Page 2 | To hope that in this day and age in the UK, servants no longer exist?

meditrina · 29/05/2014 10:12

maternal - relating to your mother
paternal - relating to your father
fraternal - relating to your brother/s
sororial - relating to your sister/s

Littledidsheknow · 29/05/2014 10:12

Servants are voluntarily in paid employment, Divingoffthebalcony, they are not slaves. Slavery is illegal in this and most countries.
I don't see the problem with people paying for domestic help. When I worked full time with 3 young children I had a gardener and an ironing lady. I am too messy for a cleaner.

beccajoh · 29/05/2014 10:13

I don't see the problem. Paid employment. Why is it any different to being a cleaner, waiter, nanny, chef, taxi driver or any other role where you're paid to provide a service? You're assuming that because they're paid to provide a domestic service for their employer, they're somehow treated badly and/or put upon.

Not knowing the names of your staff is just rudeness. Nothing to do with being an employer.

meditrina · 29/05/2014 10:14

I don't share, and don't particularly like, the assumption that domestic work is demeaning.

OddBoots · 29/05/2014 10:14

I know some people still have live-in nannies, do they count?

NotNewButNameChanged · 29/05/2014 10:16

Yes, I meant paternal. No idea why I put fraternal. Moron that I am!

He really enjoyed being a butler and his employer was bloody marvellous. He had a big estate and every single person who worked for him had their own house or cottage on the estate (so no 'overnight' servants who lived in the big house) and they all had their home for life. They didn't pay any rent and still didn't in their retirement. After my grandfather retired, he stayed in that house until the day he died. His sister was also cook until she retired 30 years ago and was still living in that cottage until she died two years ago. Her husband STILL lives there now, aged 94, even though the guy who owned the estate died himself two years ago. He left provision in his will that while his nephew inherited the estate, all tenancies had to be honoured until they died.

They may have worked for him, but they were not treated as underlings or 'servants' in the old fashioned sense at all.

BristolRover · 29/05/2014 10:17

I think actually the use of footmen / butlers / drivers / chefs / housekeepers etc is probably increasing rather than decreasing because of the acquisition of a lot of our large country estates by overseas buyers who spent only a fraction of the year in them but which need maintaining all year round. You only need to look on The Lady / Eden job sites to see the type of vacancies / salaries around.

It's perfectly acceptable work for which people get paid and usually have accommodation provided as well.

what's the issue? you'd rather the rich didn't get sucked up to by their staff but would have thousands unemployed and homeless as a result? and who's going to clean the silver? wake up and realise that the rich will always be rich but as long as they're employing (on fair terms), it's preventing a lot of other people from being poor.

pebblyshit · 29/05/2014 10:19

Loads of people have servants but the people who do it say "I'm a driver/cook/PA/housekeeeper/cleaner" rather than saying "I'm in service" whilst tugging their forelock and the people who have them say "I have a housekeeper, a cleaner and a nanny" rather than "I have three servants."

minipie · 29/05/2014 10:20

I'm thinking of people sat eating at a table while their minions stand waiting behind them to cater for their every whim? Who in their right mind would bow and scrape to another human being, day in, day out?

This sounds rather like me and my (somewhat imperious) toddler...

Minnieisthedevilmouse · 29/05/2014 10:21

Have you heard of waitresses? Waiters? The hotel trade?

Op, you've been smoking right?

BookieTubules · 29/05/2014 10:24

Heh Minipie. We had exactly that realisation when we went to Ham House and there was a bit about servants. DD wanted to know what a servant was and I said "Well, someone who washes for you and cleans for you and picks up after you and... "(penny drops and voice fades away) and she replied, "Like you do for us Mummy?"

YoureBeingASillyBilly · 29/05/2014 10:25

It would be good if more houses were taking on domestic staff. Lots of people still needing jobs.

BristolRover · 29/05/2014 10:28

facking hell. I've just looked on the vacancies section of the Marshall Harber Domestic Staff agency. A GRAND A WEEK for a governess! (less sure about the ladies
(or £750 net p/week plus a house for a domestic couple...)

BookieTubules · 29/05/2014 10:30

And on the point of the thread I used to have a job where I did a fair bit of work for the kind of people who have servants. On a couple of occasions we had to arrange stakeholder pension schemes because they had more than five employees. By the time you've got a housekeeper, a nanny, a gardener, it all starts mounting up. It's not that uncommon in those kind of circles to have a live in couple at the very least she's the cook/housekeeper, he's the maintenance/gardener/handyman. They can be earning a fair salary, often with free accommodation and a car.

