Ask Who Gives Instructions in a House With Staff

Imagine a housekeeper named Clodagh Byrne who starts with the Penhallows in September. She works five days a week, and Mrs. Penhallow hired her through an agency. The house already has a nanny, Yvette Moreau, who has looked after the two children for six years. On the first morning, Mrs. Penhallow gives Clodagh a list. It covers the kitchen, the family’s laundry, the bedrooms, and the two guest rooms. Then she leaves for work.

In the second week, Yvette asks Clodagh for help. “Could you take the children’s laundry and tidy the playroom in the evenings? The last housekeeper always did, and Mrs. Penhallow won’t mind.” Clodagh wants to get on with the person who has been in the house longest. She is in a hurry, and she says yes.

By the fourth week, Clodagh is doing the children’s laundry, the playroom, and the children’s lunch boxes. The guest rooms slip to the end of each week. One Friday, Mrs. Penhallow’s mother arrives to stay and finds her bed unmade. That evening, Mrs. Penhallow asks Clodagh what happened. “Yvette asked me to take the children’s things,” Clodagh says.

Mrs. Penhallow goes upstairs to talk to Yvette. After that, Yvette barely speaks to Clodagh. At the end of the trial month, Mrs. Penhallow calls the agency. “She works hard,” she says. “But she takes her orders from the nanny.” The agency sends another housekeeper.

Suppose instead that Clodagh asks three questions on her first morning, before Mrs. Penhallow leaves. “Who should I take my instructions from? If Mr. Penhallow asks me for something, what would you like me to do? And which jobs are Yvette’s, so I don’t get in her way?”

Mrs. Penhallow answers each one. “From me. If my husband asks for something, do it, and tell me if it moves your week. Yvette does everything for the children, including their laundry.” Clodagh writes the answers down.

In the second week, Yvette asks Clodagh to take the children’s laundry and the playroom. “I’d be glad to help,” Clodagh says. “Mrs. Penhallow gave me my list, so let me ask her tonight how she’d like it.” That evening, she asks. “Yvette could use help with the children’s laundry. I can take it on Tuesdays and Thursdays if the guest rooms move to Friday mornings. Would you like that?” Mrs. Penhallow says yes, and she tells Yvette herself.

When Mrs. Penhallow’s mother arrives on a Friday afternoon, her room is ready. Yvette has two evenings a week back, and she thanks Clodagh for asking. At the end of the trial month, Mrs. Penhallow keeps Clodagh on.

Clodagh worked just as hard both times. In the first version, she took her work from the person who asked first. Yvette had standing in the house after six years, but she did not decide Clodagh’s work. So the job Mrs. Penhallow hired Clodagh for slipped, and the family found out from an unmade bed.

In the second version, Clodagh learned on the first morning who gave her instructions and which work was Yvette’s. When Yvette asked for help, Clodagh still helped. The person who decided Clodagh’s week chose how.

So in a house with staff, ask on your first morning who gives you your instructions and which work belongs to whom. Then keep to the answer. Here is why that order goes unsaid, what a class for house managers heard, and what a nanny found.

A house with staff runs on an order that nobody explains

Here is the course’s view of a household that already has staff. Its order has three parts. The first is who gives each person their instructions. The second is which work belongs to whom. The third is the routines, such as when the children eat and which rooms stay quiet in the afternoon.

The family and the staff who have been there longest know that order so well that nobody thinks to say it. So it reaches a newcomer in one of two ways. The newcomer asks, or the newcomer breaks a rule and someone notices.

The routines are part of how a household already runs, and a newcomer learns them before changing anything. Inside the family, standing decides whose say counts, and it can differ from one person to the next.

Research on people starting new jobs shows what asking is worth. Talya Bauer is a researcher at Portland State University’s business school. In 2007, she and four colleagues combined research on 70 groups of newcomers in the Journal of Applied Psychology. They looked at newcomers who went looking for information, and at the way employers brought newcomers in.

Each of the two tended to go with three signs that a newcomer had settled in. The newcomer understood clearly what the job was, felt able to do it, and felt accepted by the people around them. Those signs, in turn, went with better work and a greater chance of staying, among other results.

Those newcomers worked for companies, and the step to a household is the course’s own. Here is the step. In a house, there may be nobody whose job is to bring you in. The family is busy, and the other staff have their own work. So asking is the part you control, and the person to ask is the one who hired you.

A housekeeper said good morning to her employer and was gone by evening

In January 2014, The Billfold ran an excerpt from a Harper’s cover story by the writer John P. Davidson. He had enrolled at the Starkey Institute, a school that trains people to run the houses of the super-rich. In the excerpt, a Ms. Bullock explained the words the class would use. “Principals” are the owners of a property, the people the staff ultimately work for.

Then she asked how you address your principal. She asked it to make a point, and told the class about a visit she once made to a house in Dallas. “The house manager was the only person on staff allowed to speak to the principal. He had recruited a housekeeper from another position, and on her first day, working in the hallway, she said good morning to the woman of the house as she passed by. At the end of the day, the housekeeper was gone.”

