Helper horror stories

BEING a domestic helper is not an easy job. These workers take on some of the most burdensome tasks around the home for families who can’t manage the workload. Sometimes the working relationship is harmonious, and a helper will stay with a family for years. Other times, though, she finds herself in situations that were not included in the job description, and it’s these horror stories that the helpers share below.

Dawn, 35:

I used to do live-in work for a married couple in St Andrew. They were OK to work with because they both went to work every day and they weren’t nasty. No children, just a cat. It was a dream job. That was until the wife started accusing her husband of sleeping with me, because sometimes he would come home earlier than she did, and she would see us laughing or watching TV. She never said anything to me about it or started any argument with me, but I knew she was stressing out over it. Then one day he said that they had to let me go. We both knew nothing was happening between us, but I guess he did it to make her happy.

Veronica, 70:

I used to work for this family years ago when my children were young. Big family, and neighbours of mine, with all grown women. But I would have to wash everything by hand, including their underwear. And though I had to cook, I couldn’t eat the same food that they were eating, nor could I eat in the dining room. I had to make a separate meal for myself — usually mackerel or sardines — and eat on the steps by the back door. Sometimes my two youngest girls would come to wait for me after school, and I couldn’t even give them water from the fridge. My boss insisted that they drink from the hose in the front yard, and would complain loudly that they smelled. I stayed because I just didn’t have a choice, as my husband spent all his pay on rum.

Blossom, 58:

I did ‘days work’ for some rich people in town some years ago, but I had to stop. They are the worst people I ever worked for. I don’t know how they have so much money and couldn’t buy a washing machine. Five of them lived there, and they only wanted me to come every fortnight, and they expected me to wash two weeks of everybody’s clothes, iron and clean the big dirty house in one day. Then the man was so mean — he was paying the minimum he could pay. Sometimes his mother used to feel bad and make it up. But I still quit because they didn’t want a helper, they wanted a slave.

Jacqueline, 51:

I was working for this man for years. It was a nice man, and he hired me because he didn’t have a personal woman living with him. From time to time he would carry over a different woman, but the relationships never lasted. Then after about a year with this one woman, they got engaged and she moved in with him. But the woman was so nasty! She would just leave her undies roll up on the bathroom floor for me to pick up after her. And she burned up all the pots when she claimed to cook, and left them for me to wash. And she didn’t have any manners to me. When they got married, I quit.

Allison, 40:

I used to do a little days work a few years ago to supplement my security guard salary. I had to stop when I got pregnant, and when I told the lady one week that I couldn’t come because I was feeling too ill, she said I’d better come because “a nuh [she] breed mi”. Another week I went, and even though she knew I was pregnant, she told me that I had to clean the stand that some water containers were on — containers over 10 gallon — and she expected me to lift them and then put them back. After I lifted the first one and almost have ‘body come down’ I left, because I wasn’t about to harm my baby. She didn’t even pay me either, because she said I didn’t finish all of the work for the day.

Rosie, 48:

I was working for a married couple with two children. Everything was OK at first; it seemed like a normal family. Then the husband started moving fishy round me, always watching me mop and so on. One day he put argument to me, and I told him that I was there to work, not fornicate. By the next day the wife came calling me all sort of names, saying I was trying to take her husband. I don’t know what he told her but they fired me.

Gwen, 46:

I worked for these rich people one time, who would leave money careless all the time around the house. I never touched a dollar, even though they probably wouldn’t notice if I did. They had a teenage son, though, who was the most spoilt child I ever met. He stole $20,000 from his parents’ room one time and told them it wasn’t him. And the other suspects were me and the gardener, but the gardener hardly came in the house, so they thought it was me. They didn’t fire me but I don’t like when people tell lie on me, so I left.