Archive for maid
Maid #6
Posted by: | CommentsSome of you have been complaining that I’m not sharing Maid stories any more, and the truth is I don’t have many to share. We figured things out with Maids #1-5 and so now we have a fabulous young woman and we just don’t have those kinds of stories to share.
Well, until a few weeks ago. Maid #6 has been on time every day and hadn’t missed a day of work. In the middle of the day she took a phone call and got very animated on the phone. Apparently one of her two children had been taken to the hospital earlier in the day and the medicine the Doctor prescribed was going to be 300Q.
Our Maid is one of the better paid maids in town, but even at 1600Q a month they obviously don’t have any emergency savings. She asked to borrow the 300Q and said we could take it out of her paycheck. She also asked to leave right away. The Wife gave her the 300Q and told her to go to see her baby.
The next day she arrived on time and asked if she would be able to make up her hours at some point. We said no problem, and took the 300Q out of her next paycheck.
About two weeks later, she came to me with a long story involving lots of ‘fijese’ and obviously wanted some money. I told her to go talk to The Wife for two reasons; first, I want the Maid to understand she works for The Wife, even if she knows I am giving The Wife the money. (Don’t you FemiNazis think I control all the money; The Wife and I own everything jointly, it’s just that the job of hitting the ATM every other day falls to me). The second reason is that I couldn’t quite figure out what she was asking the money for and don’t really need any more drama in my life.
It turns out the Maid got a new floor for her house and needed 600Q to pay for it. I didn’t get all of the details from The Wife, but apparently the Maid’s husband’s friend had installed it for them and done the job cheaply as a favor but they really needed to get him some money. Now, perhaps this floor was an emergency of some sort and we didn’t get the details, but I was a little reluctant to loan the money when it was a household improvement and not a life or death hospital situation.
However, The Wife really likes the Maid and pointed out that the 600Q was less than two weeks pay and that she had effectively already earned half that and so she gave her the money. I really have no complaints about Maid #6, except I’m worried that the lending could become a habit; let’s face it, when you make 1800Q a month you’re always going to need money, and when you know that your Patron gives you money whenever you ask for it, it’s a temptation.
Last week Maid #6 got a phone call from her mother saying that one of her children had been taken to the hospital. She didn’t share many details but asked to leave and ran out of the house in a hurry. I suspect she would have asked for money but hasn’t paid off the 600Q for the new floor.
The next morning she didn’t show up for work, instead, her older sister showed up about 8:30am and offered to work that day in her sister’s place. On the one hand I was irritated Maid #6 didn’t bother to spend the 1Q to call me (or even try GuateCalling), but instead sent her sister to the house, with the explanation that she was at the hospital with her baby. On the other hand I was impressed as could be that she sent the sister and the sister actually showed up.
Of course, I want her to take care of her baby. I know how often my schedule is disrupted by unpredictable children, and Maid #6 has so far made up any hours and repaid any money she’s borrowed. However, after six months I’m starting to get the feeling that we’re slowly, gradually, slipping. Santiago tells me you simply can’t give an inch or you’re going to be dealing with new requests and changing rules all the time, and that the Maid wouldn’t treat a Chapin Patron this way.
What do you veterans think?
Update on Maid #4
Posted by: | CommentsThe last chapter in this little drama was Maid #4 asking for 2,000Q as severance pay for her 3 hour a day job that paid 800Q a month. Readers will remember that I took some steps to determine what the ’spirit of the law’ was. After all, I believe that civil laws are binding on men unless they are opposed to divine law, so no matter how ludicrous it might seem, I try to do the ‘right’ thing when possible. Most of the time.
My lawyer said I owed her 800Q and the consensus among friends was that this was ‘reasonable’. So I offered her the 800Q payment less the 300Q which I had loaned her. Her response was 2000Q.
I actually spent some time thinking about this and my initial inclination was to negotiate, perhaps to offer 1000Q and she if she started working her way down. But when the Wife found out about all this, she was furious. Apparently the anger had been building for all those months, with her being disrespected, the Maid showing up late and leaving early, and always taking a doggie-bag home after dinner. The idea that we would pay anything more than we had to was really offensive to her. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was guilty for a) having let the Maid behave in this way and b) Being willing to pay anything at all.
