Househelps do an integral job of maintaining the house and looking after your kids while you are out there working. However, they can do a lot of crazy stuff when you are not around. Some of these habits you may never know if you don’t have a surveillance system in your home.
From stealing your underwear to relieving themselves in your kitchen, we reveal the crazy househelp habits you need to know.
1. Inviting their Boyfriends Over in Your Absence
This crazy habit is not a new one among Kenyan househelps. This usually happens when you are not around, and the kids are in school. They invite their boyfriends over, and thanks to your absence, they do all sorts of things.
The househelp cooks for the boyfriend, gets intimate on your bed, and takes a shower in your bedroom. The boyfriend leaves a few hours before you or your children return home.
You might never know about this, especially if you live in your compound.
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2. Eating the Baby’s Food
Some househelps may do this, especially if they are not well-fed in your house. However, other house helps are just mannerless. They will eat your baby’s food, and they’ll force the food meant for the adults on the baby.
As saddening as this might be, others go the extra mile of not feeding anything to your baby. This is especially true if the baby can’t keep up with the adult’s food or is a poor feeder.
The solution to this? Always feed your baby well before you leave and when you are back from work. Keep track of your baby’s weight and let them know that you care about the weight of your child. You can also install CCTV cameras in your house.
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3. Mistreating Children
Your children might be innocent, beautiful creatures to you but not to your househelp. A video of a Ugandan househelp beating up a child was trending a few years ago. In the video, the househelp was beating up the innocent child while stepping on his tiny stomach.
This barbarian behavior happens when the househelp expresses their frustrations with the baby. The best solution is to install CCTV cameras in the house and alert the househelp without revealing their locations.
4. Seducing Your Husband
Indeed, some husbands are mostly the ones who keep eyeing the househelp in your home. However, it may not be a surprise to find a househelp busy seducing your husband.
It’s a pretty common occurrence where the help ends up becoming the wife after you leave.
5. Stealing Your Clothes
This is a common habit with dayburgs or day scholar househelp in Kenya. Most of these househelp also have their own children at their homes. So if you are not keen on your children’s clothes, they may keep stealing and taking them to their children.
It is often recommended that you don’t give a notice to your help when you want to fire them. You just wake up, wait for them to take a shower, tell them to pack their belongings while you watch, give them their dues, and see them out. It might be cruel to do this, but if you don’t, they might leave your clothes or other stuff in your home.
6. Gossiping About You
Among the 9 crazy househelphabits you know is that almost 90% of houses will gossip about their bosses. They’ll gossip about you with their househelp friends and your neighbors.
They share private things about your home, how you run your househelp, and other private things. As much as you might not care what others say or think, privacy breaches shouldn’t be taken lightly.
7. Relieving Themselves in Your Kitchen
There has been trending CCTV footage of a househelp who urinates in a bowl inside the kitchen. She then pours the contents inside the kitchen sink and goes about her normal duties as if nothing has happened.
Another footage also trended where a househelp used urine to cook tea with the urine. Her aim? To lure the employer’s spouse into becoming hers.
8. Dressing Indecently
As much as it is their choice to put on what they want, if you have children around you might need to warn them of such kind of dressing. If your is a decent home where you teach your children about decency, then you need to warn your househelp about indecent dressing.
One solution to this is getting uniforms for your househelps. You can offer them the uniform as soon as they get to your home. It should be some kind of a rule in your house.
9. Misusing Households
This habit is another popular among the crazy househelp habits you need to know.
As an employer, you already know the amount of things like sugar, soap, cooking oil, and other stuff your family uses in a specific period. You might have recorded that you use 2 liters of cooking oil in a week. If a new house help comes in and you end up using 4 liters, then you need to know that they are misusing the oil.
Others go as far as boiling cereals, which they might sell to your bachelor neighbors without your approval. For electricity bills, some house helps may even boil water for everything, even for mopping the floors.
This eventually contributes to a hike in your electricity bills. They can also misuse water, and you will end up paying double what you are used to paying. The solution here is to let them know that they are misusing things in your house.
Give a stern warning about their salary deductions if they continue with the habit. This always works since they do not want to have their salaries deducted.
How to Prevent Bad Househelp Experiences
It might be close to impossible to stop these crazy house help habits. However, here are some tips to help you reduce them:
- Install CCTV cameras and notify the househelp.
- Set your house rules right from the beginning.
- Only hire from reputable platforms
- Consider getting a middle-aged house help
- Ensure that you know the background life of your house help.
- Spend time with your children after work and know how they spend their day.
