Having a servant or a maid for middle to high level community in Indonesia is a common way. They usually hire servants (I prefer call them domestic assistants) to help do the chores, nurture their babies or children. Like in my family, due to the old age and weaknesses of my parents, we have a domestic assistant who assists my mom do her bath, clean the house, and finish the chores. She is a middle age woman with limited primary education due to her poverty. His husband has no steady job. Fortunately, her daughter has quite a good job that obviously can help cover her family’s needs. Her family stays in a rent house and they have to move from a rent house to another for years. This year, the house that they have been staying for nearly five years, will be out off contract. Therefore, she has to find another house for her family. However, as her daughter has already had a good job, she is planning to open a credit to buy a small house.
Collecting as much information as she can about the related advertisements in the newspapers, magazines or radios was the first way she did to meet the proper house with “good” price for her budget. She usually reads newspapers that my father always buys daily when she has spare time during her work at my family. After she already collected some information then she started to call some marketing office that offer “good price” for a house she needs. Yesterday I heard she was talking with a staff of a marketing office about quite cheap housing not far from her daughter office. For my surprise, beside her limited education, she talked with the staff through her own mobile phone. She dialed some numbers and asked information from them. After some conversations with some marketing offices, I talked with her related to her issues.
Well, what was surprising me is not the cell phone that she brought but the way she chose to use her own cell phone for her personal matter. She works for my family. If she will, she can ask my parent to use our family phone to make some calls for her personal needs. However she never does that yet she brought her personal property for her personal issues. I reflected it for my attitude at work.
For some of us, we get some facilities from the institution where we work such as free internet connection, free telephone line connection, free office-duty vehicles. The question is: have we used all the facilities for our institution’s needs and services? How many times have we used the facilities for our personal needs? For me, I am ashamed with myself. My parents’ domestic assistant has limited education and formal experiences however she can perform her professional attitude in her work. For her, I should give my appreciation.
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