Best Practices: How to Care For Your Servants

Let’s face it – it’s not easy to live adjacent to wealth and status. That’s why it’s important to take the time to make your servants feel appreciated. Now before you spit out your mimosa and have FedEx send a printed copy of this article to your home via bike messenger so that you can throw it into your composter and let your contempt feed your avocado grove, let us assure you that we aren’t about to suggest you start inviting your domestic servants to be seen with you at social functions, or try to learn their first names. No, there are other, more simple ways of making your servants feel valued that will enrich both of your lives without raising or lowering anyone from their appropriate stations. The secret to happier help is all about being a fun boss, and they will respect your decision to address them as subordinate professional acquaintances rather than actual friends, which quite frankly would come off as fake and offensive.

Tip The First: Regularly Change Your Name

Nothing makes a job less fun than an unchanging list of tedious duties that must be accomplished in exactly the same way every day. And what’s the one thing about being a personal domestic servant that never changes? The head of the household’s name. You can spice things up a bit for your dreary butler by insisting he calls you something utterly different every single week. For instance, today you might be “Mr. Baldwin,” but next Monday you could look up from your English muffin and copy of Variety magazine as your butler struggles to dislodge from the air vent the iPhone X you sent hurtling through the kitchen after learning of your Academy Award snub and announce, “Henceforth, you are to address me as ‘Iron Jake Thunder.’” In order to really sell it, pretend to fall into a blind rage should they ever forget your new name or fail to address you by it in its entirety. It’s an easy way to inject a spritely bit of the unexpected into an ordinarily mundane task. (It’s best to wait until your staff has finally memorized your new name before changing it again, but feel free to switch it up to keep them all on their toes!)

Tip The Second: Turn Each Task Into a Fun Game

Your driver is probably so bored with going to the same garage every morning to collect the same Rolls Royce to drive down the same private road to the same palatial front door to collect and chauffeur you to the same Pavilions for bulk liquor purchases. That sort of mundanity can drive (ha!) a person to an early suicide. But you can make your domestic servants’ day exponentially more enjoyable by turning each duty into a fun scavenger hunt. Knowing that they’ll have to allot three extra hours just to find where you’ve hidden the car, your golf clubs, or your toddler will add a thrilling dimension of excitement to their workday.

Tip The Third: Stage A Murder

Escape rooms and How To Host A Murder parties are in serious vogue right now, so what better way to introduce a little fun into your servants’ daily lives than creating a murder mystery for them to solve. Hire an experienced performer to pose as a bloody corpse in the main hall of your home and gather all your servants together to “discover” the scene. Then announce that someone among them is a killer, and refuse to let anyone leave until the murderer’s identity is revealed. Make sure to collect all of their cellphones, which honestly should already be part of your usual routine if you expect to run a tight household, and set them loose on the grounds! (Please note, your servants will almost certainly accuse you of being the murderer, particularly if you’ve had any of them dispose of a dead body in the past, so preparing an ironclad alibi beforehand is a must.)

With these tips, we’re confident you’ll find yourself lording over a happier, more productive team of personal servants in no time!