Gardener Issues

Posted by Matthew McEwen

When we moved to Dhaka, we settled in a 5-story building with an apartment on each floor. It's the only all-teacher building at our school and it came with 3 guards that work around the clock and a "gardener". The guards make about 3000Tk (about 45USD) and the gardener makes 6750 (about 100USD) but we were new and really did not know any better. The "garden" is a few enormous barrels on the roof with who-knows-what in them and a bunch of house plants in the garage. Apparently, you can buy plants from him at marked up prices, he'll water them, and eventually kill them while you are away on vacation. The problem is that over the year and during the beginning of this school year, I realized that we are throwing 20USD at this guy a month to do what? Oh ... I forgot to mention the fact that he also cleans the stairs, roof, and garage. This guy is so ridiculously overpaid and underused that the building had a meeting at the beginning of the school year to come up with more jobs for him. I was shut up on moral and ethical grounds by trying to suggest that he should try to secure employment or additional income elsewhere. Most apartments pay a couple bucks a month for this service but this guy has been sitting on this job so long that he's literally over compensated himself. He feels he is obligated to the job. The problem is that no one would pay even a tenth of his salary to do a job he sucks at. He's on a grace period.