In defence of personal servants.

From the depths of Mordor,i adnotated :

A Vancouver Craigslist ad for a personal assistant has advocates and at least oneii professoriii shaking their heads about what is being asked for in the listing. The person who posted the ad describes him or herselfiv as part of a professional working couple living in Gastown’s Woodward’s building and asks for things like washing vegetables, keeping household products stocked, and packing lunches. It’s essentially an ad for a personal servant,v said one UBC professor, who added she was not surprised to see it given the country’s growing income inequality.vi “They’re not calling it a personal servant but that is what they’re asking for,” said Sylvia Fuller, who studies employment and inequality. “Its not surprising that you start to see more of this kind of arrangement because there are people who can afford it and there are folks who don’t have any other options.”vii The Craigslist ad was posted for at least eight days before it was flagged and taken down last week.viii Metro has not been able to contact the person who posted the ad. People who are new to the labour market, like recent graduates and immigrants are often the most vulnerable when it comes to precarious employment, said Fuller. The ad language, including its claim that the job is an internship, indicates the couple is looking for a millennial to fill this job, she said.ix The problem is, there is nothing in the job description that indicates it would forward someone’s career, she said.x “You’re not really developing any particular skills in that job.” The ad even states, “[i]f you’re the type of person who likes super “creative” work, where you have a lot of variety in your day … and deal with a lot of different types of complex challenges… then this probably is NOT right for you.” People have historically avoided this kind of workxi – personal servitude – if they have other options and for good reason, she said. “If you’re hidden in somebody’s household, in this kind of job, typically you’re not being paid particularly well but it is also easily subject to abuse and exploitation.” The ad also states the couple is looking for someone who, “doesn’t take things personally, have feelings hurt easily or get offended at all.”xii But the ad has appeared to offend a lot of people online already.xiii Downtown Eastside advocate Wendy Pedersen calls the people behind the ad “rich entitled slobs with no life skills”xiv and Vancouver writer Lindsay Brown describes them as “people who have PAs as well as a housekeeper and demand that you don’t get ruffled if they have a tantrum.”xv Fuller is not surprised the ad has ruffled feathers but is also not surprised the ad was placed in Vancouver. “Vancouver is one of the most unequal cities in Canada when we look at incomes – its not surprising that we would see examples of this here.” Families who had the highest incomes (top 20 per cent) increased their average wealth by 80 per cent between 1999 and 2012 while families at the bottom of the income spectrum (bottom 20 per cent) only increased their average wealth by 38 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. Meanwhile, precarious employment – temporary, freelance, and on-call work – has increased by 60 per cent since 1989. About one in every five workers in the Toronto area work in precarious employment, according to the most recent report by United Way and McMaster University.

From that IRC channel you probably didn’t know about but shouldxvi :

pete_d: Holy shit does this sort of libertard flailing grind my fucking gears. Ad is included in article and is eminently reasonable.xvii Nothing a PA or nanny wouldn’t do. I seriously dun get it and it drives me up the fucking wall. The gall of these impotent shits. To think that it’s evil for employers to have specific expectations rather than being ‘universally’ ‘inclusive’.xviii
shinohai: They got a personal army of similar-minded folks to flag post and get it removed, that’ll show ’em!

pete_d: This is presumably what the employment alternatives look like.xix i) Wash dishes for well-to-do couple, learn,xx maybe make productive connections along the way (you hope) ; ii) Play ‘flag the meanies’ in your mom’s basement ad infinitum. That ‘the press‘ would aim to shelter and coddle morons into the latter camp is despicable, unethical, and destined to fail – for both themselves and their moo-eyed readership.

So what offended you more, the Craigslist ad or me ?

