This is an interesting question and one we should all consider when employing or managing private staff.
Last summer, in a luxury apartment complex outside New Delhi, all hell broke loose. It started when a woman accused one of her maids of stealing around $250. The maid then claimed that, as punishment, her employer wouldn’t let her go home. Word spread and a riot broke out, complete with crowds of domestics shouting, “Today we will kill her! We will kill the madam!” The employers retaliated by locking their maids out. A boom in the local takeout food industry allegedly ensued.
Disputes between employers and their domestic staff rarely erupt into such chaos, but this affair did highlight the underlying fragility of the relationship, a ticking time bomb of class conflict when not delicately managed.
The stories that make it into the news are often gruesome: the infamous Papin sisters, live-in maids in France who were convicted of murdering the wife and daughter of the family that employed them, in 1933 (the events inspired several movies and Jean Genet’s 1947 play The Maids); Linda Stein, the New York real estate agent whose personal assistant confessed to beating her to death.
And then there are tales of treachery, such as when two of Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi’s personal assistants were accused of charging $1 million worth of clothing and trips on the couple’s credit cards…
Click through for the full article at: TownandCountrymag.com