SOCIETYBYS TA NDE RTatler August 2019 tatler.com‘Yachts are the worst. The crew
scowl when you show up
because they think they own it’YOU JUST CAN’T
GET THE STAFF
‘They go through your knicker
drawers. They know far more about
us than we know about them’[VAT per hour but wouldn’t weed,
throw out the rubbish or even sweep
up before he left. That, he sniffed,
was my job. Clearly, it’s nothing like
the days of Downton Abbey, when
staff did all the unsavoury things
that we refused to. As one friend notes
forlornly, ‘We project our feelings
on to them today. We feel we can’t
possibly ask for something we don’t
feel like doing. They pick up on our
feelings then begin to think it’s be-
neath them too.’
Said friend has homes in London,
Barbados and St Moritz, and is far
too terrified of her staff to go on the
record. Most of her time is spent
dealing with staff (and yachts are
the worst, she says. The crew scowl
when you show up because they
think they own it). ‘They can cause
us such stress,’ she says. ‘They know
such intimate things about us. They
go through your knicker drawers.
They know much more about us
than we know about them. I used
to operate under the assumption
that, as I am paying they should do
as they are told. Now I know that
you have to praise them endlessly so
they will turn like a flower to the
sun and want to please you.’
One Hollywood talent executive
tells me she agrees with this strategy.
‘They must be managed as talent.
Rule One: You must subjugate your
ego to theirs,’ she says. ‘Rule Two:
You must praise them incessantly
regardless of how incompetent they
are.’ A further, unspoken rule is that
you must also live in fear lest they
turn on you. The papers are full of
names (Mel B, Mariah Carey, Sir
James Dyson) whose staff are suing
or being sued by them. Just like
rock stars, the most highly prized
staff know that, if sacked, they will
be hired again immediately. And so
chatelaines are at their mercy and
staff-employer relations have been
turned upside down. ‘Employers
used to fly business class on holiday
and put the nanny in the back with
the kids,’ says Taylor. ‘Now, nanny
says “I’ll meet you there” – or, more
likely: “I’m not coming.”’ One Lon-
don film agent even found herself
held to ransom by her nanny. Just asthey were about to embark on a trip
to Los Angeles with her three darling
charges, she demanded a deposit for
a flat upfront – or she would walk.
One ultra-wealthy mother was so
desperate to keep her nanny that
she relocated the nanny’s boyfriend
from South Africa and created a job
for him in her husband’s company.
As many a well-heeled family will
know, when it comes to hired help,
there are endless trade-offs to
negotiate and deals of diminishing
returns. One woman, who was a
partner in a law firm, tells me shewas forced to quit her job after her
nanny pulled a sickie for the third
time (for emergencies such as having
her period). Bosses tend to have zero
tolerance for domestic dramas,
assuming that home works in the
same way as the office – which it
doesn’t. I can attest: in 15 years of
employing a succession of nannies,
I never managed to convince a single
one to babysit on a Saturday night.
Even my husband, who has been on
many management-training courses,
couldn’t begin to negotiate. He lik-
ened them to Chief TechnologicalOfficers, who stumble into the office
at noon reeking of whisky and get
away with it because, essentially,
they know they have you hostage.
So how does one navigate these
choppy waters? One deploys endless
understanding and sympathy, of
course. Our cleaner returned home
after she’d been away for a month,
and announced she needed another
week off to recover from the jet lag.
In any other sphere of working life,
she’d have been sent flying. Instead
we both behaved as though she was
Lady Gaga and cooed, ‘Poor you.’
After all, at least we still had her:
another nanny we had was poached
by an African president. She was
paid a banker’s salary, assigned her
own bodyguards and today owns a
compound in Portugal. ( PHOTOGRAPH: RENÉ HABERMACHER. MODEL: JULIA ZIMMER08-19BYST-SOCIETYStaff.indd 40 30/05/2019 06:11
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