Is it age? It must be, because I don’t remember feeling all these different emotions one by one or all at the same time a few years ago. It feels crazy, unnerving, confusing, and helpless. Is this a preview of menopause? If it is well, it’s a scary thing. I’m concerned for my family. Hahaha..
I would like to think that I am a patient person, but recently I realize that my patience is thinning. I think my level of patience for certain things have gone down. I get easily irritated when a cashier takes her sweet time talking to her bagger that it affects the efficiency of her work, there are times that I want to take over. My mom was this when I was growing up, and for the life of me I NEVER understood why. I would always thing ‘kawawa naman yung kahera’, but now my mom is ME.
I’ve lost patience with people who do not have common sense, apparently – common sense is NOT that common. We’ve been short staffed in the household – it’s only Yaya B for a while. She’s efficient, I guess through the years she’s learned my style and has been able to adjust. We’ve both adjusted to one another depending on the situation. So when we found extra help, we both thought that we can ease out of our daily chores. Well, we were in for a surprise!
We both understood that having inexperienced help poses as a challenge, but as we all know – as long as the person is willing to learn and do the work, then everything should be okay. I mean, doing daily tasks on repeat should be okay, right? Well, we were wrong! You see for two weeks, I assumed this was enough adjustment period. Mind you, the tasks are quite light – sweep the floors, mop the floors, wipe down tables, arrange the dining table (lunch and dinner), clear out dining table (breakfast, lunch, and dinner, wash the dishes (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). All one needs to do is remember what needs to be done and at the time it needs to be done. It’s SHOULD be automatic, like arrange the table setting before noon time, clearing the table after lunch and washing the dishes accordingly. For the first five days, it was good! I gave little prompts, but when the sixth day hit – it was as if we were back to Day 1. It seemed as if they were on a different clock, a time that was one hour behind everyone else and on a different planet altogether. This caused me to become upset and disappointed, I mean – things were looking up on Day 5, I thought they were feeling the grove. Well, we thought wrong.
For the life of us (Yaya B and I) could not, COULD NOT FATHOM how a repeated daily task could not be done properly. I usually have a list of instructions, but Yaya B said that it intimidated the new helpers, saying that reading about what they needed to do was overwhelming. I am the type who is very specific on instructions as I don’t want anything to become lost in assumptions and translation, so if you can imagine – my instructions is very detailed. So I adjusted it for their benefit giving them a bullet point kind, but guess what – the tasks were still left undone. These printed out instructions were left in the drawers – it’s quite alright to be honest, as long as you have the gist in your head on what you need to do.
When Day 6 hit – the new helpers started to use cleaning materials that they deem better. Like using bleach in the water to mop the floors. We all know what bleach smells like – so I asked them why a sudden change? Their answer was ‘Wala lang, gusto ko lang’. I didn’t know that the decision was their to make! I mean, all you need to do is FOLLOW. I had to remind that helper that, bleach water (pure or diluted) when it touches colored fabric, the effect is discoloration. Yaya B and I have been repeatedly reminding them of such to avoid the ire of Panget, because this has happened on numerous occassions when little innocent splashes touches colored fabrics. But I guess their mind was somewhere else when we repeated this reminder to them. Another is to increase the concentration of Pine-sol with the water because for them the stronger the scent meant that it was more effective. So you can imagine us running out of Pinesol in a span of a week! To give you an idea, Pine-sol was to be used ONCE A WEEK on certain areas and not daily. Well, they did it for two days straight.
I am not one to dote on them while they’re working – I trust them enough not to watch over how they do their daily tasks. But what I realized is, that this generation of new helpers NEED TO BE MICROMANAGED. I have to watch over them on their tasks and give instructions as they do it. It really felt uncomfortable to be, but it this was they way – then I will do it. For the next few days, I had to watch over them like a hawk. I thought to myself, was this how they liked it? I ask because, I don’t like being watched while I’m doing something, it makes me more self conscious. Maybe they liked the attention? I don’t now really, but they tend to not do things properly when unsupervised. This frustrates the hell out of me.
Then one day, (a few days shy of her staying for a month) one of the new helpers declared out of the blue that she will be going back home because she will be enrolling for this school year. This was such a surprise to me, actually to everyone because when she started her work she told us that she needed to earn enough money so she can resume her studies in a year’s time. I guess it wasn’t a year’s time and instead is in a month’s time. I am not one to force, so I let her go. Training down the drain, this was the upsetting part – the time and effort we put into training her, well – down the drain.
Experiencing hope, putting in effort to teach and train, trying my very best to be patient only to be left hanging and disappointed, it felt as I was being tricked all the time. My feelings were being played. Is there some sort of a trickster spirit in my household? Yes, I even thought as far as smudging my entire house to rid it of unwanted vibes.
It’s tiring to be honest. With all these emotions, I feel extra tired physically and mentally.
This adulting thing gets more difficult through the years. I thought it would get easier, but having more emotions thrown in – well, it becomes tiring and draining.