Housekeepers for rich owners: what you need to be prepared for. Housekeeper: my employers earn from $1 million a year, they are great What will be required of you

Wealthy people are usually busy people. They stay late at work, so there is no time left for housework. The best way out of this situation is to hire a housekeeper.

What will be required of you

If you decide to serve as a housewife for rich people, get ready for:

1) interview with HR manager. Bring a copy of your passport, medical certificate, autobiography and several photographs to the meeting. This data is necessary, because for future employers you are an absolutely stranger whom they will let into the house;

2) security check. The absence of a criminal record or connections to crime is an important condition for obtaining such a position;

3) an interview in the owner’s house. You may be asked to prepare a dish or tell how household appliances work in order to see your future assistant “in action.” Working hours are usually paid;

4) probationary period. It is 3 months. Show your best side by strictly adhering to these rules:

• neat appearance. Neat hair, clean uniform (at least 2 sets per day in case you get dirty), appropriate makeup, clean-shaven legs, etc.;
• absence of bad habits. Nobody likes a housekeeper who goes out for a smoke break every hour or wipes crystal glasses while drunk;
• high-quality performance of direct duties. The ability to handle household appliances and use cleaning products correctly, and to take care of household things is the main “commandment” of a hired assistant;
• good mood, restraint. Forget about despondency and gossip - these are your “enemies” in your new workplace.

Myths and reality

Often young girls are afraid to take up such a position due to false fears. Let's try to figure it out and dispel them.

1. Worries about your own safety. Some people believe that masters can mock their subordinates (“they are rich, they are allowed everything”). In reality, the relationship between the employer and the assistant is good, because no one needs black PR.
2. Cheating with money. Girls are afraid of damaging property and “working for food” all their lives. To prevent this from happening, perform your duties as efficiently and accurately as possible. Pay attention to the contract: it is better to include the relevant clauses in it.
3. Intimate relationship with the employer. Such cases are rare, because no one wants to ruin their reputation, destroy their family and lose a good housewife. If the boss is interested in additional services, he looks for private housekeeper with sex. These responsibilities are negotiated orally or specified in the contract.
4. The boss's wife's claims. You must understand: the spouses of rich people can be hysterical or very pleasant people to talk to. To improve your relationship with the lady of the house, you will have to be a bit of a psychologist. Guessing the mood, not asking unnecessary questions, not allowing unnecessary things to happen in conversations with the employer - simple rules that will help you get comfortable and stay in a new place.

The Village continues to find out how much representatives of different professions earn and what they spend money on. In the new episode - a housekeeper. Ten years ago it was believed that only members of the upper middle class could afford an au pair, but now, despite the crisis, many people with average earnings have housekeepers. Their services no longer seem prohibitively expensive, but they save a lot of time and effort. An assistant to wealthy Muscovites told The Village how she lives, how much she earns and how much she spends.

PROFESSION

Housekeeper

SALARY

48,000 rubles

per month

Expenses

20,000 RUBLES

provision for son

400 RUBLES

phone payment

10,000 RUBLES

car refueling and repair

3,000 RUBLES

8,000 RUBLES

3,000 RUBLES

vitamins

1,000 RUBLES

2,000 RUBLES

cosmetics

600 RUBLES

transport

How to become a housekeeper

My name is Natalya, I'm 51 years old. I am a leather goods technologist by training; I worked in a leather goods association, first as a seamstress, and then as a craftsman. I never even thought about becoming a housekeeper until last year, when my son began to live in Moscow with his father, and I, a resident of Pushchin, wanted to be closer to him. Then I started looking for a job with accommodation in the capital.

I always liked doing housework, so I decided to try myself in this field. Having contacted first one agency, then the second, I did not get any real results. Everywhere they took money, offered to undergo training, but there was no sense. Then I started looking for advertisements directly. Having written a response to the vacancy of a housekeeper and indicated in the application form that I had no work experience, I immediately received a response with an invitation to an interview. This surprised me because everyone is looking for people with experience. Subsequently, I learned that my employers, Alexander and Natalya, were impressed that I spoke so thoroughly and honestly about myself in the application form.