___ ___ ___

  1. MetroNews’ Wanyee Li to be exact. While the fillie is a replaceable rube who’s using the position as little more than a dating platform, you’ll recall the rag for their earlier racism.
  2. This is exactly equivalent to proposing the following : “We only asked one homeless schmoe – the nobody! – if he thought that President Obama was a martian sent from the future to destroy American jobs, and schmoe did! Now just imagine that schmoe is representative of something, anything at all, and we’ll continue this disgracefully specious reasoning from there.” Does that really sound like a cogent argument to anyone who didn’t eat a mayonnaise sandwich and fuck their own sister before work ? 
  3. Ahem. Associate Professor. There’s a difference. Just as there’s a difference between President and Vice President, and between soldiers and cadets. Please.

    Anyways, it must be said that Fuller’s not entirely unattractive.

  4. The ad was clearly written by a woman. As if a fucking self-made dude is ending a paragraph in a classified with “…lol!”.
  5. You can tell that being a “servant” or even so much as being ~of service~ is beneath the cocked brow of cocky Canadians by the simple fact that the brainwashed government school idjits fancy themselves too good to work minimum wage jobs… at all, leaving actual service positions to be filled by industrious immigrants like my beloved Philippinos. “You can be anything” is a blasted fairytale and a most wicked curse upon these snowy lands. Damn you pretenses to equality!!!!1
  6. The influx of money from mainland China is accelerating this trend nicely. The curve was too flat for too long, leading to this whole “we r nice (like mice)” song and dance, a song and dance that will only change its tune (and its step) when it’s too late. As ever, humans, particularly at the kommunittee level, are ever-reactive and never-proactive.
  7. There are in fact no other options. Period. Even for those born with silver spoons in their mouths, they must completely and unabashedly submit to their superiors for training. Whether it’s a private couple looking for a PA of sorts, whether it’s Walmart or whether it’s Wall Street, it matters not. Learning must happen and in urban / civil society that means that a ladder must be climbed. No one’s born knowing everything so hop to it – time to start sucking the cock (a euphemism for absorbing everything that your superiors have to offer, including, ideally and non-euphemistically, sexual practice).
  8. Eight days ? What is this, the magical oil that burned 8x longer than expected ? I know, let’s make an advertising holiday to commemorate this momentous occasion!! Oh wait, you already have a bunch of those, don’t you.
  9. Fuck Fuller and burn her at the stake using her worthless “doctorate” as kindling. Seriously, where does she get off so blatantly inserting her own dumb narrative where it doesn’t belong ? The ad says nothing of “precariousness” or “millennials” and yet somehow those are magically relevant because she feels things. Clearly, her mood ring was purple on this particular day and she was envious that young people might be wanted for productive purposes, which she’s clearly never been able to attain.
  10. Read between the lines, wouldja. Or better yet, open your fucking eyes. Do you have any idea how many EAs and PAs get promotions, have introductions made, and are generally invited into a world their worthless parents could never show them ? More than you know is apparently the answer here.  
  11. HAHAHHAHAA. Omgerd this is so backwards it could only have come from an up-is-down socialist.
  12. This obviously offends the libertard tenet that we’re all very special and soi-disant “good entities” *hurl* but little else besides. This is called “begging the question,” or petitio principii, for those of you interested in formal logic.
  13. How many is a lot ? Who knows! Math is racist!
  14. Takes one to know one, I guess.
  15. Is that supposed to be insulting or… ?
  16. No one has time for your “ostrich” defence, birdbrain.
  17. Personal Servant - 1
    Personal Servant - 2
    Personal Servant - 3

  18. You think the world would be a better place with mincome ? Where you’re paid to express your inate and suppressed creativity breathe ? Please, tell me about all the TV shows about art projects you’re going to watch on my dime.
  19. To the “idealist” (read : socialist) mind.
  20. Learn what ? What success looks like up close and personal, for one. How many other people can say they’ve had such an opportunity ? College certainly doesn’t give it to you.

8 thoughts on “In defence of personal servants.

  1. PeterL says:

    I don’t understand, the article says the post was removed after being “flagged”, but what would it be flagged for? I see nothing objectionable in the ad? Maybe it was taken down because they filled the position (really, how long would it take to find a qualified individual in a big city)?

    The article also assumes the ad is targeted at millenials, but really it could just as easily fit an older woman who has spent years as a homemaker and now wants a part time job to bring in a little extra cash, for example.

