Do You Deduct Your Maid’s Salary For Damages Done?

For those of you who employs a maid, whether part-time or live-in maids, do you make the maid  pay for damages that she had done to your property and belongings?  I have been having live-in maids for almost 10 years and I have never deducted my maids’ salary for damages that they had done whether to our clothes or other belongings.  Lately, our live-in maid has been damaging our things quite a bit. Apart from the occasional bowl, cup and pot breakages, burnt food, she also burnt our clothes while sleep-ironing. Yep, this maid has a habit of dozing off while ironing our clothes or even washing shoes in the bathroom (though we have been telling her umpteen times that she does NOT need to iron the adult clothes – my hubs will send them to the laundry. My mil irons her own clothes)!  But we have never once deducted damages done from her salary, albeit we did threaten to deduct (but darn, we still don’t have the heart to do so!).

Yesterday while she was cleaning the windows and mosquito nettings, she pushed one of the panes of the netting off the frame and it fell 5 stories down!  Suffice to say, the mozzie netting was mangled!  That replacement pane of mozzie netting would cost us a few hundred Ringgit.  It would not be fair for us to bear the cost. Just like she burnt Alycia’s new hand-made dress that I ordered from my friend.  It was brand new and never worn and she burnt it with the iron and tried to keep quiet about it! I found out when I took the dress out for Alycia to wear and saw the damage at the bottom of the dress.  But I did not deduct the cost of the dress from her salary.  I feel that it is really not fair that she keeps damaging things, happily knowing that we will not have the heart to deduct the damage from her salary.

Do you deduct damages that your maid had done to your belongings from her salary?  Let’s discuss!

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Author: Shireen

I am a WFHM of 3 lovely girls - Alycia, Sherilyn and Cassandra. I am a health, fitness and clean freak. I am a freelance content writer and occasionally help out my other half in his food catering business. I also do product reviews and accept sponsored posts on my blogs. I hope you'll enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy sharing my day-to-day adventures and mostly boring ranting :P Welcome to my blog! :)

11 thoughts on “Do You Deduct Your Maid’s Salary For Damages Done?”

  1. i never did only coz it was an accident but if she keeps continuing make mistakes, then you better. maybe this round so she feels the pinch?

  2. Well, it depends. For a habitual unrepentful person like your maid, I think the best lesson is deduct her salary for areas where you feel she has been negligent or intentional. In the case of Alycia’s dress, deduct. The mossie net, deduct. You mention she’s going to leave soon right? Then list down all the items she destroyed, and tell her you are only deducting these few. Very fair dy. Burnt food, pots and pans all you waive off out of goodwill or occupational hazzard : ) but the dress and mosq netting was purely her carelessness.

    You don’t hv to feel bad. Think you have stick up with her nonsense enough. But of course,Shireen… tell her your deduction on her check out date.

  3. We have foreign workers here and boss will deduct their salary if they made mistake. Depending on the level of mistake, sometimes, boss will deduct a few %. If the mistake is too much and too obvious, then will deduct 100%. That helps to make them be more careful and responsible person when working.

  4. I think some bosses will deduct their salary to remind them to be more careful and to be responsible of all the things they do and not to take them for granted.

  5. I’ve never deducted for mine. But to be fair, the maids I had never really damaged many things. I would normally tell my maid to be careful with ironing, so, she irons with care. As for your cases, I would be fuming if my maid acted that way. I think I would definately deduct her pay if she is not willing to take extra care, despite you warning her many times….especially the example of ironing clothes.

  6. Most comments here seem fair. The issue it seems yr maid is negligent and careless. Aske her this…what does she think is fair compensation for the damage? See what she says. Tell her then that starting immediately, u will list all the items damaged and the cost. You have it on paper, make several copies, and make sure she has one. Does not matter if she is leaving soon or what, it is a wake-up call for her. I know if the damage is minor, u will not seek $ from her but it will be a nice little experiment to see if she changes her ways.

  7. Personally, I don’t like people I hire to leave our home with a bad taste in their mouths so I wouldn’t deduct.

    I’ve had helpers who:
    – bent our kitchen’s venetian blinds out of shape after just one cleaning
    – broke a drawer in a chest of drawers by overstuffing it with clothes
    – broke a clothes peg on a row of 3 clothes peg – till today, I can’t figure out how she had the strength to do it!
    – cleaned a new, non-stick saucepan with a scouring pad and
    – stained 2-3 of Hubby’s work shirts and a couple of my blouses.

    Things are just things even if they were my favourite blouses :S

    Domestic helpers usually come from very poor backgrounds – I don’t have the heart to reduce their take-home pay.

    I would show them what they did wrong and then, show them the right way to do things. The last maid I had was beyond education, which is why she’s no longer with us. There are just so many chances I can give someone.

    I’d rather they regret not having done a better job while under our employment than curse us, our kids or our kids’ kids!

    “Kill them with kindness”, you know? Happy Easter!

  8. This is a tough one. It will start getting annoying if everything starts getting damaged because the maid is lachadaisally careless & does things in a rush as she just joesnt give a toss; in which case I would have a long chat with her & throw it back at her to ask what she thinks you should do. It also depends on the maid’s personality, whether she has bad attitude issues or whether she is genuinely sorry for making the mistakes.

  9. deduct by % just to teach them a lesson? I find it quite impossible to deduct fully because some items cost too much to their monthly salary.

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