Confessions of a reluctant HR Manager

We get back from skiing late on Saturday night. Sunday is the amahs’ day off and rather than wait for Monday I set about the washing. There are nine full loads of it.

The following morning I become increasingly aware that all is not well. A neighbour who’s heard gossip from her amah alerts me to the fact there is a family feud bubbling away in our house. The sisters are seemingly no longer going out together, nor are they eating together, nor are they even speaking to each other. When I walk in to the kitchen you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.

What on earth is going on? We’ve only been away a week and civil war has broken out. I thought the amahs were there to help me and yet I am spending more time and energy sorting out their issues than my own. Lucky as I am to have this level of help, this is so not what I need. I am a mother, not a trade union official. I spend the evening discussing it with my reasonable, diplomatic and wise husband who then sends me in to bat. Can’t you do it? I plead. No, he says, this is your department.

One by one, I hear them out. It is six of one, half a dozen of the other; she did this, she said that, petty squabbles, jealousy and bickering. I fought long and hard to get the Dream Team to Hong Kong from the Philippines and this is what it’s come to. I am so fed up I could bang their heads together.

Now it’s my turn to speak and I read the riot act. Things have begun to slide. I have been too lenient. Metaphorically speaking there have been too many boiled turkeys, too many incidents of polishing the antique furniture with Windolene. It’s time to lay down the law. This is the sort of behaviour I would not tolerate from my children, and I tell them so. If they can’t sort out their issues with each other then I’ll send them both home. For good.

Do I make myself clear? I hear myself saying before I march out of the room, every inch the Ma’am, the employer, the boss. And as I do I know my cheeks are flaming and I want to run and hide. I feel as though I’m ten years old, play-acting a part in a big-girls’ play. It was a part I didn’t really want and rarely have I felt so ill-equipped, so under-qualified and so fake. These women are the same age as me and yet I sound like a mother, a teacher, an old cow.

Ten minutes later I leave for yoga and hope that a bit of deep breathing and sun worship might calm me down. I wonder what the fall out will be and reason that if they are really unhappy they can try their luck elsewhere. They are free agents and can give notice at any time. Despite the inconvenience and my deep reluctance to return to my helpless in Hong Kong state, I know that in time I will find a replacement. A former boss of mine used to say, whenever anyone left his firm, We’ll get someone better. And yet, in truth what we all know is that a month’s salary in Hong Kong is not far off the average annual wage in the Philippines. Whilst I am reeling at the disproportionate amount of power I seem to have acquired, my amahs might be reflecting that a decent job in Hong Kong is not something you want to lose to a sisterly spat. But the truth is that with all the cultural, social and linguistic issues that divide us, coupled with my own inexperience at handling squabbling banshees in my own kitchen, I have simply no idea what they are thinking or what they’ll do next. All I know is that I never applied for the job of HR Manager.