I apprised Santiago of the updated status and he said, “Don’t budge. If she wants to take you to court it will take her months, she’ll have to hire an attorney, and I’ll go with you so we can give them hell together”. That didn’t sound like my idea of fun, but I figured I would learn something in the process. Most importantly, I knew that Maid #4 needed the money because she was calling daily, sometimes 3-4 times a day, asking where her money was.
To use money as leverage against a poor person is offensive to me on the surface, but I thought I was being reasonable with my offer and willingness to comply. If the attorney had said I owed her 2,000Q, I would have paid. If it was 4,000Q, I would pay. As it is, I held my ground at 800Q.
One of the negotiating secrets I learned doing private equity deals was that you can often times close a deal just by putting the money on the table with the contract. When people see a check for $10 million on the table in front of them and it’s just a signature away, sometimes the details get resolved quickly. In my business we would often work for months, sometimes a year, to get a deal done, only to have one party playing hard to get over some little detail. Cash on the table plus a contract usually wins.
I did that once buying a car too, by taking stacks of $100 bills to the owner’s house and offering an immediate, cash, discounted price. People can’t stand to have money just sitting on the table in front of them and contemplate it walking away.
I phoned Maid #4 and told her I had the document ready for her to sign and the 500Q in cash and that I would meet her. She repeated her demand for 2,000Q but said she would be at the office at 9am the next day. We decided to meet at a friend’s office rather than the attorney’s so she wouldn’t be intimidated by the attorney. I thought it was possible she would show up with an attorney, friend, family member, accountant, or possibly the whole neighborhood, but I was committed only to getting her signature and handing the 500Q, not a renegotiation.
So, the next morning I’m at the office at the appointed time. After 20 minutes she had not arrived, so I left the contract and the money with my friend and said, “If she ever shows up, get a copy of her cedula and her signature before you give her the money”.
Well, later that day I get a call from my friend who says, “The woman is here but she doesn’t want to give us a copy of her cedula. She does want the money”.
That’s an easy one folks, because as we had already learned this woman had four or five different names and had given us different names over the course of the negotiations, so I didn’t want to risk paying 500Q and having her come back with a different name later to ask for more. The lawyer was VERY insistent about this, so much so that I figured it was a point I probably shouldn’t challenge. Apparently she didn’t want to give a copy of her cedula, so I hung up.
In the end she signed, gave us a copy of her cedula and took the money, and I’ve not heard from her since.
Lessons learned:
1. You must have a contract with your employee. The contract should specify their duties, hours, and wages.
2. You’ll need to pay minimum wage (1,000Q) otherwise you’re open to being taken to the labor department. It doesn’t matter that your maid only works 3 hours a week, the law says she’s entitled to minimum wage. Of course, if you’re like the wealthy Guatemalans, just pay her 1,000Q a month and make her work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Apparently that’s just fine.
3. You’ll need to build their bona catorce, Christmas bonus and severance pay into their paycheck so that you don’t have to worry about doing all that down the road and have it be a big surprise.
4. You must have receipts for every payment you make. The receipt should specify not only that they received the money, but that the money represents all the pay they are entitled to for that pay period. You don’t want it to be your word against hers, because you are a Devil from the North and we all know your word is worthless.
5. Don’t loan money, or at least not beyond the current paycheck. This might be hard if you’re a charitable person, but I’ve learned they will take advantage of you, see you as weak, and otherwise abuse you. I’ve already loaned money to Maid #6 in violation of this rule, but I took it out of the very next paycheck and made sure she understood this couldn’t be a regular thing.
6. If trouble is brewing, get “lawyered up” real quick. Litigation is a business weapon in the states, and you have to look at it the same way here. The other side will have to go through the effort and expense to retain counsel, which drives up the cost for them as well. If your pockets are deeper, you have the advantage, and since your employee has every other advantage on you, you need everything you can get. Time and money are your only self-defense options.
Maid #4 Plays Her Hand
Posted by: | CommentsReaders may recall that Maid #4 started giving us some trouble recently, first by referring to my wife in the diminutive, as though she were her daughter, and then by showing her less and less respect to the point where she would not look at her directly when the Wife was speaking to her and would not stop doing whatever she was engaged in to receive instructions.
When we moved, Maid #5 stayed with the old house, so she is thankfully out of the picture, and through Marina and Genesis we found a wonderful new girl, so we have Maid #6 working well. More on that later.
