Saturday, May 22, 2010

Maid Interviews

We had two interviews set for today, one at 10am and one at 2pm. The 10am came, we'll call her G and she was very nice. Nice enough to tell us that she usually works for singles who just need her for a few hours a couple of days a week and thinks we should look elsewhere. That interview lasted about 15 minutes. G traveled almost three hours for that.

I got to take a two hour nap today between interviews - woohoo!!

The 2pm came, we'll call her P. P was driven by her hubby and when traveling in the car it takes 5-10 minutes to get to our house. But if she works for us she'll walk, so it'll take much longer.

P is great! We're going to call the references that the Embassy has and look at her resume. Unless something doesn't checkout there we're going to go with her. She was willing to negotiate with us on her pay, but we made sure she new that we'd be giving her a raise. She's willing to come here four hours a day Mon, Tues, Thurs, and Fri. On Wednesday, the day I'll be working if I get the job at the Embassy, she'll come 7:30-5:00 giving her 23 1/2 hours. I think we'll just be paying her for 24.

P has an 11 year old son and a 20 year old son, so she's experienced with kids. She's willing to watch the kids if I need to go out, and she's willing to work nights when John and I want to go out! That's very exciting for me! More Embassy functions, yay!!!

She loves to clean, and is willing to iron even though she doesn't really like it, which is good because dry cleaning here is outrageous! Having her here everyday of the week is great because that means certain things that have to be done frequently (floors) can be done frequently.

We told her that eventually we want her to go to full time, either when I get my job, or when the new year starts. She said that would be fine too. She's very accommodating.

She was great with Malachi when he wanted to show her his castle in the back yard. She's over all very sweet. Both sides have a 30 day trial period to terminate the employment without any consequences. After that I'd have to pay severance and other penalties. So I hope any problems come out before those 30 days are up and either are solved or it's easy to find someone else.

She's worked for Embassy families before. Hopefully those are her references so I can easily talk to people about her and see if she'll be as good a fit as I think she will.

I really, REALLY hope she works out and that we can start using her this week. I hate cleaning. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate cleaning. The last couple of days I've been able to use the painter as an excuse to not clean the downstairs (except the kitchen of course) but that doesn't really work for the bathrooms. Am I cleaning them anyways? Nope! Did I mention I hate cleaning?

On non-maid topics:

I went shopping at the "Costco" down here again today and bought a few things not on the list of course. Who can go there and not do that?! For grocery shopping today I went to the nice store. It's called Auto Mercado and it's really nice! Shopping there was so peaceful. For those who have lived in VA it's like going to Harris Teeter after shopping at Shoppers, for Texans it's like Simon David after Fiesta, and for Minnesotans it's like Byerley's after Cub (although I do remember Cub quite fondly). I did have to pay to have the nice store, but I think that it might be worth it some times. We'll see how often my husband lets me go there.

The dining room is completely painted! There are some spots that I might touch up - we'll see. I don't know if I'm even skilled enough to do that. Tomorrow he's coming in the morning to do the living room. Hopefully he can work fast enough to do it well and get both coats done. We'll see though, the living room is quite a bit bigger than the dining room and it took him about three to four hours to do one coat in the dining room.

Other than that tomorrow we have no plans.

4 comments:

Bfiles said...

how great, hope she works out! I hear you on the cleaning- I don't like it, but there's also no time when you have little ones!
Sorry if I missed this, but what colors are you painting? Are you allowed to paint real colors?

Sara said...

You are allowed to paint what ever color you want but you have to pay the Embassy to have it painted back when you leave.

A Daring Adventure said...

Oooo, hope she works out for you! That would be divine.

And once you've had her for 30 days, if she leaves or you need to not use her any more, you have to pay her severance? In whose world? Who says?

If I hired someone, and they showed me (after 30 days) that they weren't fit for the job, and I had to let them go, there's no one on this earth that could force me to pay severance and/or penalties. So I guess I need to just start liking cleaning my house.

Sara said...

Kolbi, it's Costa Rican law. They're very progressive here as far as labor law goes. We'll have a contract though, so that should help protect both parties. I think in a lot of countries it's not the same.