudly from a distance away, “Ou… Ah Mui, boleh mintak air? Saya lupa bawah dari rumah!” (Ou …. Miss, can I ask you for some water? I have forgotten to bring it from home!)”
I looked out a distance away mansion he works in and I looked back at my little cottage; a little munia compared to a giant eagle, I wondered if this little munia really got more foods in her nest than the giant eagle’s nest?
I called out as equally loud, “Ok, boleh! (Ok, sure!)”
I filled up RO water with a big spa Reine empty bottle and at the same time I hanged him a box of cookies. He looked at it, “Ah mui, saya mahu air panas untok kopi! (Miss, what I want actually is hot water for my coffee.)” Then he gave me a plastic bottle.
I replied him, “Jangan guna plastic bottle untuk air panas, tak bagus untuk badan. You sini tungul saya. (Don’t use the plastic bottle for hot water, it’s not good for your health, you wait here for me.” So he waited outside my gate.
Few minutes later, I hanged him a glass bottle of hot water, with few teabags and some instant coffee and he left happily.
*********************************
A really hot day I pop in my son’s school to pass him something, I got to sign up at the security guard stand, I could feel the hot air blowing directly to my face and I looked at those sweated security guards. There were hundreds of students, school staffs and students’ parents walked in and out passed through this stand, why nobody realized what have happened? I was wordless, few days later, I brought them a fan.
*********************************
During Chinese New Year, I followed Mr. Money to visit his friend’s open house in an outskirt Sarikei. When my kids were playing with a tom cat near the kitchen, I saw an Indonesian man carried a wok out of the house. I looked at Mr. Money’s friend in a surprise, “Are you hiring a chef to cook for this open house?”
He replied, “No, this is an Indonesian employee of mine, he has been working for me for 10 years, but in between he ran off once to work for others, eventually he still returned working to me. He is a hard working man and he does almost everything in the house whenever he can. He works as a gardener and even washes our plates. Is a joke right? I don’t need an Indonesian maid to wash plates for me! He eats with us and we treat him like a part of this family, every Chinese New Year I also give him a big ang bow.”
The man didn’t tell me directly or boost that he is a kind man, but from the whole house-full of guests he invited for open house and from the whole table-full of good foods, I could tell he and his wife are both very friendly and generous persons. I put in my heart to pray to God that may this household be continuously blessed.
I have an old classmate and his wife who also treated whosever working for them kindly and generously. They temporary rented an apartment to stay, they would bring drinks and foods to the poor security guards, they never mistreated their drivers, HPs were given to drivers etc. and their maids were well provided with clothes, ornaments and good foods. My classmate is also getting more blessed, years after years I only see him getting richer and living better.
Unfortunately, I have come across bad employers’ cases more frequently, who would treat their Indonesian maids meanly.
Someone told me how the ways her neighbor (JE)'s Indonesian maid was mistreated. One day when the Indonesian maid couldn’t pick up tissue paper on time from the floor due to juggling between other household works, those tissues were actually dumped by JE's naughty kids. Instead of should discipline her kids, JE dragged the Indonesian maid out of the house to the garden, JE used the picked-up tissue papers forced into her maid's mouth, and the maid was punished to stand under the sun, she warned the maid, “I tell you if you want to report that I abused you, I let you know first that the police chief in this town is my uncle!”
I couldn’t believe my ears, I know this lady JE, because this lady normally would act so nicely and sweetly to friends. But one day after my friend told me how her daughters rejected to go learning piano because they witnessed how JE scolded her student, a little boy until he urinated in his pant!
Very soon after such incident, JE called up my friend, wanted to bring her daughters for shopping and resumed her nice composure but her daughters were both scared the shits out of the crazy lady!
Once I paid two part-time Indonesian maids to come help me cleaning the dirty house due to after fixing air-condition, the house ended up like after a dust storm. I worked together with them, they ended up very happy. In between the half day work I brought them for Mee Goreng and drinks in a Malay Kopitiem. During chatting, they revealed to me that they would work everyday from early morning before 6:00 am until 10pm++, they would work for other people during day time but in night time they have to return their agent’s house to help up household works again. I was wordless, the only thing I could do was I informed the agent that I gave those girls ang bow because they worked very hard and I gave everyone something, extra money, old clothes, ornaments and vegetables from money tai tai’s garden, so everyone was happy.
I heard also there was such a case, an employer who has never solved emotional problem with his wife, he would deliberately give problem to the Indo maid to make his wife’s life turning hellish, like he would deliberately add in pork to every dish he cooked and scolded his wife loudly in front of the maid. This man always worked outstation but once a blue moon when he returned, he would scream and scold the Indonesian maids unreasonably, for years he would never treat anyone of his Indo maids well, when his as equally battered wife saw one after another maid was abused by her hubby and left she thought of no hiring any, but her nasty hubby insisted to have a maid at home! Not all Indo maids were verbally abused by their lady bosses but also by their male bosses (here don’t mean sexually assault cases).
*****************
Mr. Money and my sister always bugged me to employ Indonesian maid to assist me, I told them if I am so rich, I don’t want just a maid, I need a butler and many maids!
I totally disagree with such semi-slavery system practice widely in ex-colonial nations, unfortunately such earlier on royalty slavery practice has deeply rooted and influenced subconsciously even after 50 years of Malaysians' independence. I wonder are those peoples hiring maids to proof to other peoples that now they are superior (or rich)? I doubt very much peoples with such kind of slavery superior mind set, if they ever or able treat their maids nicely. Many years ago they witnessed how their grandparents worked as gardeners and maids for the whites, now they employ Indonesians which they think are “poor and inferior” to work for them?
Many folks are mean, if someone from Singapore or Brunei, these special mean stuck-up Malaysians would treat them with respect, but when the special stuck-up Malaysians met those foreign workers from China, Thailand and Indonesia, they would immediately treated them as second class citizens.
I remember once I sarcastically brainstorming someone, “Hey! Please treat foreigners well, one day you will be going out of this country, how about if you go to England and those British treat you as rudely as you treated our foreigners which you think is an inferior race because their currency is lower than our Malaysian ringgit?! Just to tell you some of these Indonesians working here in Malaysia could be dentists or architects, they are much more educated and cultivated than some of our peoples here!!!”
I prefer my experienced Americanized way of treating their helpers (Americans hardly employ maids, only those super rich do), during my studies in USA I sometimes helped some American professors or friends to clean their house, those American ladies would treat me like their kids to clean their house, I learned so much of household works which I indebted to them, I feel like I was paid to learn how to clean a house.
********************
Do you aware of these:
To treat foreigners and foreign employees nicely and kindly, regardless of which countries they are from, is another diplomatic door opened indirectly, you help our nation to promote our country and its predominant kind folks indirectly.
A good example in year 2000 I visited America, the minute I stepped out the airplane, a guard stopped me, after he glance my passport he snubbed, "Huh... Malaysian!" I was so angry and I felt like wanted to broadcast to the whole world letting peoples realized how rude Americans could be, but once I stepped in the Americans' soil, the common folks there really treated me kindly, generously and with warm welcome.
To cherish our own poorer fellow country people nicely and kindly is a priority than you donate money to earthquakes victims in other foreign countries!!! (Imagine how I felt when this morning, I witnessed how our own fellow countryman was being treated badly by “VIP foreigners” on our own soil!)