It seems to me that a housekeeper is chosen based on intuition: the client either likes the candidate or doesn’t. In addition, employers prefer women of Slavic appearance. Often they even write that Russian citizenship is required to get a job. As a rule, those who don’t have enough money and have nowhere to live become housekeepers. For them, such work is serving a sentence. But if a person gets a job helping around the house only because he doesn’t have money, if it’s difficult and unpleasant for him to do this work, the client will feel it.

Housekeeping is really interesting to me, and I went to work not because I needed money, but because I needed to keep myself occupied with something and, probably, to feel needed. I lived for myself for so long that I wanted to become useful to other people. I consider myself an assistant: I help when a person has no time. Doing what I love, I also earn good money.

I, as a citizen of Russia, do not need a patent; only visitors from other countries need it. But I work unofficially, since to formalize it I need to open an individual entrepreneur to provide services. Then I will pay taxes, and I will have work experience. But in order to open an individual entrepreneur, you need to find a person who understands accounting, because for me this is a distant field. My owners are not against this payment format, but how else? I have never heard of housekeepers opening individual entrepreneurs, although I would like to do this in the future: in five years I will retire, and work experience is important to me.

Features of work

When I first arrived at the four-story house that I am currently cleaning, the owner Natalya told me about her cleaning preferences. The entire first floor of this mansion is dedicated to the hallway and garage, on the second floor there is a living room, dining room and kitchen, on the third there is a hall and three bedrooms, and on the fourth, attic, there is one large playroom for children. Two adults and two children live in the house. Despite the fact that the building is four levels, it is very compact. There is a gym in the hall on the third floor, which the owners periodically use. When no one is home and I want to take a little break from cleaning, I also use it - Alexander and Natalya don’t mind.
I live on the territory of a mansion in a separate guest house. This is a one-story building with a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, where I have a computer and a router.

Every day I only clean the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen and stairs. Otherwise my responsibilities include cleaning one floor per day. I also have cooking to do, so I have plenty to do. The start of my working day is not strictly defined in time: if the owners need breakfast, I can come at 07:30. But since they rarely order breakfast, I usually start work at nine or ten in the morning by cleaning the kitchen, after the family has already had breakfast. I work until two or three in the afternoon, then I go on a break, and at four or five in the evening I return to work, put things in order where necessary, and prepare dinner. At 19:00 I go to my place and return only at 21:00 to clean the kitchen after dinner. This concludes my working day. In my free time, I do what I want, surf the Internet, watch movies.

My employers do not consider themselves superior to those who help them. Perhaps we have such a relationship because they were not always rich: they used to live in an ordinary Moscow apartment, and when the owner began to earn good money, they bought this house. They and I are very similar in character, and we immediately established a trusting relationship, as if some kind of kinship of souls. I try not to interfere in the personal life of my owners. Alexander has some kind of business, he runs it from home. His wife does not work and devotes herself entirely to the children.

Salary

When I first got a job, they offered me 25 thousand rubles a month. I accepted this salary because I knew that I had no work experience, and without it they wouldn’t hire me anywhere. Two months later, Alexander raised my salary to 40 thousand. At first I worked six days a week, then I realized that this was too much for me, and we agreed that I would work four days. For such a download I receive 24 thousand rubles per month.

I decided to use my weekends for a part-time job and found a family that needed cleaning once a week. Their house is located within the city, its owner is a high-ranking official, he is rarely at home, and his wife takes care of the children and does not work. They have their own security service there, and when I was hired, they checked me.

The house itself is two-story, but very long. On the ground floor, in one wing there is a gym and a sauna, and in the second there is a large dining room and kitchen. On the second floor, in one wing there is an adult bedroom and an office, and in the other there are children's rooms and a nanny's room. I simply don’t have the opportunity to work out in the gym in this house: I clean up from morning to evening.

