Not One Less

Kindness, toward the hired household helper, how people should BE treated, even IF they worked as maids for you, translated…

As everybody sat in her/his seats, my dad said, we can’t start eating yet. She’d pointed to the empty seat, stressed, “Wait until she sits down.”, I’d led Jen, who was working on the chores out of the kitchen, invited her, to sit and eat the New Year’s Eve meal with us. Jen waved her hand out of courtesy “no”, but there were, tears, filling up her eyes.

Jen came from a farming household in Hanoi, Vietnam, in order to help with the household finances, she’d come to Taiwan to work, she was driven, by that strong pull toward her home country, and worked hard day and night. And still, as she’d saved up enough, as she readied herself to head back home, she’d heard, that her husband had come down with illness. On the one hand, she worried about how her husband was doing, and on the other, she’d worried about the economic burdens that will soon, follow then. She’d become, unsettled as to whether or not she should head back home, or stay here and work for a bit more.

We’d consoled with her, gave her a red envelope too, hoped, that Jen can have a little less to worry about. But she’d told us, that she was already getting paid a wage, that she didn’t feel fitting, to take the red envelopes. Later on, as my dad insisted, “Although we can’t replace your loved ones, but we’d hoped, that the love we have for you, can warm up your heart during this holiday season”. And Jen finally nodded, and, took the red envelope from my dad.

So, this, is how well a family treated a “hired help”, and this, is pretty rare, because people here who’d hired a foreign worker usually see the people they hired as beneath them, in some families, the household helpers couldn’t even sit at the supper table with the families to eat the meal, they’d needed to, wait until everybody else’s is finished, then, eat the leftovers, but this family surely, treated this foreign hired helper very kindly.