Measured against this lesson, the housekeeper did what most people would call good manners. The rule she broke was that house’s own, and she came from another job. So she found out the rule on her first day, by breaking it in the hallway.

Each family draws its own lines, and this one drew them tightly. Even so, the question that would have helped the housekeeper takes one sentence on the first morning. She could have asked the house manager, “Is there anything about speaking to the family that I should know?”

A nanny’s job grew when nobody said what was hers

Awanthi Vardaraj, now a writer in Chennai, India, worked as a nanny in Australia, London, Paris, New Zealand, and Ireland. In September 2017, she wrote about each job for The Billfold. She was 19 when she flew to Australia for the first one, with a family of five children. She had never looked after children before.

In the third week, the family’s “light cleaning” became a “deep cleaning” schedule. “I was given a long list of chores, most of which hadn’t been mentioned previously, and I was also in charge of cooking dinner,” she wrote.

The mother also decided how much say Vardaraj had with the children, and she told the children. In Vardaraj’s words, “the mother told them that I had no right to discipline them.” The children ran wild and made messes that she had to clean up. She left after three months.

Her second job was in London, looking after a baby of eight months. “I had almost no cleaning to do because the family had a cleaner come in every week, and my job revolved around my charge,” she wrote. “It was perfect.”

Measured against this lesson, Vardaraj was young and new, and the Australian family set the terms. Nothing in her account shows the family settling her job at the start. So the family kept adding to it, a chore at a time. In London, the cleaning belonged to the cleaner, and the baby belonged to Vardaraj. A housekeeper who joins a house with a nanny can ask for that division on the first morning. Then she does not find it out in the third week.

Why checking every request with your employer goes wrong

Imagine a household assistant named Saskia Ferrante who runs the Tremaynes’ diary, errands, and post four days a week. Mrs. Tremayne hired her and gives her a list each Monday. Saskia knows that Mrs. Tremayne decides her week.

One Wednesday, Mr. Tremayne stops Saskia in the hall. “Could you pick up my suit from the tailor this afternoon? I need it for Friday.” Saskia already has three errands, and she does not want to step outside her list. “Of course,” she says. “Let me check with Mrs. Tremayne first, since she sets my week.”

“I didn’t know I needed my wife’s permission in my own house,” Mr. Tremayne says. He picks up the suit himself, and he does not ask Saskia for anything again. In March, Mrs. Tremayne tells Saskia that her husband would like an assistant who works for them both.

Saskia was right that one person sets her week. Her mistake was treating a request from Mr. Tremayne like a request from another member of staff. Another member of staff cannot change your work. A member of the family usually can, because the house is theirs. Checking with someone else each time tells that person they have no say in their own home.

The version that works treats the suit as a request from the family. “Of course, I’ll have it here by five,” Saskia says. Then she tells Mrs. Tremayne that the dry cleaning will wait until Thursday. Mr. Tremayne keeps asking, and in March the Tremaynes give Saskia a fifth day.

Checking with your employer is not telling on a colleague

Many people who work in homes would rather say yes to a colleague than seem difficult. Checking with the employer can also feel like going over the colleague’s head, or like reporting them.

What you ask the employer about is your own week, not your colleague. Clodagh said yes to helping before she asked anything. She asked Mrs. Penhallow only which days, because the guest rooms would have to move. Yvette got her help, and nobody had to explain an unmade bed. Saying yes first matters too, because a family watches how you treat the rest of the staff.

The family is the one that divides the work. In London, Vardaraj’s family had done it before she arrived, and she called the job perfect.

How to learn who gives the instructions in a house with staff

1. On your first morning, ask the person who hired you who gives you your instructions. Write the answer on the page you keep on the client. For example, an organizer hired to work in a house for a month can ask, “While you’re away, should I bring my questions to you, or to Mrs. Ruiz?”
2. In the same conversation, ask what to do when someone else in the family asks you for something. Then do what the answer says, every time. For example, a house manager can ask, “If your daughter asks me to book her a car, should I just do it?”
3. Ask which work belongs to each of the other staff, and write it next to their names. For example, a dog walker might write that the housekeeper feeds the dogs at six. The walks and the brushing are his.
4. Ask how the family likes to be greeted, and how much it wants to see of you. That is the course’s suggestion, from the Dallas housekeeper’s first day. For example, a housekeeper placed by a house manager can ask him, “When the family passes, should I say good morning, or carry on with my work?”
5. When another member of staff asks you to take on part of their work, say yes to helping. Tell them you will ask the person who sets your week. Then ask that day, and offer the days you could do it. For example, a house manager asked by the chef to take over the grocery order can say, “Glad to. Let me check with Mr. Vale that he’d like it with me, and I’ll tell you this afternoon.”
6. Leave the other staff’s work to them, even when you could do it faster. If you notice a problem in someone else’s work, tell that person once. For example, a dog walker who finds the side gate open can tell the gardener, “The side gate was open when I came at noon, so I shut it.”

Next: You will see how referrals travel among people who work in homes, from the school gate to the neighborhood.