A few days after I fired Maid #4, I got a call from a friend who said, “There is a woman here who says she used to work for you and you owe her some money, what should I tell her?” Welcome to a very small world known as Antigua, dear readers. It turns out Maid #4 had gone to this friend’s workplace (she met him once at my house), and explained that I owed her severance money, bona catorce and her Christmas bonus.
Now, Maid #4 worked for us for about 6 months. The original (verbal) agreement was that she would earn 800Q a month for four hours a day, six days a week. That quickly turned into three hours a day as she arrived late and left early, and she invariably missed a few days of work each month, but since she was getting the work done and was mostly reliable, we let it go. I considered it a raise after her probationary period, and felt good that I was being a generous employer.
Over the months I loaned her hundreds of Q, and always paid her even when she didn’t show up for work. We also fed her dinner every night, which she managed to stretch to over 30 minutes and usually took a healthy bag of leftovers home. Big mistake. So maybe it was like 2.5 hours a day, almost every day.
So I met with some friends and got their input, and the consensus was that at most I would owe her 1/2 month’s pay for severance and 1/2 month’s pay for bona catorce, but not the Christmas bonus since she didn’t work over Christmas. That sounded fair to me so I proposed that I pay her the equivalent of one month’s pay less the money I had loaned her.
My friend Santiago, who you all will remember has frequently provided insight and great advice on matters of dealing with the domestic help, advised me to get a contract drawn up so I could protect myself. I went to the lawyer, explained my needs, and he agreed to draw up the letter, but didn’t want to be involved directly as it might cause the Maid to ‘up the ante’ on her side. He seemed overly anxious that she might go to the government and complain about me.
He then explained that the way some people interpret the law, the minimum wage is 1,000Q per month, whether the person works one hour per month or 10 hours per day. So while I thought I was being generous in paying her and feeding her, if she was vindictive she might be able to drag me through the government and extort a lot of money from me. (Now readers should understand why US firms outsource to India and China and not Guatemala).
Well, I naively thought this couldn’t possibly be the case, after all, I had always been kind to this woman, paying her when she didn’t show up, feeding her a full meal for a 3 hour shift, advancing her money, buying her US quarters, etc. Little did I really know, for she began calling daily asking for her money and told me that she had consulted an accountant (I later learned the accountant in question is her son), who said that I owed her 2,000Q.
Now, before I moved here a year ago, a $250 bribe to make a problem go away would have been a no-brainer. It’s just a cost of doing business. The problem is, that here this is a daily kind of problem. Everyone wants money, and pretty soon word gets out that you’re an easy target. Plus, we’re trying to live on a lot less, so we can live this life in paradise indefinitely.
So, I immediately decided I wasn’t going to pay the extortion. None of my long-time Antigua resident acquaintances thought 2,000Q was a fair severance for six months of part time work. That means we’re going to play hard ball.
Stay tuned…
Drama With Maid #4
Posted by: | CommentsOver the last few months Maid #4 has continued to share with us bad news about her sister. Apparently she was in a truck with a bunch of other people when there was a collision with a chicken bus. It’s not hard to imagine how that could easily be catastrophic, and apparently she suffered many severe injuries, including head trauma.
As a result, Maid #4 has missed some work, arrived late and left early on several occasions. She has also asked for money repeatedly, something about having to take care of her sister’s family, or expensive surgery at the hospital, or other needs. I’ve given in on each occasion.
However, after talking with the Wife and kids, we’ve now counted three different occasions in which Maid #4 has announced that the sister has died and this is the reason she wasn’t at work the day before, or won’t be at work the following day. I’m thinking I’m getting played here.
The next drama was when Maid #4 brought her daughter over for me to interview. We wanted someone to help in the mornings, to replace Maid #3. I wasn’t comfortable with having two women from the very same family working in the house, but I need to practice my GuateInterviewing skills and so agreed. When the two women arrived, Maid #4 introduced the Wife by the diminutive version of her name. Imagine if she referred to me not as ‘Don Marco’ but as ‘Marcito’ (sp?)
Now, you all-or at least most of you-know that I use the Don Marco ‘handle’ self-mockingly just as all my friends do in the US once they learned this was how some people in Guate referred to me. Despite what some readers think, the idea of my being an aristocrat, given my origins and worldview, is laughable. However, I recognize it is a sign of respect within this culture and I act accordingly. I’ve never insisted before that the Wife be referred to as ‘Dona’, and she probably wouldn’t be comfortable with it anyway, but to have Maid #4 refer to her as she might my young daughter was too much.
