Tui is Gone

Rangsima fired Tui today.

It started when I went next door to talk to Ralph (but spelled funny) about the DSL, and Tui was there. I was talking to Ralph (bsf) about how my maid wanted to live in the front apartment. (The front apartment is a small little place next to the garage with its own private entrance. You could entirely miss it if you didn't know it was there.) Tui chimed in, "Oh she can't stay there. I'm moving back in there when Ralph leaves." (Or something to that effect.) I basically told Tui there was no way he was going to live in that apartment. Tui immediately got Rangsima on the phone thinking that she could tell me about how Tui was going to be living in my front yard.

I politely listened to everything Rangsima had to say... but she didn't mention Tui staying there... just about how she used parts of the apartment for storage, and the security guard needed a place to stay, et cetera. (My guess is Rangsima realized — based on the fact that Tui was calling her up and telling her that I had a problem with him staying in the apartment, and then handing the phone to me — that her explaining to me over the phone that Tui was going to come live on my property was an exceptionally bad idea.) Regardless what she thought, I'm pretty sure that when I gave the phone back to Tui, Rangsima had no doubts about my feelings regarding the prospect of Tui on my property... and I had barely said a word other than "uh-huh".

Just to make sure, 10 minutes later, back home away from everybody, I called Rangsima back and told her that Tui was not going to be moving into my new house's apartment... as politely as I could. (I told her I needed the apartment for my staff... the people who would be cleaning the pool and taking care of the gardens.) She assured me Tui wouldn't be moving in. (And seriously: Why the hell should I provide an apartment to somebody who doesn't even do a goddamn thing except drink all day?)

Well, obviously that little exchange — along with the offhanded comment I made 4 or 5 days earlier about how it had been 4 or 5 days since my pool had been cleaned — got Rangsima curious, and she started to put 2 and 2 together.

Ralph (bsf) told Rangsima he was moving out because the house was too expensive... what with paying for a gardner and pool cleaner and all. The two 90-year-old geezers in front of me apparently mentioned something about their pool not being cleaned at some point in time.

Then came the straw that broke the camel's back: The day that prospective renters came to look at my house (the day after Tui's wife and kid cleaned the entire yard), Tui was running around making sure everything looked good, and he noticed that the bathroom in my bedroom was dirty. He cleaned it himself. Then, he mentioned how dirty it was to my maid Toom, and how annoyed he was that he had to clean it.

Then, he made the fatal mistake: He told Rangsima what he said to Toom.

In other words, Tui the lowly houseboy, told Rangsima about how he told one of her tenants that they were slobs.

The only thing I can think of is he must have been really drunk to say something that stupid. I mean (1) this is Thailand where criticisms are never made; (2) if criticisms are made, they are made by somebody higher up on the totem pole, as opposed to somebody like Tui, at the bottom. These are probably the 2 most major cardinal sins in the Thai rule book of social faux pas. Rangsima was furious.

How furious? When she came today to tell me that Tui was gone-so-gone, and she mentioned what Tui had told her, a frown crossed her face. That's opposed to the 100% all-the-time pleasant smile she usually wears. Her voice even caught a major jagged edge when she said, "Even I am not allowed to tell you that your bathroom needs cleaning."

Oh... you can bet slugs would have tasted better than those words as far as Rangsima was concerned. That was called the Thai version of swallowing one's pride and taking responsibility for somebody elses' actions. It isn't handed out lightly or easily, and it usually costs the subordinate who created the problem very dearly... especially when the person apologizing is a high-society Thai lady, and the person who caused her to do the apologizing is an uneducated, drunk, dirt-poor Burmese peasant.

Tui is probably floating face-down in a Bangkok khlorng by now.