how many people have personal staff?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Full-time maid and cook, comes in five days a week but is live-out.

No driver, as we don’t need one here, and we live in a penthouse apartment so no gardener.

The last place I lived, we had a full time maid, a full time driver, a gardener twice a week and a security guard. And their monthly combined wages were barely 300 dollars, making them some of the highest paid around (for South Asia.)

I justify this by the fact that I work full-time, as does my wife, and neither of us like to clean. It’s worth more to me to have leisure time than to have to do something I don’t want to do, when someone else both 1) is willing to do it and 2) needs the money.

22

Just curious. Your location is listed as Lima, Peru. That is REALLY South Asia.

23

That was for my last posting – Sri Lanka.

24

My friend has a gardener. She’s the only person with any sort of hired help that we know. Her gardener is an old Indian guy. He dresses shabby and has a limp. They don’t pay him very well. To get to her house he walks from halfway across town. One day, he drove instead.

His car was a Porsche :eek:

25

If I could afford to, I would have a maid service, a gardener, and a chauffer. However I don’t have a garden or a car, and I can clean the place myself after a fashion, so it’s not really required.

But really - if I could, I would.

26

buckler of swashling-

I felt that some people might find this line of questioning inflammatory.

jfranchi-

First of all, I’ll clarify, I do not think its wrong to hire “help”. I certainly didn’t mention exploitation.

So far we’re at 8 have people, 7 do not.

As for the hooker…hmm I suppose you couldnt perform that kind of service yourself, or could you?

27

Housekeeper once every 2 weeks. Considering using a landscaping company.

28

Some years back, we had a woman come in every other week to give the house a once-over. She was the wife of one of my husband’s coworkers and I think it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

A few years after that, we were living in a different area and went with a nationally franchised maid service, until we came home to find evidence that they were doing more than cleaning, so we dropped that service. (No, nothing too ooogy, but they did take time out to play darts and select a book to read, and leave wet glasses on the counter and not wipe down the water rings. They were just sloppy and we decided we couldn’t trust them to do what we were paying for.)

Frankly, now the only way I’d hire a housecleaner would be to get the deep cleaning that I don’t like doing - like moving furniture to vacuum. This flitting over surfaces with a feather-duster and running a vacuum cleaner in the clear areas is something I can do myself. I would like to hire someone to do something about the leaves in the fall, but we have so doggone many, I don’t think we could afford that service!

29

My wife has a cleaning woman who comes in every other week for three hours, essentially to mop all the floors and give the kitchen and bathroom a good going over. The aforementioned wife works full time and then some, and can be somewhat of a slob, so it’s a good move on her part. The cleaning woman charges $30.00-$35.00 an hour and has enough clients that she’s vetted and hired staff and is still so busy that she can’t take on new clients.

While I’m sure that very rich people may still have an Upstairs, Downstairs type of classcism going on, for a lot of people these days, they’re simply too busy to accomplish all they want to by themselves.

(And in case anyone wonders why I don’t clean the house - my wife and I live seperately, and so I don’t do her floors.)

30

I wish I could have help!

I do have one part time staff member for my school, who comes in one day a week. On that day, she OFTEN washes my dishes and tidies my kitchen and though I feel guilty, it is such a nice thing for her to do that I could hug her. (She is getting paid for her time, but she’s really supposed to do office stuff for the school, not clean for me!)

One day I would love to have someone to do the heavy cleaning and also in my wildest dreams, to cook dinner for me and the kids on my three busy nights when there is not time to think let alone cook anything reasonable to eat. If I could afford it now I could justify it for reasons of my kids health!

31

But it’s not lost wages if it’s just something done on a weekend as maintenance for your home. Do you work Sunday mornings after reading the newspaper? That’s typically when my hub will go outside, mow the lawn and rake the leaves. I find it to be self-aggrandizing to hire someone to do something that could relieve stress and contribute to a sense of pride in a job well done for your home. I really don’t get the whole gardener thing unless you have a vast estate or are physically unable to handle the work yourself.

Example – my young up-and-coming-so-he-thinks BIL has a small yard with his home in Castro Valley. He hires gardeners which I think is a horrible waste of money and knowing him, just pretentious. He’s just damn lazy and it’s evident throughout the way he lives his life.

32

Why is this lazy so much more pretentious that any other form of paying for convenience?

I dunno. I work 50-60/ week minimum teaching public school. I get all sorts of feelings of pride and accomplishment from that. I relieve stress by spending Saturday mornings lazying around in bed with my husband, which seems to work fine. I don’t need to spend a couple hours a week in my yard to complete my emotional life. I don’t see why paying somebody to come by once every couple of weeks to mow my grass is somehow worthy of scorn.

