Teflon

When we first hired our housekeeper I told her to only use a sponge to clean our Teflon cookware. After a while I noticed that our Teflon pot was becoming scratched, so I watched her one day and she was using steel wool to clean it. Again I told her to only use the sponge on the Teflon. As far as I know she has only used the sponge since then...at least for a while.

Recently I noticed that I was seeing more and more of the metal under the Teflon. Basically somehow the Teflon was being removed, and today I learned how. When she could not get the eggs off of the Teflon (that we were stuck to the pan because of the decreasing Teflon in the first place) with a sponge, my housekeeper decided to scrape it off with a metal spoon. While I was sitting with my tutor this morning I noticed both the sponge and the steel wool were sitting beside the sink and she was using something to clean our Teflon, and it sounded like metal on metal. I asked KB to go check, and sure enough she was scraping the eggs off with a metal spoon. She said the sponge would not remove the eggs and I would not let her use the steel wool, so she decided that the metal spoon was the next best option. I told her next time to put water in the pan, let it soak a few minutes and the eggs will come off very easily. After she left I looked at the pan, and I can see each stroke she made in attempt to scrape off the eggs with the spoon.

My tutor often dismisses her saying that she is just a village lady and does not know better. It is hard to defend her when she does things like this. I do not understand her logic, and I guess we are getting a new Teflon pan.