Even back on Planet Ordinary, there are plenty of households with both (or the only) adult working where people pay out for child care, cleaning, ironing. Once upon a time every middle class family would have had a maid, all we've done now is tend to pay one person who may do the same thing for lots of different people, rather than one person who does everything for us.

libertytrainers · 29/05/2014 10:31

i bet lots of mnetters would love to go back to downtown abbey days and have servants

lets hope we never go back to those days. people need decent jobs at a fair wage. it just highlights the divide in wages

there are plenty of filipino housekeepers round here, made to leave their own children and families to care for the rich here. it's such a fucked up world and could be so much better if people just spread the wealth a bit more.

sorry to rant

MinesAPintOfTea · 29/05/2014 10:33

Loads of people have servants but the people who do it say "I'm a driver/cook/PA/housekeeeper/cleaner" rather than saying "I'm in service" whilst tugging their forelock and the people who have them say "I have a housekeeper, a cleaner and a nanny" rather than "I have three servants."

^ This from pebbleyshit. There are forever threads on MN talking about dealing with their nany or cleaner, what are these people if not modern servants?

deminedprincess · 29/05/2014 10:33

so, what happens when you go out to a restaurant to eat? do you clear away the plates yourself?

Whitewaters · 29/05/2014 10:34

How is it any different to being a cook, cleaner, PA, waiter/waitress, nanny, concierge, chauffeur, gardener etc? Surely it's just the same as any service industry job? Lots of people in their right mind do those jobs.

It's just there's not as many of them hired in domestic settings today compared with the past, and they're probably referred to by specific job rather than called a 'servant' as such.

AMumInScotland · 29/05/2014 10:40

Having huge numbers of servants, living in tiny cramped attics, died out during the Great War, as so many young men had to go off to war, and young women were often needed to cover other jobs.

Before that, almost everyone had some kind of servant - even quite low classes had a 'char woman' who would come in and do the heaviest work. And most 'ordinary' middle class families had a maid-of-all-work who had a room above the kitchen or similar.

Pay and conditions have improved as the availability of lots of very poor people to do that kind of work has reduced. But there are still plenty of servants of one sort or another.

badtime · 29/05/2014 10:52

I was recently thinking how many PAs are basically modern versions of a Jeeves-style valet.

Ploppy16 · 29/05/2014 10:53

Have a look at the classified ads in something like The Lady, there's loads of domestic position in there, usually very well paid with full perks.
I do know someone who worked for an older very high up member of the royal family for a while, she loved it and grew to be quite fond of him.

evertonmint · 29/05/2014 10:54

I have loads of 'servants'. They clean my house (cleaner), look after my children (nursery), trim my hedges (gardener), service my car (mechanic), do my food shopping (supermarket delivery), fix my lights (electrician), paint my walls (decorator), fix the toilet (plumber), rid my house of pests (mole man), cut my hair (hairdresser). And that's just the 'servants' I've used in the past fortnight!

Except I don't call them servants - I call them whatever their trade is. And they don't live with me. And I like cooking so don't need anyone to help at mealtimes. So the OP probably doesn't think badly of me. Phew, that's a relief...

The only difference between me and the employer the OP talks about is that my 'servants' don't live with me and only get an income from me when I choose to use them. Any servant in the situation the OP posits at least has a guaranteed income and potentially a home as well.

There are very few people in this world who don't use modern day servants. It's just that now they're generally employees/self-employed in the service sector, which is a rather large proportion of our economy, and work for many rather than one person.

PrincessBabyCat · 29/05/2014 11:57

If they're paid fair and treated well, I don't see any problem with it.

Most house keepers here go through a service where they just come to your house when you pay them and leave a few hours later.

We might save up to hire one as a one off to deep clean the house when baby starts crawling so that any and all dirt/bacteria/dust build up is removed. We got an old house where the carpets haven't been steamed for god knows how long.

But they don't work exclusively for any one employer.

GardeningPerchance · 29/05/2014 12:15

I don't get the shame or stigma attached to be honest, it's a perfectly legit job IMO and you wouldn't necessarily have to be 'desperate' to want to be a butler etc.? Jeez, different people like different jobs, my job involves me being shat on by animals mostly but I chose to do it and am perfectly happy thanks, go stick your beak in elsewhere!

StillStayingClassySanDiego · 29/05/2014 12:22

Who in their right mind would bow and scrape to another human being, day in, day out?

People who need a job?

As long as they're treated well and not as 24 hour slaves, what's the problem in being a servant?