    And it is just a part time, afternoon thing, so it could be a perfect setup for a student or somebody who has an evening job, like a bartender or something.

    • Pete D. says:

      It’s easy, you just don’t understand how flagging works : SOMEONE WAS OFFENDED MKAY. That’s all it takes for the entire ‘sensitivity training’ echaufaudage to shake itself loose on its rickety moorings by resorting to the only recourse it really has : burying its head in the sand and flailing loudly.

  2. whaack says:

    In East of Eden the character Lee describes how being a servant to a wealthy family is a great option for the philosopher. One gets to enjoy living in a grand house with minimal work other than spending someone else’s money. In addition, a servant from a well educated background will almost never be fired because the competition for the position is atrocious. A smart servant can turn the tables so that a wealthy family will quickly find themselves in the position where they depend on the servant, while the servant does not depend on them.

    • Pete D. says:

      It’s almost as if Li and Fuller know this to be true – that talented, trustworthy servants are worth more than their weight in gold – and know likewise that they haven’t nearly the qualities needed to turn the tables of the power dynamic between client and patron. Since positive outcomes from such relations couldn’t exist for their solipsistic selves, they couldn’t possibly exist for anyone else.

  3. mhj says:

    Whut? She always takes her own garbage not just to the bin but to the power plant and chucks it in the furnace herself? When she goes to a restaurant, does she grow her own vegetables first, only to sell vegetables to herself in the morning on the market, arrive early at the restaurant to cook her own meal, serve it to herself at the table like some sort of split-personality, enjoy the meal and chat with friends over it, only to go out and wash the dishes afterwards. What a lovely dining experience. Oh.. not to forget – she of course takes the trash from the restaurant to the local power plant and chucks it in the furnace…after she cleaned the toilets at said restaurant of course….

    It’s completely retarded in many ways, but a thing that stands out is how she clearly is appalled by tasks such as those commonly carried out by assistants/pa’s/maids/drivers etc. This ironically makes her point of view very demeaning towards the very people carrying out those tasks (..and not that I care much about demeaning or not, but it seems like it’s one of her flagship “arguments”). It must be very confusing to live in her world, hence the split-personality. Confusing because she contradicts herself and has to live with her very own split morals. On top of this her world view completely depends on her own arbitrary “demeaning” view of different tasks and her own lacking ability in seeing where and how one could benefit from taking on a “pa” role. With all the “diversity celebration” the “progressives” are doing, my oh fucking my, then apparently everyone needs to go into the same mould of wanting to “be creative” “have more responsibility” “wanting to further their career” and other horse shit.

    Why is it OK to pay for an accountant, but not someone to prepare your food? Why is it OK to pay for someone to cut your hair, but not for someone to do your laundry?

    And why oh fucking why is it OK to pay for a research assistant doing all that boring paper research – but not for someone to keep your house clean.

    If she’s so happy doing everything herself.. ..maybe she should go fuck herself.. Which she would need to do – because with that personality and attitude I wholly disagree with “Anyways, it must be said that Fuller’s not entirely unattractive.”

    I’ve seen many personal assistants etc. that climbed the ladder, and climbed it fast mind you. Some say you are the five people around you, which certainly isn’t to be under-estimated. Spending time with successful people (even if you do it whilst scrubbing their floor), and peak behind the curtain of said people can be its weight worth in gold, and toilet-scrubbing. It’s just up to each assistant to make it such.

    On the other hand, I have seen first hand genuine slave labour in the form of “She’s from a third world country, was promised conditions that aren’t, they took passport when she arrived, she can’t speak the language, not allowed to leave the house, obeys master when ms. is not home, physical abuse etc”. I have had such a maid work for me after 10 years of the abuse above. But that’s an apple – and this is an orange.

    • Pete D. says:

      This ironically makes her point of view very demeaning towards the very people carrying out those tasks

      Libertards have always been the real racists. Hell, they feed off the existence of this type of made-up problem. It’s totally messed.

  4. […] one of my Philipino personal servantsi […]

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