May 23rd, 2011 | Posted by acidicice

My housekeeper has been working for my family since I was roughly 4 years old. She is a very good worker and often does things you don’t ask her to (i.e. changing your furniture around, repacking/tidying the cupboards). She is part of the family. She even attended my wedding as a guest. She used to work for My Evil Mother 5 days a week. That agreement ended when My Evil Mother stopped paying her. She owed her quite a sum as well. She kept promising to pay her and she kept working in the hopes that this would materialize. It never did. My grandmother and I kept her on though. Like I said, she was part of our family.

Every year she takes 3 weeks leave in December. I pay her for her leave, since I get paid for mine and try to work in a bonus if budget allows. If she is off sick she usually doesn’t get paid though. This year when she came back from leave she demanded an increase before coming back to work. I thought she had a bit of a cheek, but I let it slide since I had intended giving her the amount she asked for as I felt that she was due for an increase anyway.

She let us know a while ago that she would need to go in for an operation mid April as she was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth of the womb. She would be off for 6 weeks. I felt really badly for her and said I would try to help her out with some money while she was off, but that I would need to get someone else to help out in her place so I couldn’t say how much. She said it was fine.

At the beginning of the year we also agreed that I would pay her at the beginning of the month for the entire month as I was finding it tiresome to try and leave her money in my account each month and finding an ATM each Tuesday to draw her pay for the week. I remember she asked me ‘What if I can’t come to work and you’ve already paid me?’ and we agreed that she could then work the week in or I could deduct it from the next month. At the end of March I left her the money for April. When I called her that day for something, she asked me why I did not leave her money for 5 weeks as March had 5 weeks. I explained to her that I am paying her in advance, not after she worked and she said ‘Oh. Is that how it works?’ and left it there. I paid her 4 weeks in April, but due to her sick leave she only worked 2. I was fine with this. She called a few weeks ago saying she is broke, so I sent her R150.00 and got R100.00 from my grandmother to give to her as well (she works for my grandmother sometimes too).

On Saturday the lady who is helping us out was there and I thought it would be a good time to call my housekeeper to check when she is returning to work so that I could make arrangements for next week if necessary. She went off at me! She said she will only come back to work once I pay her the money I owe her. I enquired what money she was referring to. She then brought up the March issue again, claiming I short paid her and that I still owe her the rest of her sick leave money. She said the fact that I got someone else to help out has nothing to do with her. She also said she isn’t sure what the R150.00 I sent to her with Rudi was for (implying that it wasn’t enough according to her). She was SHOUTING at me and would not let me get a word in! Eventually I had to shout over her in order to speak at all. I explained to her again that I pay her in advance (calmly) and reminded her about the question she asked me. She denied asking it. She then also claimed that I said I would pay her sick leave in full, which I did not. She refuses to come back to work until I pay her what I owe her. She wants money from me that she did not earn. I am SHOCKED and very upset. I specifically paid her in advance because I wanted to give HER the peace of mind that she had already been paid because of what happened with my mother. I find it very odd that she didn’t query why I OVERPAID her at the end of February (in anticipation of the 5 weeks in March), I didn’t think of it at the time though, so I did not mention it. Eventually she hung up on me.

I called my grandmother to let her know what had happened. I was crying on the phone. I cannot believe that this woman, who we trust in our homes, invite to our weddings/family events and help take care of would do this to me. Not only did she drop me, she was rude. She suddenly has a sense of entitlement and I have no idea where it comes from. She has never been this way. It would also seem she had no intention of letting me know she wasn’t coming back to work. If I hadn’t called her, how would I have known? I guess she figured I would call her eventually.

I now have to change the locks on the doors because she has a set of keys and I am not sending Rudi into a township to go and collect them. Who knows what she is capable of? I know someone recently moved in with her after being released from prison for robbery.

I feel so betrayed and disappointed in her. Rudi doesn’t really care. He has been wanting to get rid of her for ages because he is convinced she takes food without asking and that silver lying around the house has gone missing. He feels she doesn’t work thoroughly enough too, which I never agreed with. Luckily we have already found someone to help us out for now. She’s a tiny bit cheaper too.

What an unhappy ending.