How many of you have the good fortune of employing a butler? The common folks or even the HDB rich are quite used to employing maids to take care of their household chores, and pay a pittance for them. At that kind of price, it is only normal not to expect too much. But no, some Singaporeans believe their money is very big and want to get their money’s worth. They want to work their maids from 5 am to 12 midnight, 7 days a week. Some may even be thinking of 24/7 and 365 days in a year. They are paying and they expect the maids to work. And if the maids are lazy, they may iron them or starve them for being unproductive.
For the privilege class who can afford a butler, the situation is quite different. They pay good money for the service of the butler and expect a service quality that the maids cannot do. They expect the butler to do everything in the house, including thinking and planning ahead for the needs of the master. They do not want to waste their time bothering on the nitty gritties of living. With a butler, a talented one as they are supposed to be, for the money they are paying, it is only right that the paymaster can expect the quality of service they are paying for. And so does the butler. He demands the high pay and knows that he has to live up to the expectation of his masters.
For every price the quality of service will come with it. It is only right that the paymasters have a lot of high expectations from the butler. Can any paymaster be blamed for blaming everything on the butler if the bulbs are blown, the tap doesn’t work, the rubbish not cleared, the fridge is empty because yesterday was a holiday and the butler forgot to top up the fridge? Or is it not right to blame the butler when the kitchen caught fire and no fire extinguisher can be found? Or can the paymaster blame the butler when there is haze and no mask is available in the house?
Or should the butler tell master, why don’t you do a bit of work yourself, go to the shop and get your own mask? Or can the butler tell the master he did not buy because the master did not tell him to do so, like a HDB mum will order the maid to go and get one?
What is the point of paying the butler so much and still cannot depend on him to take care of all his living needs? I am sure many will just sack the butler. They will tell the butler, ‘You are the butler and that is your job. Go and get the job done. No excuses. Pay you so much to sit on your fat arse and play dumbo?’
15 comments:
RB, I think you get it wrong. We do not employ a butler, we are butler. PAP has make it clear that they are going to prevent 70% of our students from getting degree meanwhile, flooding our country with loads of FT.
Today they are telling us to hawk. Tomorrow, they will tell us to be maid. Next they will tell our woman to be prostitute and man be shit collector.
Singapore has the lowest college enrollment in all develop countries.
PAP has already forecast that we will run out of maid when our neighbor develop. Never mind, Singaporean will be maid to FT.
If PAP suicidal FT policy continues, I foresee a destruction of singapore in 30 years.
How many butlers does LKY have? does anyone know?
Think before President Nathan, they are looking for a chief bulter to take of the bulters..
Has the vacancy been filled up already, can the MPs asked this in Parliament..
very good, sir
Hope that Singapore are prepare for the type of SARS that causes serious damage to Hong Kong because of overcrowding and overpopulation left many staying in cages, 100K still waiting for the rental flats.
At that time, fortunately they govt intervene to buy many stocks to push up the market if not Hong Kong will be in serious trouble and during the serious recession, ask the China govt to let its people to tour Hong Kong to push up the economy?
A good article...
Everytime I critise the G for not doing something right, my very pro-PAP friend would say I expect too much. I always replied that is because we pay them too much, and therefore there is nothing wrong for us to expect them to excellent in all aspects.
Want to be paid like a butler and work like a maid.
PAPig is the butler in this article.
Singaporeans are overpaying the butler.
And the butler is telling us to be more independent. And not have a subsidy mentality.
i.e.
We pay millions to the butler. And the butler turns around and tell us that it is not his job.
That we have a dependent, subsidy mentality.
Sometimes the master is discovered dead, leading the cops to conclude: The butler did it.
"Singaporeans are overpaying the butler."
To be specific, Singaporeans did not overpaid these greedy butlers because they did not agree to the pay in the first place, rather butlers engineered themselves the most extraordinary pay in the world without Singaporeans's approval, by having own species of kxngxrxx and wallaby to say YES whatever to benefit the party and themselves, and NO that disadvantage them. Even near $1 million dollar to mercer for wayanging the minister's pay cut.
How can someone say he paid someone in which he did not paid to the latter at all with his knowledge and approval ?
Redbean,
what do you think ?
You people are reading too much into what I wrote. I am just talking abou the butler and the maids and comparing their pay and quality of services expected.
The maids are mistreated because the gov did not set proper regulations for the working conditions for a maid. Why is a maid not fall under the employment act is strange? why do people fight for the right of lgbt but not maid is strange? why do people keeps voting of pap is strange?
'PAP has make it clear that they are going to prevent 70% of our students from getting degree meanwhile, flooding our country with loads of FT.'
- why do pap wants to limit people access to higher education? because it is easier to control lowly educated people. Lowly educated people do not start and lead a protest.
" Anonymous said...
The maids are mistreated because the gov did not set proper regulations for the working conditions for a maid. Why is a maid not fall under the employment act is strange? why do people fight for the right of lgbt but not maid is strange? why do people keeps voting of pap is strange?"
I bet you never read the news, they want to increase to 40% by 2025. At same time they also opening the market to foreign grads.
Just like there are now maids from Myanmar and Cambodia , as Indonesians and Philippians are getting expensive.
This is their way of suppressing cost of living.
However they "overlook" salary for rest become stagnant too.
Also look around, you will observe only very few developed nations relied that heavily on house maids.
Results because both couples have work to maintain the living standard.
Today, the maid at my house cost $700 a month with levy. When my maid go back home for 2 weeks, my whole family kinda breaks down.
A accuse B of messing up the house. C accuse D of not taking care of babies. For the entire 2 weeks, we eat outside.
Do we really want this kind of life? Do we really want to put all our woman to work?
This is not a healthy family.
I wonder what Singapore will become if maid gets expensive. When the old fall sick and incapacitated, will our woman wipe their backside?
Will our woman wipe the backside of her own baby?
As the region develop, the days of our maid are numbered. I always stress we need to build a normal and healthy society. By inculcating materialism, by making house price sky high that our woman are forced to work, PAP has squander all our potential for further development. We have wreck our culture and our virtue. When virtue is lost, everything is lost.
We could be heading for inevitable destruction.
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