Of course, we might be exempt from your derision since my husband is disabled (rare deginerative bone disease, walks with a cane), but you know what? Even if we were both in the pink of health, I don’t think we’d do it ourselves. What I really like to do in this world–what amuses me, fufills me, delights me–is my job. I’ll save my energy for that, thank you, and don’t mind paying a price to do so.

33

I interpreted this the opposite way, because you had it in the pit I thought you were objecting to able-bodied people hiring help. :smack:
I apologize and hope you can understand why I misunderstood.
(I really do hope to have a weekly housekeeper someday)
Jim

34

If you have a lawn tractor, invest in a 42" lawn sweeper. It turns a horrible job into an easy one, especially if you compost them and don’t bag them.

I use a mulching tractor and a Craftsmen 42" lawn sweeper and despite a huge amount of leaves on a large property, I will be done in 2-3 hours without backbreaking work. I used to try with the bagging attachment and I had nothing but problems. Sweepers are the best.

Jim

35

I have a lawn & garden guy come weekly to mow, and every month or so he trims the bushes & trees.

I could do it myself, but I’d need to buy a few hundred dollar’s wrth of equipment & take an hour+ out of my very precious weekends to do it myself.

I take my car to an oil-change place (did it just this last Friday). In college I built a complete car from a loose pile of parts, so yes, I could change my own oil. But these guys oly charge about a $20 premium over my DIY cost, and I’d have to drive to their place anyhow to dispose of my used oil if I did it myself.

We use a house-cleaning service about every 6 months to get the deep stuff we just don’t want to mess with. The other 25 weeks we’re not slobs and do the basics to keep the place neat, but again our free time is more valuable than freshly dusted upper bookshelves.

I pay the dry cleaner to wash my typical officeworker dress pants. I could buy a home machine for a couple grand and DIY that too, but why?

Where does personal staff end and simply purchasing services begin? I also pay a barber for a haircut I suppose I or my wife could do.

I pay Smuckers to make & bottle my strawberry jam when I could buy (or grow) the berries & make & home-can the jam myself. At that point am I buying the product “jam”, or the service “canning/preserving”?
On the meta-topic of classism, or wealthism more accurately, it seems there are a large number of SDMB members who’re working-class poor, ie have enough to go day to day, but not much if any to spare. Also many students who don’ t yet have much.

And there are also a lot of comfy folks who take having, say, a new car every couple years pretty much for granted.

Finally, we have a few real high earners or folks with inherited wealth.

Where but a place like this would folks from these 3 groups ever really have the chance to have a wide-ranging conversation?

Unless our own lives are truly exceptional, most people tend to think that most other people are just like them. Certainly our circle of neighbors IRL reinforce that assumed similarity. Your SDMB “neighbors” are a much more diverse crowd that that.

Working class folks generally take pride in the self-sufficiency that mowing their own lawn represents, while comfy-class folks take a similar pride in being able to pay somebody to take the chore off their hands and usually, do a better job of it. Who’s “right?” Neither. Or both.

36

I would love to hire someone to clean for me. But even during those times when we could have easily afforded it, my husband is uncomfortable about having a “stranger” in our house “going through our stuff.” The only time we managed it was when we hired one of our daughter’s friends to do so. She was (and still is) a sweet, lovely young lady who, for reasons I cannot fathom, simply loved to clean.

The aforementioned husband, in fact, always wants to do everything himself – yard work, vehicle maintenance, home improvements, you name it.

My sister and her husband (both retired but able-bodied), on the other hand, have a service come in to do their lawn (which is approximately the size of a postage stamp).

I guess if you don’t like doing something, and can afford to pay someone else to do it, why not? Certainly the folks performing the service are doing so voluntarily and are glad to get the business.

37

Interesting - because my folks had one and they said it was pretty close to worthless. We did rent a vac/mulcher last weekend and it did a bang-up job, but it was an all-day job, and we only rake a portion of our 3 acres - most of it is left for Mother Nature to deal with. We’re seriously considering the purchase of a similar vac/mulcher, although the $850 price tag has stopped us short. At least for now.

38

Yeah, I actually pay to have my oil changed, too. In the 70s and 80s, cars were high enough off the ground it wasn’t too bad. And you could dispose of the oil in any number of ways. Now we know better… so I’d have to dump the oil somewhere appropriate, which would be a PITA, and I’d have to get under the car… and I just don’t fit there.

39

I just got done. It took me less than 3 hours and I have a 2 acre Property. I barely did the back acre however. So 1 acre with lots of leaves took about 3 hours.
Back when I used Rakes and Baggers it would take 10-12 hours. Same Lawn Tractor.

Jim (sorry for the hi-jack)

40

I don’t know. Sometimes there’s the satisfaction of doing it yourself. Like my parents like gardening and fixing up around the house. But most of the time, I look at that stuff like a chore I do because no one else will.

He must be doing something right if he can afford gardeners (unless it’s family money).