"AITA for telling my wife her relationship with our maid was inappropriate?"
English is not my first language, so im not sure if Maid is the best term for an employee that just cleans our house, but Ill go with that. My wife and I have been married for 3 years. I am 36 and she is 31. This year we moved into a bigger house, and she got pregnant.
After 3 months of pregnancy, I hired a maid to help with house chores. I was raised with some maids my parents hired, so I thought why not do the same?
My wife was very chatty with her since day one, and insisted in helping the maid to clean. I told her not to help her because I hired her to do a job, and she should not interfere, but she keeps doing it.
Sometimes I find both just talking drinking coffee, or doing whatever, and I tell the maid to go back to work, but my wife tried to make her stay. They even go to another places together, like malls or cafés outside their work hours.
I told my wife that her relationship with the maid is inappropriate, since she is our worker, and not a friend. She was mad at me, and for a few days both of them didn't talk to each other. But then, my wife came to me, and said that she fired the maid, so now there is no work relationship and they can be friends.
I blow up at her, because she had no authority to fire her since I hired her, and she was crossing a line. I tried to call the maid to rehire her, but she declined my offer since she already found another house to clean.
I told my wife to get her sh*t together, and that we are not supposed to 'make friends' with employees, she told me to that I can't control her friendships and that I created this problem. She is giving me the silent treatment now.
She told me I am the one who started this problem, but I was establishing boundaries, while she made it a problem herself. AITA?
Comments:
OrangeCubit says:
YTA - I thought you hired the maid to help your wife, so why are you using this as a way to control and punish her?
mm172 says:
YTA. Does it not concern you that your wife is apparently so lonely she’d rather pay someone to keep her company than clean the house?
Did you even talk to her about whether that was the kind of support she needed before you hired a maid in the first place, or have you been trying to dictate her handling of her pregnancy the way you’ve tried to dictate her interactions with this woman?
LawBird33101 says:
I mean, I don't even see it as his wife being that lonely. She just sees that the people who perform services for her are still people and are perfectly capable of becoming your friend when there's mutual respect.
Growing up there was never a person who performed a service for our family that my parents didn't befriend in some way. Our housekeeper (who came about once every 2 weeks) got pretty much every hand-me-down that passed through our home, leading to us practically clothing 2 generations of her family.
Some of my dad's employees watched me grow up in the office and see me as a surrogate grandkid, to the point that my wife and I keep getting pestered about when we're going to have kids ourselves.
I didn't read the original post as OP's wife being lonely, just that she's a kind and empathetic person. I'm sure she helped her friend to find the new job so they could continue their friendship, and if her friend still wants to hang out without being paid it reads to me that the wife didn't like how her husband disrespected her friend's position relating to them.
Weird-Roll6265 says:
I used to work with someone who had a housekeeper. One time apparently the housekeeper missed a spot or didn't clean it right or something.
Instead of taking 3 whole seconds to clean the offending spot herself and politely mention it to the housekeeper the next time, she literally went out of her way to clean AROUND that spot for several days and absolutely let the poor lady have it the next time she came.
People like that are known by fellow employees of whatever service is being provided--for all the wrong reasons.
VenomRatte says:
YTA, I see nothing wrong with befriending someone working closely in your home.