There is a lot of glass in this house; all the ramps and stairs are made of it. Cleaning there is actually washing several windows. It’s difficult to put all this in order in a day, and I get very tired. When I came to them, they immediately told me: due to the volume of work, you will have a ten-hour working day. When I started to do all this faster, they started adding more work to me, not taking into account that, having removed everything that was required, I was already tired. After such a hard day, I need one more day to recover. Working in this house is hard for me not only physically, but also mentally. The owners do not have such a trusting relationship with me as in the first family, and in their house I feel tense. But this part-time job brings me another 24 thousand rubles a month.

Spending

Of course, expenses change every month. My son is studying at the institute, I help him with money, so the lion’s share of my budget (about half) goes to him.

I have a car. Now I use it more often than public transport. It costs about 10 thousand a month to refuel and repair it, and about 600 rubles to travel by minibus and metro.

With clothes, everything is very simple for me, I’m not picky, and it costs an average of 3 thousand a month. It’s more difficult with nutrition: I don’t always eat what my owners eat, I have my own preferences, so part of my budget goes to food - fruits, vegetables and dairy. Another part of the expenses goes to vitamins: in our lifetime we cannot do without them.

I don’t like decorative cosmetics, so I hardly spend money on them.
Regular cosmetics that maintain skin tone cost 2–3 thousand rubles a month.

The owners pay for the Internet, and I only spend money on paying for a cell phone - only 300–400 rubles a month. I also like to read business magazines. On average, they spend a thousand rubles a month.

About the quirks of clients

I worked in many families, and I also had to deal with the quirks of rich people. In the house of a musician family, where I worked for about two months, the bathroom was decorated in the style of “golden toilets”: white earthenware covered with gilded designs. In my opinion, a gold-plated toilet is an unnecessary show-off, because such a design is short-lived. And cleaning such places is much more difficult than ordinary bathrooms: on the one hand, everything is covered in gold, and on the other, there are calcium stains from the water.

Usually clients treat me with respect, but things have happened. In one family, for example, there was no lunch break for the housekeeper.
Where and how I would eat didn’t really bother them. Eating while standing in the laundry compartment was not very pleasant for me.

Once I got a job with a family of lawyers - a lawyer and her daughter. They had two cats and an incredible amount of fur in the house. It became unbearable for me to come to clean up after the cats, then I told myself: I will not serve the cats. If a person gets a cat, it is his whim, not mine, therefore the person must take care of it himself. I help people when they really need the help of a housekeeper, and when they simply don’t want to do it themselves, an internal protest arises in me. For this reason, I soon left this family.

There are many women in our country who love to do housework, but nevertheless they sit within four walls and do not know what to do with themselves. If they help someone at least twice a week, it will be useful for them both financially and in terms of realizing their usefulness. But more and more people from other cities and countries are becoming housekeepers; it is still difficult for our women to overcome their pride and become an au pair. Although there is nothing shameful in this work and I perceive it as mutual assistance: clients have the opportunity to help me financially, and I have the opportunity to help them with housekeeping. My own family doesn't require much attention from me now, so my home is the home of the families where I work.

illustrations: Dasha Koshkina

Unlike the previous heroes of the column, Oksana is not ashamed of either her status or her stories. She asks not to film her face for security reasons: in her bag are the keys to the apartments where the money is. Oksana has been working for Belarusian moneybags for almost 15 years - cooking, cleaning houses, babysitting children.

I always have my keys and phone with me 24 hours a day, they can call me at any time, even at night.

- For what? If they get hungry?

The alarm will go off, for example. One family is currently abroad.

They gave me a lot of money, but my brakes worked

- The Faculty of Economics is not open anywhere. Tell us how you got into this environment? And have you gained such trust?

At the beginning of the 2000s, I received a higher education and went to work at a Brest school as a psychologist. Money was symbolic and teenagers were difficult. I went for interrogations and talked with investigators. In 2 years I got pleasure for the rest of my life and decided: enough is enough.

I searched for a job for six months. Until I came across an advertisement for a housekeeper. They took me, probably, because I had a higher education.

-What kind of people were they?

Some of the wealthiest people in Brest are “garment workers”. Their clothing brand is still among the top.

