My ex-wife’s family in Mexico has servants. They were called servientes in Spanish. The “main” servant was “Pachita,” and illerate old lady who was awesome in every way. I think she made $200mn per week. Sometimes she would take breaks out of anger, so a younger lady they simply called “la señorita” would fill in for a few weeks until Pachita realized she had it pretty well off.
My ex’s sisters, although not nearly as well off as the mom and dad (que descansa), also made it a point to have servants, although they could ill afford it. It was pride thing for them.
When I lived in Hermosillo and China, I had house keepers, and in the case of China, a driver, too. Like China Guy says, we always paid above market rate in China. I want to say that I paid the equivalent of about $400 per month for five days a week, eight hour service.
As is typical in China, they did a superficial job. Things looked clean on the surface, but deep cleaning was never performed unless I was home to instruct them. And don’t get me started about using the toilet materials to clean my countertops.
Some of the ayis (“aunties”) cooked for their guest families, but I never let mine, because they have zero understanding of hygiene. On that note, shopping in Chinese grocery stores is disgusting for our western sensibilities.
In no case, neither Mexico nor China, were they considered part of the family. I don’t know where any of them ended up. In the case of my driver, I do keep in some contact via WeChat. He still works for my company (I made sure I could find him another position), and his kid was accepted on a sports scholarship to his second choice school. My driver was absolutely fantastic.
Growing up in LA in the 70s we always had housekeepers and gardeners.
These days I single parent. So someone who comes in once per week - more if I feel something needs doing - to clean/dishes/laundry and so forth is something I value. I also have a lawn/garden/handyman. He’s downstairs putting in new floors right now and I wish he’d finish.
It’s just a part of my worldview. I don’t think everyone can have such, but it is helpful. Enormously so when I was sick last year, too. Those ladies essentially kept me going.
From 6 months to almost 4 years old, we lived in Japan in the '60’s and I’m told my parents and their friends (almost all Federal Gov’t Civil Service) had maids and it was commonplace for both non-military and military families at the time. Don’t know how often ours came or stayed, but she must have stayed at least until after school on the weekdays or was there on the weekends because my brother and sisters distinctly remember her. Also my Mom said she didn’t have to do any cooking, cleaning or ironing.
I don’t remember her face or even her name, but I do recall someone always carrying me around on her back. I thought it was my Mom, but she said as long as the maid was there, she (the maid) carried me all day. She had her own children, but I think they were all older than me and she was older than my parents. I just realized the other day while posting on another thread, she’s probably where I picked up some distinctly native Japanese traits that no one else in my family has.
I was a middle class blue collar worker and so was my wife. We always had a housekeeper and gardener. The house keeper stayed until dinner was served and then left. About 4 hours daily. She also baby sat the kids when they got home from school. 1970’s and 80’s
I think there might be something else you’re missing. Someone earlier mentioned “robots” meaning dishwasher, washing machines etc and that’s part of it, too. I could probably afford $35K - but there isn’t enough work to be done around my house to make hiring a full-time employee worthwhile for me. It’s not like it takes 40 or even 20 hours a week most weeks. It might have been different when my kids were young- but I couldn’t have afforded it them.
That’s a good point from the marginal-utility-to-the-employer end, but it’s actually a further incentive from the employee end - get paid better than retail, have no rent, AND only do 20 hours a week of actual work??
You can’t tell me nobody would sign up for that! Except apparently, they don’t.
So sure, you don’t feel fine paying $35k for 20 hours a week (so going rate of $33 an hour, which is cheaper than most maid services, and this is maid + cook + groceries and errands, etc), but I think a good chunk of households would be fine with that rate.
I mean, it’s all about how much you value your time. If your time is billed or worth significantly above that $33 an hour, it could be a slam dunk to come home to a frictionless household that doesn’t demand any of your time for everyday tasks.
And then for the employee, they get $33 an hour PLUS free rent…the more I think about it, the more I don’t see why it doesn’t exist already, and the more I fall back to it being weird sociocultural hang-ups that are preventing it.
Well, it’s not $33/hr. It’s $33 or more an hour ( I said "it’s not like it takes 40 or even 20 hours most weeks- that means most weeks it takes less than 20) plus room and board plus the inconvenience of someone sharing my space * And anyone who lives-in would be sharing my space - my house doesn’t have separate space for a live-in employee- and if there was, I’d be renting it for a minimum of $1500 a month.
I’m not at all saying you didn’t pay your live-in help generously - but 1.5-2X the going rate in some other country doesn’t necessarily translate to even minimum wage in the US. The general impression I have gotten is that in those countries where live- in help is common is that the cash wages are closer to $5K a year than $35K
I don’t like sharing space. We visit my brother-in-law every year. We never stay at his house because I prefer to stay at a hotel even though it costs about $100 per night.
As I said before I think Textual Innuendo definitely has a point about US cultural aversion to ‘servants’, on both the employer and employee ends. This plays out in part in the economics.
But I agree with you the calculation of cost has to include either explicit cost of having separate-entrance living quarters (then it’s also costing you lost rent) or implicit cost of sharing your living space, all the time, with somebody who doesn’t work anywhere near all the time.
