“I can hardly keep these domestic staff. They are so lazy. I am a perfectionist and I can’t stand dirt. So it is better for me to send them away than keep complaining over everything they do.”
The lie of perfectionism is the lie employers tells themselves and others as they try to absolve themselves of any responsibility when it comes to how their domestic staffing has been mismanaged. High staff turnover, frequent complains from domestic staff on mistreatment and maltreatment, slave-driving, micro management and non stop nagging are traits often found in the home of these perfectionists.
A faux perfectionist only starts to demand perfection after hiring. The perfection criteria is overlooked during the sourcing process so many times, they are hiring some who is uneducated or mildly educated, unexposed and untrained and so, totally incapable of delivering the level of excellence which they are going to be placing a demand for.
No matter how much pressure is put on a domestic staff that falls in this category, they cannot produce the level of perfection that they aren’t equipped to produce. They can only churn out the quality of work that their exposure and mind allows them to.
A true perfectionist would hire with the perfection criteria in mind and therefore go for someone who has been groomed for professional housekeeping and understands what the standard is without being told or micromanaged.
If you employ an unexposed person and continue to nag, complain or micromanage for a perfect job to be done, you are literally asking for the impossible and if you continue to push further or even introduce consequences or punishments when your expectations are not met, then you have started slave-driving. The domestic staff who cannot see why you constantly complain, because they are putting in their best just as they promised, day-in and day-out but never seems to be enough, will at some point start to see you at the enemy and start to resent you.
To have a more drama and stress-free domestic staffing journey, identify what your desired outcome is and walk back into determining who will be best fit to produce that outcome that you desire.
You can get the perfection you desire. But only if you hire someone trained to deliver perfect work.