Continued from here where I was talking about my assistant and how disappointed I've been in her work ...

Catherina had no idea how to turn on a vacuum cleaner ... the retractable cord had her totally flummoxed for starters ... or use one, and because she didn't grow up in a house with electricity or hot water needed instruction on how to make the tap water go from scalding to tepid. Ironing is done with no technique, so clothes end up almost as wrinkled as before they hit the board, and although no coaching is necessary for vigorous wringing of hands, wringing of mops only happens after half a dozen lessons, then a couple of reminders that huge and sloppy puddles of yuck water thrown around do not a clean floor make. She's fairly short and seems to believe that anything above her eye level does not require attention, and corners don't exist in her world.

I learned all this in the first six weeks of her three month probationary period and fully intended to give her a couple of weeks of training, then let her go, as I'm quite certain she will never be as much help as I need. Since she can't even get the easy part of the job right ... the housekeeping ... the things that I would hope she could shift into, including supervising someone doing the housekeeping once she'd moved past that, would appear to be completely beyond her range. Feeling as though it's better to cut losses earlier rather than later, it seemed the right thing to do even though it would mean going through the hiring process again.

Of course, I didn't want to sack her at Christmas ... that's just too awful ... and her probation isn't over until the end of January, so I thought to give her notice sometime after the holidays. This would also give her lots of paid days off, and mean that I would be doing the work I was paying her to do in preparation for holiday entertaining, but would assuage my unnecessarily prickled conscience a bit.

Yes, that was my intention.

Continued ...