Which also gets back to my point about ‘fully above board’. I mentioned tax and immigration, but there are also applicable labor laws which mean the person can’t really be on constant call as in the concept of servants in the past or in poorer countries now. And discussing what you could get away with illegally is never very productive IMO. You might get away with all kinds of things you really shouldn’t do.
In my US state (NJ) the governor is intent on raising the minimum wage to $15/hr, though the (even though strong Democratic majority) legislature is not in tune with a lot of his more left leaning proposals. But you’d have to be ready for that, and not sure it’s below the going rate anyway for that kind of work anyway (again the cultural point is valid in that respect, but that’s reality). Then not only FICA but, you’re not going to provide health insurance, pension, etc? Here there’d be social pressure to do that, separate even from the social inclination against ‘servants’. $35k is still not really it, it’s more. And the person can’t be called on all the time (look up your local labor laws), and is either sharing a space bigger than you otherwise need or a basement apartment (lots of the old houses in my neighborhood have one, ours is one family) you could otherwise rent out.
Now, for some Americans that that’s not a huge expense: some Americans indeed have live in ‘servants’. But part of the reason more don’t is that you have cut corners on various laws to make it less than a very expensive proposition (some people do that too). And a very $-wise inefficient proposition for most people’s demand for services compared to hiring a cleaning service, ordering/eating out when they don’t feel like cooking etc.
But again back to cultural, a personal car being uneconomically utilized (it is for a lot of people who live in any area like ours, right near NY) doesn’t stop them owning them. The fact we don’t even really need one car, doesn’t stop us from having…two. But I like cars, whereas having live-in help would be a non-stop awkward existence I’d probably pay something to avoid, much less shell out $50k/yr or whatever it would (realistically) cost. Until maybe some day we can’t take care of ourselves (after moving to a house that’s easier than this one).
Not my experience. We had nothing but deep cleaning, and the food was prepared to much greater standards than I hold. :eek:
Different experiences. Although we did go through several folks that were not a good fit, but generally speaking they were sticklers for cleanliness and hygiene as much as their environment allowed. It took a bit of introduction sometimes to a washing machine and dishwasher, but never a resistance to being clean.
Yeah, I agree as well, doreen makes a good point there on the opportunity cost of lost rent and having to be willing to share your space, and I hadn’t thought of that angle.
But to your other point of “they don’t work all the time, and they’re not on-call all the time,” I don’t think anyone is really expecting that. I mean, my cook or maid wasn’t on call all the time or working all the time, and it was still worth every penny. You could handle this with a contract either specifying the things they have to do and the QC standards for them being “done,” or by a set number of hours “on-call” per day/week/month, beyond which they can tell you to pound sand.
As to health insurance and pension, I wasn’t thinking of those as part of the deal, seeing the primary talent-pool alternatives as retail jobs and fast food, neither of which provides health care or pensions, rather than jobs like teacher and receptionist, which do. Right now there are boatloads of people making below $15 an hour and with little job security and no pension or health care - it seems like some of them should be willing to make twice as much, AND get free rent, AND work less hours per week, even if they don’t also get health care and pensions on top of it.
But, what do I know? The overall value prop sounds like a really reasonable thing from both ends to me, and yet this doesn’t happen in the wild in the US, so there must be big things (which again I assume are sociocultural) stopping them on either or both ends.
And sure, “not wanting to share a living space,” “foregoing potential rent,” “no health care or pension,” and “not enough value for money spent” could be slices of that pie…I just have the feeling that all those together are like 20% of the picture, and there’s still 80% that will shake out as weird sociocultural hangups preventing it from happening. Completely unfalsifiable without a lot of really good surveys from both high income people and retail / fast food people, though.
Many working people use an “ironing lady” but that is hardly a service. I have a mower man- mainly as I get so many sun cancers- also I am bone lazy. I pay him $70 to mow whenever but the bonus is that every now and then he will turn up with a load of cooked crabs for us (he goes out crabbing in his spare time).
I never had a servant, but one of my cousins lived in India for a while. He had several servants, who were a dime a dozen there. He married one of them.
I don’t think it’s so much about wanting them to be on call all the time. It’s more a matter of utility - I’m paying someone $35K plus room and board to do X between Time A and Time B, five days a week , even the weeks where I don’t need much or any of X done. But if I need X done outside of those hours, I have to pay extra , hire someone else or do it myself. Why bother hiring a live-in full time person when it would be less expensive to hire the services as I need them rather than paying for a full-time driver and then either paying for cabs or paying the driver extra when I need a ride during his off-time. Even if he is just sitting in his room in my home watching TV and I need to be picked up from the airport after being away for a week, during which he was paid but didn’t drive me at all. I suspect that a big part of the reason that the most common live-in employees are nannies ( which is also possibly the one job where hiring a live-in can be less expensive rather than more ) is because they will virtually always actually work all the hours they are being paid for.
My mom had a cleaning lady who came in twice a week. We always had to clean our rooms beforehand. My college girlfriend’s family had a full time housekeeper/cook and I never liked visiting her family. “Leave it - Maria will pick it up.” “Tell Maria how you want your eggs.”