It was a large house of 300 square meters, plus animals - a dog, a cat, fish. Couple with a child. I did everything there. I cleaned, cooked, and nursed the child when my mother went to work. Since then I have no longer worked with children. Not because I’m tired, I don’t want to let you into my heart and then part with it. Since then, I generally stopped taking my work to heart. These first employers were my family, now they are just work.

At first I was paid $100 - 5 times more than at school.

- Seriously, for what? When you studied to become a psychologist, did the program include cooking or cleaning?

No, but I learned quickly and completed culinary courses. In general, I would love to work as a cook now, but they don’t hire based on age - soon 40.

They brought me in at 9-10 o'clock, and left at 16-17. Once a week the driver took us to the market to buy food. Fresh food had to be prepared daily.

Cleaning also had to be done in the first half of the day. After lunch I sat with the child - put him to bed, read. While I was sleeping, there was time to quietly stir, and when I woke up, I became a nanny. The next day the same thing, only without the market.

- Did you throw away a lot of expensive food at the end of the day?

No. They had a cat and a dog. And there was little unusual on the menu. You will be surprised, but everyone has homely, familiar tastes. Menus are often written by nutritionists.

Here, for example, is the list for the week:
cucumbers;
tomatoes;
avocado;
meatball and rice soup (small saucepan);
soup without meat with mushrooms (a little pasta);
pancakes with and without meat;
pancakes with and without cottage cheese;
sea ​​bass or several (bake);
shrimp skewers;
hake in Greek;
schnitzels;
avocado salad;
chicory;
almond milk.

Well, employers buy some things themselves.

Once a week I reported how much I spent. No one limited me with money or forced me to save. I didn’t litter them because I’m very practical myself. Until now, the toad is strangling to buy tomatoes for 25 rubles. And my employers buy these...

Believe it or not, I often travel to Poland (from Brest!), where I buy household chemicals for work. I can't buy Lenor here for $10 when it should cost $2.

How to ask for a salary increase

Your work in the first family was paid monthly. Didn't want to relax in the middle of the day? They won't pay anymore anyway.

There is always, it is normal for a person to want to be lazy. But I dealt with this desire differently. A year later, she approached the owners and, like a psychologist, correctly asked for an increase in salary.

- Teach?

You expect the employer to be in a good mood and ask: “Do you want to increase my salary?” It is necessary that there is no denial in the question. It took me a long time to learn this. I left the family with a salary of $400. Banquets were paid separately ($50-100), bonuses for birthdays or New Years were the norm. She didn’t deny herself anything. And this is with two days off a week

Families are different everywhere. I already had up to 10 employers, and each with their own cockroaches. But I remember the first ones with more warmth. They insisted that I get a license and helped me buy a car. It was cool. I worked for them for 6 years. But then tragedy struck the family. They had no time for cleaning. I was fired.

I took recommendations and went to the agency. With my experience, a new job was found for me very quickly. I worked in the second family for 2 years. The owner was engaged in cargo transportation - a very profitable topic for that time. So for the first time I saw a sofa for 14 thousand euros, a chandelier for 25 thousand, a kitchen for 80... She told me about it herself. She probably wanted to make an impression. Although I still don't get it, I think it's very poor value for money.

- Did you sit down on the sofa and feel nothing?

There were some goose down pillows. Well, I would pay $100 for it... I didn’t tell the owner that, of course. It would upset her. She was proud of the sofa.

Then the crisis came, wages began to be cut. And I refused to work. By that time, I had too many responsibilities. Up to and including attending parent meetings and some meetings of building cooperatives.

Realizing that no one would pay anymore in Brest, I fled to Minsk.

I'm a service person, but I once cried out of resentment.

I always parted ways peacefully because it was my resume and reputation. Basically, there was “hell” once - work in one Minsk “village”. It lasted me for several days. For $50, I was offered to clean a two-story cottage with a basement and attic once a week. Every time it was just a mess. It seems that until my next visit no one raised a finger there, but demanded ideality. This is impossible if you don't at least maintain cleanliness.