I talked to a friend, you all know him as ‘Santiago’, and he told me to fire her immediately. He listed at length the problems this would inevitably lead to. I didn’t tell him we were already experiencing most of those problems, but I did ask him to visit with Maid #4 and I to talk about the need to treat the Wife with more respect and the need to show up on time and to ask permission before leaving (she’s developed a habit of just announcing she’s leaving, whenever she thinks she’s done enough for the day).
So Santiago, Maid #4 and I met and we talked about it. Of course, she denied ever referring to the Wife in this way, but seemed nonplussed about the whole thing. She also acted shocked that we were alleging she was regularly 15 minutes late and occasionally 30 minutes late. Watching the situation I realized just how comfortable and secure she was in her position, and afterwards Santiago repeated, “Fire her.”
Well, I didn’t, and the problems got worse. She arrived on time for a few days, called the Wife ‘Dona’ for a few days more, and then it was back to normal. She arrived when she wanted, left when she wanted, but worse, would no longer even look the Wife in the eye when she was speaking to her. She would just go along with whatever she was doing and half-way acknowledge her. She remained respectful to me, especially when asking for a loan or an advance. She also became very diligent about bringing a bag full of quarters every day, watching the teenager count them out and then convert them to Quetzals and then recounting them. When I learned this process was taking 15-20 minutes a day, I decided to put an end to acting as an exchange house. (Not to mention some readers accusing me of cheating the Maid on the exchange rate!) No good deed goes unpunished…
I know some of you are thinking that I’m making a big deal about the work the Maids do or don’t do, but you don’t realize that we do more loads of laundry and wash more plates than most hotels/restaurants in Antigua. I know that from having compared our consumption at the mercado and our bodegona/PriceSmart bills with restaurant and hotel owners. There is a lot of work in this house, and I need the Maids to be working for the time I’m paying them.
In the interim Genesis and Marina had inquired of their Maids if they had friends looking for work and so we had begun interviewing girls and found someone we liked, so I decided to let Maid #4 go. She handled it pretty well, but when I told her that she could keep all of the money I had loaned her as a ‘bonus’ or ’severance’, she acted confused, as though she had no recollection of the money I had loaned her. Whatever. I thanked her and said good bye.
The real drama didn’t begin until a week later, but you’ll have to wait for that.
GuateMop
Posted by: | CommentsThe Wife made an interesting observation the other day; how the Maids’ mop is actually equally efficient and yet far more sanitary than the standard US style mop. Now this is not the type of thing I would normally be interested in (housework being womens’ work and all), but I thought some of you noble savage types would appreciate this.
When we first moved here we were shocked and perplexed by the behavior of the maids when preparing to mop; they would stand over the pilar with our sharpest knife from the kitchen, jabbing it wildly into one of our best kitchen towels. Then they would slip the handle of the broom through the towel and wrap the towel around the business end of the broom to create a mop.
At the time I rolled my eyes and thought of it as a crude and wasteful use of two otherwise functioning resources. For one thing, we never seem to have enough towels (at least when I’m on kitchen duty), and the children observe that the broom ends up wet for the day, reducing its efficacy.
However, the Wife has noted that the Maids are able to remove that permanently altered towel and give it a thorough washing in the pilar every day. This would never happen with a normal mop, whether the medusa style or the sponge style. Instead those mops tend to collect nastiness until you throw them away. In addition to losing their effectiveness they almost certainly represent a health hazard.
So, score one for the Maids (and add a line item in your budget for towels, because between the daily mopping and the pilar, they’re not going to last long). Now if I can just get the Maids to work in an organized, pattern around the room they would not leave so many large spots untouched which are visible to anyone who stands back and looks.
As Long as You Spell My (Domain) Name Right
Posted by: | CommentsYears ago when I had the opportunity to work with a master PR guy on an acquisition, (he had just left a job as a top strategist for the RNC, but was then working in the private sector), he told me that all press was basically good, as long as “they spell your name right”.
Clearly not everyone would agree with this opinion, but I guess if you’re of the mindset that selling things is what matters, or getting votes is what matters (after all, there is no ‘intensity button’ on the voting machine) and you don’t really care what people think, well, I guess it works.
