Wife wants to fire maid for 'no reason'; husband learns maid has dirt on his wife. UPDATED
"AITA for refusing to fire our maid (at my wife's request)?"
Here's the story:
My wife and I have 5 kids together, ranging from 2 - 15. My wife is a stay at home mom while I work a full time (8am to 7pm, 5 days a week) job.
We live in Hong Kong where it's the norm to have a maid (or "domestic helper" as they're called here) rather than being limited to rich. Our maid is a 34 year old Filipino woman that has been working for us since she was 19 years old. She lives with us in her own room and gets weekends off.
The problem is that my wife wants us to fire our maid. She hasn't given any specific reason other than "I don't want a maid anymore." I honestly have no idea where this change in attitude is coming from, but I don't want to fire her because:
She has helped raise my kids for 15 years and is almost part of the family at this point
She relies on this job to send money back home and it would seriously affect her and her family to lose it
We still have an infant/young children that require constant attention
I work extremely long hours and don't want to have to do cooking/chores on top of that. My wife doesn't cook nor clean so I am extremely skeptical that she will take up all the chores once our maid is gone
The woman in question is nothing but kind/polite and I don't understand where my wife is getting all of this resentment towards her. I'll mention this now in case people think she's jealous: my wife is significantly more attractive and we spend all our spare time together. Jealousy does not seem to be the case here. AITA?
Commenters were suspicious. Here's what some people had to say:
leftist_parrot said:
The maid has some dirt on your wife....
CorenBrightside said:
^Was sadly my first thought also. The maid knows something your wife doesn't want OP to know, but most likely the maid is oblivious about the knowledge she has or firing her is the worst she could do.
ieatconfusedfish said:
NTA your maid saw your wife cheating tho. I mean hopefully not but firing someone for apparently no reason after they helped raise your kids for 15 yrs is definitely a red flag
bicep123 said:
NTA. "My wife doesn't cook nor clean so I am extremely skeptical." I share your skepticism and predict that your wife will petition you to find another maid as soon as you sack this one. So much for the wanting to do the child rearing and housework herself.
I'm in agreeance with all the other posters who think the maid has dirt on your wife. It's the first thought that came to my mind too. If your wife was jealous, she would have gotten rid of the maid when she was 19 and (relatively) hotter.
burgerchucker said:
NTA. The wife is hiding something. Probably cheating on you since she has fuck all else to do all day. Sorry dude, time to start investigating a bit. Might be worth putting a private investigator on the case. Good luck, still the maid seems nice and can do the parenting while you work so not a total loss!
Turns out, commenters were on to something. The man has since posted this UPDATE:
Well screw me I just spoke with my maid. She says she hasn’t seen my wife cheating but that she came home a couple of weeks ago and found my wife having a glass of wine and lying on the couch with a guy she’s never seen before.
From her description I’ve never heard of him either. She kept it to herself as she assumed it was just a close friend of my wife. Honestly thought my marriage was perfect I never in a million years suspected my wife would be unfaithful.
Well, looks like he's not the a**hole here.