By the way, have the men in your families ever been bothered by the fact that their wives (usually called housewives) don’t actually do anything around the house?

No. There are different families. Somewhere children require more attention. Now I have employers where the wife does nothing. She takes care of herself and rarely appears at work. This is normal and does not bother anyone.

I currently work for two families. I come to cook and clean 2-3 times a week.

My owners have an income of $1 million a year. Nobody told me this, but only an idiot wouldn’t notice. If a husband gives his wife an expensive car on March 8, it is not bought on credit. By the way, when the agency gives the employer’s contacts, I don’t know anything about him. Details can only be learned during the work process.

- There have been situations when you were asked: “Oksana, where did the ring go?” or “Why is there less caviar in the jar”?

No. But I found money in places where it shouldn't have been. Under the sofa there is a large bill, for example. This is not lost money, of course. This is a test of honesty. And I don’t eat the owner’s food. I'll bring my own. Coffee and tea - please, but soup with cutlets - no.

You have said “mistress” and “master” more than once. Considering that you were brought up in a country where masters were, at best, dispersed, are you not offended by the status of a servant?

Yes, I'm a service person and it doesn't bother me. I do my job honestly and get paid for it. And I have not encountered any outright rudeness from the “gentlemen.” Sometimes they communicate with arrogance. But these are not my problems, but another person’s.

- Didn’t you snap back?

This is out of the question. No matter how offensive it is, no matter how hurt I am, emotions are only at home. There was a time when I came and cried.

- What's happened?

I was given an expired cream. It was humiliating and no mistake. I didn't expect this. But this was not discussed at work.

- Do you feel like a wealthy person?

Not anymore. When I first arrived in Minsk, I received $1000 a month. I felt good. Now wages have fallen. For departure they pay 30-40 dollars. It turns out to be 600-700 per month. A crisis…

So the man who gave his wife a car for the holiday cut your salary from $45 to $30? There was no desire to tell him that he was greedy?

No. I like my job. Well, I understand that rich people count their money. That's why they are rich. I respect them for how hard they have worked and continue to work. Money didn't fall from heaven on them.

Moreover, I see that they internally correspond to their condition: successful businessmen without show-off, without swearing or public showdown. Therefore, I will run for another 5-6 years without vacation pay, sick leave or pension. Then, probably, my back will hurt, and I will go to the village, plant tomatoes and have geese.

There are many other professions in life. Tell the truth about yours. We are not looking for complainers and whiners - we just want to tell the truth in order to learn more about each other and become wiser. If you are ready, we guarantee anonymity. Write to [email protected].

Reprinting text and photographs of Onliner.by is prohibited without the permission of the editors. [email protected]

Quick communication with the editors: read the Onliner public chat and write to us on Viber!

I worked for a cleaning company for more than two years. I had a flexible schedule and a good salary. I never perceived this work as a career, I did not identify myself with it. This is what I needed to do to make it through college as a single mother.

I didn't spy on my clients. But when you regularly clean their houses, you willy-nilly notice things that are very unusual for you.

I drove up to these houses along small winding roads, and there were gnomes and green “carpets” all around - everything was like in a fairy tale. I parked my car in a special parking lot far from the clients’ house: so that, God forbid, the oil from my car would spoil the look of the asphalt for them. I enjoyed the view of the pier and the boats that sparkled in the bay opposite their houses. I cleaned the house and went to a new address.

I had 20 clients. Two or three houses a day.

A few months into my employment, my boss asked me to clean houses “slowly” (We don’t say that, of course. We call it “more thoroughly”). There was a lot of turnover in the company, and the boss explained that I needed to stay in the houses for longer periods. The company received hourly wages for our work.

If I cleaned houses faster than other girls in my department, clients no longer wanted to pay for their “inefficient” work. The stakes immediately began to seem too high to them.

Therefore, I tried to simply “kill” part of my working time. I looked into the master's nightstands and tried to understand through them the essence of the American dream. Then, having nothing else to do, she got to the cabinets and looked at the empty wine bottles.

