Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Live-in help is not great unless you have a separate guest house. We hated having a live-in nanny, for example, and after a brief experiment with it, we found we were happy to pay a higher rate for a live-out nanny.

The Reiners did have a guest house. It's where their drug addicted mentally ill son lived. Ugh.

Have some empathy. UGH

he should have made it a fortified facility to avoid letting the nut out. imagine if he got out and killed someone else

You are an awful person. Do you know how hard it is to have a loved one with serious mental health issues? If not, you should stfu

Good points in the thread but one factor no one has mentioned is that technology greatly changed the nature of housework in the mid 20th century. Dishwashers, washing machines and later dryers, microwaves, packaged foods that were easier to prepare, in-home HVAC instead of fires or other methods for heating and cooling a home -- all of this diminished the work that household staff had to do, making it harder to occupy household staff enough to justify having them live in.

Of course the wealthy still have housekeepers, nannies, landscapers, and personal assistants. But when your housekeeper can start the dishwasher before she leaves and get the laundry done in 3 hours instead of 10, it makes less sense to have her living in. You also don't need people lighting fires at 5am just to make a home livable in the winter, or a team of people spending 3 hours preparing a meal from scratch.

Culture also became much more casual which mean fewer formal meals to prepare and clean up after. Instead of a small wardrobe of formal clothes that needed to be spot cleaned and continually repaired and updated, people have larger wardrobes of more casual clothes that can be machine washed and don't need to be re-embroidered or beaded or otherwise tended to. Even if you are a billionaire, you simply do not need a steward or lady's maid to help you get dressed or change your clothes before dinner -- your clothes are user friendly and you can do it yourself.

These changes also came with shifts to how homes are laid out, with more open floor plans, especially open kitchens and dining rooms. Having formal staff makes a lot less sense if your kitchen can be seen from everywhere on the first floor -- it was easier when they were hidden away in a ground floor kitchen where the upper class never went. Same with open dining rooms and parlors/living rooms. It feels less strange to have live in staff when they are mostly hidden away from you and your guests and only appearing periodically to serve a meal or tend the fire. Even just full time (not even live in) staff can feel a lot more intrusive in moderation homes where the "working" spaces flow directly into and are visible from the relaxing and entertaining spaces.

labor laws and minimum wage are too strict now adays, once we get ai robots that will come back then eventually the liberals will want to give the robots right and we will repeat the same cycle

Maybe women don’t want to end up like Maria Shriver. Betrayed by the staff and her husband in her own bed right under her nose.

Anonymous wrote:Quality of service in America is horrible across the board - domestic help, at stores, at work, at school, on calls. Many are illiterate and/or ESOL- more lost in translations (voluntary or involuntary!).

Think of how many times you find mistakes in orders, sizes, your instructions, the final product? Now multiply that for someone you give the keys to your house and your kids to.

Other countries people have more pride in their work- like Japan. No need to double check anything.

Other countries domestic service industry is more professional- se Asia, Mideast, Eastern Europe. No matter, they get here, act entitled, assume everyone is a multi millionaire, and quality of service declines— especially if you’re weak at managing people and tasks.

So many do-the-bare-minimum workers here. Such a PITA. Thus when and if you find someone who cares you pay more. But do not pay more for imposters.

That and they all too often take advantage of their employers. Steal from them, use credit cards inappropriately, betray confidences, etc. There’s low level of trust on both sides.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Live-in help is not great unless you have a separate guest house. We hated having a live-in nanny, for example, and after a brief experiment with it, we found we were happy to pay a higher rate for a live-out nanny.

The Reiners did have a guest house. It's where their drug addicted mentally ill son lived. Ugh.

Have some empathy. UGH

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP who says that the staff doesn't have keys knows nothing. Obviously nobody wants to have to open the door every time someone comes to work at the house. Ridiculous.

When I nannied for a billionaire, his house manager gave us a keypad code to enter/exit parts of the property. They were always watching remotely. I assume when you're done, they just change the code.

This is standard for regular employees. Subcontractors get let in by regular employees. But there are cameras on everything. Even for a normal sized house, it wouldn't be abnormal to have 10 people show up on a regular day for various tasks. The owner most certainly doesn't want to be dealing with that.

Anonymous wrote:Live-in help is not great unless you have a separate guest house. We hated having a live-in nanny, for example, and after a brief experiment with it, we found we were happy to pay a higher rate for a live-out nanny.

The Reiners did have a guest house. It's where their drug addicted mentally ill son lived. Ugh.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rich stopped having servants after the World Wars. You should watch a movie like “The Remains of the Day” to understand why.

For the love of god it is a book. A book. Yes it was turned into a movie. But the book is phenomenal.

NP. One of my favorite books of all time!

Anonymous wrote:PP here who said nobody wants to have staff live with them. PP above definitely noted an exception. Most people that I know with that type of wealth and multiple houses have people who live in their houses when they are not there. Sometimes they are hired help. Sometimes they are friends. But it is generally helpful to have a caretaker for when you aren't at a residence. I know some who basically switch houses with the caretakers when the houses are close to each other.

Yes: If you live in the city, your maid or cook or babysitter can come first thing in the morning and/or leave after dinner. My friend-of-a-friend centimillionaire has a couple who are caretakers of his Eastern Shore house, so they live in a cottage on the grounds.

PP here who said nobody wants to have staff live with them. PP above definitely noted an exception. Most people that I know with that type of wealth and multiple houses have people who live in their houses when they are not there. Sometimes they are hired help. Sometimes they are friends. But it is generally helpful to have a caretaker for when you aren't at a residence. I know some who basically switch houses with the caretakers when the houses are close to each other.

Anonymous wrote:PP who says that the staff doesn't have keys knows nothing. Obviously nobody wants to have to open the door every time someone comes to work at the house. Ridiculous.

When I nannied for a billionaire, his house manager gave us a keypad code to enter/exit parts of the property. They were always watching remotely. I assume when you're done, they just change the code.

Anonymous wrote:In Asia live in help is still quite common. They are usually foreign workers who are paid very poorly for house cleaning, child care, and cooking. The homes aren’t necessarily large, but they have special small beds that fit in the small rooms available or the helper will sleep on the floor of the children’s room.

Essentially having live in help stopped when we started treating people more humanely, and not like a commodity.

I don’t know but I was recently thinking about this too, listening to the Martha moxley podcast. The people they interview mention casually their live in staff that they had when she was murdered- not just the Skakel family’s live in staff (multiple people) but another friend casually mentioned their own live in housekeeper as well. So in the 70s in Greenwich it still seemed to be commonplace. I had many friends from college from that very rich Greenwich/ Darien crowd and only two of them had live in help. One had two BigLaw parents and a live in nanny because presumably the parents were never home . The other was just stupid rich and had their own plane, etc and had live in staff in both their manhattan home and their CT home. Everyone else who was just “normal rich” did not.

Anonymous wrote:Live-in help is not great unless you have a separate guest house. We hated having a live-in nanny, for example, and after a brief experiment with it, we found we were happy to pay a higher rate for a live-out nanny.

Live in help is such a love it and hate it relationship. Not worth the hassle or lifestyle or addl responsibilities.

They also try to no longer count food and board as compensation. There are huge chat rooms telling Nannies and housekeepers all kinds of goodies to demand each year from their families.