Perhaps that’s unwittingly what I’ve done here at GuateLiving. I wouldn’t want to see the results of an intensity vote; I’m pretty sure the hatred level would set new records, but with every new ‘truth at all costs’ posts the blog grows in fame…or maybe it’s infamy. You decide:
Yet over at Guate Living — el termómetro en el trasero de la vida gringa en la Antigua — we have been shocked to find the suggestion that meticulous locals will take their ceviche with a prophylactic of antibiotics, and that manitas shucas (almost exlusively of the Guatemalan kind) are the root cause of the regular unscheduled trips to the crapper that appear to afflict the more delicate members of the ex-pat community.
Whilst the occasional intestinal storm is almost unavoidable for those of us bearing bacteria in our gut that — however friendly — have yet to master the local lingo, we have found that we rarely suffer from the runs when we prepare our own comida at home.
We recommend that concerned readers kit out each of the maids preparing their gringo grub with PVC gloves, face masks and hair nets, if not indeed a sealed head-to-toe anti-microbial body suit. (NB: The mask is to prevent them from spitting in your soup.
A Jar Full of Quarters
Posted by: | CommentsA funny thing happened recently. Maid #4 was cleaning a bedroom and ran across a US quarter. She showed it to one of the boys who shrugged his shoulders, but took the quarter and put it in his pocket. He understood conceptually the value, but she didn’t, and she pestered him about it.
He explained that a US quarter was worth approximately 2Q. Her eyes lit up and she got very excited, and then proceeded to tell this story:
Apparently she has, on occasion, worked at parties for her El Patron, and there are Americans present. Someone must have told these NorteAmericanos that it was cool to tip Guatemalans in US quarters. I don’t know why-what is a Chapin maid going to do with a US quarter-but they did, and she has apparently accumulated a huge jar of them. She even said that some of them have a ‘numero uno’ on them.
Needless to say she was pretty excited, and so I offered to buy them from her at 2Q per quarter. That thrilled her. The next day she showed up for work and promptly put a handful of sweaty quarters on the counter, and with eyes wide watched as the teenager counted up the coins and converted to Q.
Later it occurred to me that I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do with a jar full of quarters either. Ideas?
The Disappearing Wicker Basket
Posted by: | CommentsI’m starting to get stories from some of you all and I’m happy to post them here for the enlightenment of readers. This one is a real beauty and demonstrates how things really work in Guatemala.
“James” is a Brit and is married to “Catarina” who is Guatemalteca. They live in a nice community on the outskirts of Antigua. They have several different women in the house, each with a primary area of responsibility.
Catarina has well-trained several of them, e.g., one of them is responsible both for preparing all their meals and serving them. Nancy once told me that she didn’t really have a ‘Maid’ because in her mind a maid was someone who served you tea when you wanted it. Well Nancy, it is possible in Guate!
Anyway, Catarina has lived in Antigua her whole life and has always had domestic help, so she knows how things work. In fact, after sharing this story with me she said, “I know how to work my people”, her way of saying “I know how to work the system”.
James has related to me how on a regular basis things turn up missing around the house, and they suspect their domestic help. The way things disappear in the house is they will go missing, but not actually leave the house right away. As it is explained to me, this is the way the ‘help’ tests the client, i.e., to see whether the missing item is noticed. Eventually it then disappears and isn’t discovered missing until much later. This is especially true with things you might only use once a year, like a family heirloom or a special-event item.
We had a close encounter with this ourselves. My children once discovered that their brand new, $250 iPod was missing. I insisted that they had misplaced it and it would be found. For several days they searched the house. Eventually it was found in a very obscure corner of the storage room, where even the children don’t spend any time. Is it a coincidence that the maid keeps her purse there and changes her clothes there before and after work? I don’t know.
Anyway, Catarina explains to me that some months ago a wicker basket of hers had disappeared. They were totally perplexed by it and had no leads. Months pass and it is forgotten. One day their maid announces that someone in the family has died and James and Catarina are invited to the wake. They show up at the appointed time and are invited into the home.
To their shock they see the missing wicker basket right there in the corner of the maid’s salon. James is prepared to start a war over the discovery but Catarina assures him that she knows exactly how to handle the situation. They say nothing and eventually leave gracefully.
Over the next few days Catarina makes some phone calls through her network of friends in the Antigua area, other privileged Antigua women who collectively employ dozens of women and no doubt influence hundreds. James doesn’t know exactly what is said but Catarina assures him that the wicker basket will be recovered. Sure enough, about a week later the wicker basket suddenly reappears in the same place it always was. Nothing is ever said.
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