I also saw how many pills they take every two weeks. Doctors had once prescribed them for treatment, but now it was their way of relaxing.

Rich people have pills for everything: pain, anxiety, insomnia, depression, impotence, allergies, high blood pressure, diabetes. A pile of medicines. My personal favorite: testosterone boosting cream.

(I had to look up what it was. This thing eliminates the lack of libido in women. You apply the cream anywhere on your body, except for the genitals).

Hustler porn was regularly filmed in one of my clients' homes. All the nightstands contained bottles of lube, piles of underwear and cum-stained sheets. Someone even tried to cook here: one day I found a pan filled to capacity with beef. The whole house smelled of caramelized ham.

Other clients had a separate refrigerator with food for their cat. This boorish animal even had his own bedroom!

Next to the porn house was the Garden House. Across the road. Both had large garages the size of living rooms and ocean views.

I was in the House-Garden every second Wednesday. This is rare. The owner spent most of his time at the hospital, so it was always clean. Unless it was necessary to shake off the dust and wipe the dining table.

His wife died many years ago. I guessed this from the photographs placed throughout the house. They were made in the 80s. But every trifle that she had once collected continued to be carefully stored in its place.

Post-it notes with her to-do lists hung on the cork board in the kitchen.

“Get a new hose from the courier”.

“Find someone to fill up the cracks in the sidewalk.”.

“Install a new gate latch”.

She did “manly” things because her husband spent the day at work. And this is what it all led to.

The bathroom has two sinks. One still has a hairdryer connected to it. It hangs on a special hook. On his side was a cup with a comb and all the medications he took in the morning and before bed. Each time they were different.

Opposite the sink was a wicker shelf. On it stood a painting of their eldest son. He is wearing a green scarf and a beard. He shows the "victory" sign. And the signature: “Don’t stand and cry on my grave. I'm not there. And I'm not sleeping." This is how the owner of this house starts each day.

There was a photo of his wife here too. The signature was also in the spirit of a funeral home. I think these photos comforted him while he brushed his hair.

The amount of money my clients spent was amazing to me. In one of the houses I saw a receipt for a blanket I had just purchased. It was more expensive than my car. I vacuumed children's rooms larger than my entire apartment.

Rob, the demanding client I went to on Fridays and who adored me, spent $3,000 every month on TV and Internet. For Christmas he sent me a card with $100 inside.

I usually never met my clients. I once saw the lady from the Porn House one time in the store. She was wearing a huge coat of wool dyed red. She was choosing a steak. I stood five meters away with cough syrup and baby juice for my daughter and pretended not to notice her. But she had no idea who I was. I knew that right now she was being treated for a persistent genital infection.

I saw a woman who uses testosterone cream in a restaurant. A tall, slender woman in good shape, with fluffy blond hair. She was wearing high heels and had too much makeup on. She met her lover in a restaurant. They smiled at each other, but did not hold hands.

One day he left a bag at her house and didn’t pick it up until the children and their dad returned home. This bag contained a ball vibrator and lube. I stood opposite this couple on the bar and thought: how sad it must be to lose your libido.

After a while I got used to the loneliness that reigns in these houses. I got used to the fact that wives start smoking and cheating on their husbands on the same day when they left the city for several days.

One such client kept a box of cigarettes in a freezer in her garage. Long thin cigarettes. I don't remember the brand.

Her entire pantry off the kitchen was stocked with low-fat soups, crackers, and salad dressings. There was never anything in the refrigerator except water and salads.

My most important client asked me to come to him twice a week for a few hours. Besides cleaning, I did a lot of other things: folded the laundry of his mother, father and two small sons, ironed it.

His mother came out of her office next door just to pay me and ask about a midwife in town. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m telling this to you, you’re the first person who knows about this, other than my husband.” She was afraid that my master would find out about this. Those. she didn't think he would be happy about the idea of ​​having a brother.

While I put away her stainless steel appliances and wiped down the granite countertops in the kitchen, she and I chatted. She said that she wanted to give birth at home, despite her advanced age. I told her how dangerous it was, using my own example, but she didn’t believe me.