Why no more servants?

[silver 2039]

In India we commonly have servants as well. My family keeps a cook/maid.

 

[Plotinus]

Thats a rather huge exaggeration. There are regular reports of maid abuse but thats a very small minority.

I have a filipino maid and she enjoys working here. She does not as you work to the bone and is like a slave. I catch her half the time just idling away for there really isnt much to do. Also on their Sundays, they dont go to church and pray all day. For some reason, they gather at Orchard Road and sit in parks and major Shopping Centres with their friends and talk all day long.
Their pay, while sometimes I do feel is a bit small, is of mininum wage. They earn more here than they can in Philipines usually. Many do send back cash back to their homes but they keep a few hundreds with them. My maid, Emelda, her name just bought a new handphone which is newer than mine.
Did you actually get to speak to these maids before?

Yes, I've spoken to quite a lot of maids, and I have a good friend who works at a sort of rescue centre for Filipino maids who have run away because of abuse. Now I certainly didn't say that they all work their fingers to the bone all the time or that they all have a miserable existence, because that's obviously not true and I've often been amazed at how cheerful they seem. But I have to say that a live-in job with only one day off a week can't be good working conditions. Perhaps this is a cultural thing: as a westerner I just find the whole concept of servants deeply unsettling.

You're right that vast numbers of them spend Sunday hanging around in Orchard Road though. For some reason they all congregate in Lucky Plaza, which I find unfathomable since that's probably the least pleasant mall in the whole of Orchard Road.

In addition to the economic issues associated with having or being a servant, there are the social issues. I read that many North Americans, when they visit England and stay at a fancy hotel or an "upper crust" home, literally do not know how to relate to the butlers, maids, chauffeurs, etc. Here we are taught to "do things for ourselves" and not to expect others to do things like "fetch and carry" and run our bathwater (for example). I confess I'm one of the people who prefers to tote my own luggage rather than have a hotel employee do it, and I wouldn't expect a servant to do anything for me unless I couldn't do it myself, for some reason. It's something that seems to be out of our social comfort zone in recent generations -- especially since the '60s (since we're all equal now ).

What! I don't believe that anyone in England outside the Royal Family or at least the very upper echelons of aristocracy employs butlers, maids, and chauffeurs. Who are all these North Americans staying with? I've always assumed that rich Americans are more likely to employ servants than rich British people, although I have to admit that this impression comes almost entirely from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "Frasier". Also, surely fancy hotels in North America have just as many doormen, bellboys, and so on as those elsewhere. Personally I don't think I have ever in my life stayed in any hotel where there was anyone to pick up my luggage or run my bath, but then I'm poor.

 

[aronnax]

Yes, I've spoken to quite a lot of maids, and I have a good friend who works at a sort of rescue centre for Filipino maids who have run away because of abuse. Now I certainly didn't say that they all work their fingers to the bone all the time or that they all have a miserable existence, because that's obviously not true and I've often been amazed at how cheerful they seem. But I have to say that a live-in job with only one day off a week can't be good working conditions. Perhaps this is a cultural thing: as a westerner I just find the whole concept of servants deeply unsettling.

Well that because westerners would not accept a job like that, they have something else better. People who turn to maid agencies usually dont have better choices.

You're right that vast numbers of them spend Sunday hanging around in Orchard Road though. For some reason they all congregate in Lucky Plaza, which I find unfathomable since that's probably the least pleasant mall in the whole of Orchard Road.

Really? They seem to be always at Ngee Ann City for me

 

[Zardnaar]

Alot of people in the "west" wouldn't hire a maid even if they could afford to. Theres somehting odious about it IMHO. Generally you would have to be either very rich to get one or come from a third world country that has massive distribution of welath problems where you can hire one for minimal amounts of money.

 

[Narz]

Fossil fuels make most of the jobs of servants unnecessary. It's much cheaper to get a gadget to do it.