The Inday of Our Lives

In our day and age when our economic struggles are heightening, and our time is becoming scarce – and therefore highly valuable – many of us can no longer run our own lives by ourselves alone. We need extra hands and feet to effectively get by. We need people who are not as ambitious as we are, or who do not have as many opportunities as we have, to help us out.

We need someone to cook our food for us, do our laundry, clean the house, and even look after our kids, all at the same time. Yet we are not willing to pay much for such multifarious, necessary services. We know there’s always a meagerly schooled lass in a remote barrio somewhere who’s willing to take any offer of work we make.

She is often referred to as dull-witted, a word too unkind indeed to describe a fellow whose service and loyalty to us can sometimes be better than a blood relative’s. We call her atsay, a name that by and in itself is already condescending.

The way many of us treat our house help is self-contradictory. While we consider her to be too brainless to get anything right, we often trust her enough to run our households in our absence, as we pursue careers or professions.

The atsay usually mopes around the house with a dejected expression on her face. It is easy to tell that she’s neither comfortable nor proud about her job. She approaches her tasks with reticence and nervousness. It normally takes her three repetitions before getting anything right. This, of course, is enough to drive her masters crazy.

She knows how to do her job right, but she just has such a big fear of making mistakes that she bungles up on even the simplest chores. She is actually of a regular intelligence, but she is so insecure that she psyches herself out of tasks that she actually knows perfectly well how to do.

Her name is not really Inday, although that’s how she is often addressed. She is Marilyn or Jennifer or Genevieve. Back at home she is a respected daughter or sister, always to be consulted on important family decisions.

But here at work in some affluent strangers’ household, she is often treated as a creature less significant than the family dog. When Blackie refuses his food in the morning, he is sure to be in the vet’s clinic by noon; but Inday still has to do the laundry even if she has a fever.

Inday asks her masters the same questions over and over. She would ask, after doing it for the past three years, how to operate the washing machine. She would tell her Ma’am that someone called but would not remember the caller’s name. When her Sir asks for coffee, she puts in salt instead of sugar. It’s no wonder she is always screamed at and dealt with harshly.

But if house helps were more efficient and better composed, they probably would not be in such lowly job. If she was better educated, Inday would probably be working in a lawyer’s office or in a call center. Or, even if she works in other people’s homes, she would not be a mere house help but a governess. Then she would be receiving much better pay, and much better respect.

For the kind of service she renders, Inday deserves to be treated with admiration and understanding. It is not easy to be in her shoes, if she has shoes at all. For sure she wanted better abilities but didn’t have the chance at education which her masters had. She is where she is by circumstances beyond her power to conquer. That’s bad enough for her; there’s no need to make it worse by expecting her to be more.

It won’t help to shout at the house help or strangle her at every blunder she makes. It can work better to sit down with her and discuss her slips as soon as things have cooled down. She needs help to get beyond her terror of making mistakes. She needs to know that her masters are on her side and want to support her. It is, therefore, important that her masters find out the best way to do that, for her good and their own.

Some house helps may be intellectually inferior but they’re not stupid. Treating them unkindly is the worse kind of stupidity. They will hear better when talked to calmly. They might not get it right away the first time, but being patient with them is worth it. It’s often the mentally frail that wouldn’t mind – or couldn’t tell – when they’re getting the downside of the deal. Their loyalty, once earned, is often unshakeable.

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