Monday morning, I got dressed in a very chic and grown-up outfit. I took a picture! It was cosplay, I felt, and I was ready for it! I was in a trench! I had just enough perfume on and I was off to the Staffing Agency.
My appointment was scheduled for noon and it had come about in a decided yet dissociative way. Let me explain.
I’ve talked before about my fascination with the Craigslist Domestics section. This is the area to the bottom right on the homepage, under Gigs, where people advertise for jobs that exist in homes: Private Chef, Housekeeper, Driver, that kind of thing.
There tends to be a lot to sort through. Of course, in that charmingly classic Craigslist way, you do still get unpunctuated poetry like this:
But mostly, on Domestics, one finds people looking for Old Fashioned Help. I’ve dissected these posts before so in brief, they’re along the lines of: “travel between East Hampton and NYC”… “must be discrete”… “must have fine-dining service training”… “must have high net-worth references”.
I’ve been amazed at how transparently these postings seem to reveal a hierarchical relationship to class and physical labor. The word discretion is liberally employed, and seems to say it all. Right now, it feels like we live in a world of regulated discourse and re-designed language in relation to class; this area of the internet feels archival and audacious, hinting at structures too expensive to adapt.
Here’s the other reason I am obsessed with this corner, and do excuse me for being crude: these jobs pay SO handsomely, it seems I cannot look away! Most often, they start at six figures. If cooking is a labor that’s been privatized for the trading floor, mustn’t a person survey the market to know what’s out there? Every time I scroll, amidst my gasping and offense, somewhere in me flickers a perverse and tragic flame of hope. To find a profoundly nice, gorgeous-ly boundaried, oft-upstate, tragically-bohemian, and shockingly wealthy person or family that wants nothing more than to give a little lassie like me lots of money and healthcare in exchange for my wares: to bring nice energy to the home and to tenderly feed them. Sigh!
Most often on Domestics, jobs are posted by Staffing Agencies. These serve as middlemen between clients and workers, and they seem to have cornered the marketplace where word-of-mouth cannot. So it felt inevitable, as I’ve been hoping to take on more private clients, that I would end up a phone call with a gentlemen of one such agency, who had posted a listing that seemed like it might be a good fit.
We spoke and, after convincing him that Brooklyn was a legitimate borough with legitimate fancy clients, he invited me to interview in the office. He told me that most of their clients lived in Manhattan.
Gentleman: Also, I notice how you mostly work for creatives. You’d be surprised how many high-powered artists-- like [redacted] you know him?
Me: Yes, he’s big!
Gentleman: Well you’d be surprised how people like him keep their homes. Very formally.
Me: Huh!
Gentleman: Bring your printed resume. Let’s meet Friday.
On Friday, dear Reader, I became very uneasy about the whole thing and told him I had experienced a COVID exposure. This was not true and for that, I am sorry. I do not often do things like that! We rescheduled for Monday.
On MONDAY, like I mentioned, in my little outfit, I was ready to rock. I printed out my resume at Konditori and flourished my trench coat behind me as I zoomed uptown.
Up in the office, I was kind of comforted by that very office feeling: bright lights, murmurs, clicking, and a vague smell of someone having decided to take their lunch early. Tuna.
I was given three forms to fill out while I waited. I recognized the voice of the gent I was supposed to talk with across the room. He was the one with the tuna.
I turned to my forms, ready to get this thing moving. The first page asked for my name and personal information. They asked for my driver’s license and social security number, which—you might be happy to know-- I didn’t give.
The second page asked for my references, their addresses and their phone numbers. I also did not give all that. I figured I could just talk about it in my interview! And go from there.
The more I looked at these forms, the more that I began to see this experience from a birds’-eye view. Lots of information before any meeting at all. You know that voice in your head that reminds you that the fun experiment you are playing out might actually be taking place in a context that is saturated in power dynamics??
The third page was contract requiring my signature at the bottom:
I almost just signed without reading, like a nice girlie might do. But something seemed to stop me. Most of the text is what is to be expected… boundaries between client and employee. No under-the-table funny business. No rogue referrals. But the last sentence gave me pause.
To Agree not to Divulge sounds terribly similar to Agreeing not to Disclose. Aka NDA. Non Disclosure Agreements exist for a reason and it’s fair and within a client or institution’s right to present an NDA! Whether or not the recipient signs it is at their discretion, after all.
However! The word “divulge” as opposed to “disclose” felt confusing. If I signed this, it would mean that no matter what I learned or experienced from a potential client, this agency, and lord knows who else, if it wasn’t already public, I would not be at liberty to share. Forget this newsletter or a good story-- what if something happened to me?
It didn’t seem like a huge deal to hold off on giving my signature.
Me: All done! I’m just going to wait to sign the last page.
The Receptionist: Do you understand it?
Me: Yes, I do, I just don’t feel ready to sign right now.
Her: They’ll come explain it to you.
Me: Oh!
As a new lady made her way over to explain it to me, I could sense I was causing a bit of a ruckus. The air felt tense and I was tempted to make some joke, force up a compliment maybe, to make them like me. Making a scene is a performance that I find suboptimal when I’m end up being its star. I felt uneasy!
The Lady Explaining to Me: The contract works to protect you and keep you safe. For example, it’s for when you’re running late. You let us know so that we tell the client. Ok? Ready to sign?
There was no mention of tardiness in the contract, but the ambiguity felt clear. My mind suddenly zipped to of one of my favorite podcasts, Normal Gossip, wherein every episode an anonymous story is retold. Often these stories are funny and strange, but occasionally they are jarring, allowing vantage point into some very out-of-pocket ways humans relate to one another. The host Kelsey McKinney starts off each episode asking her guest their relationship to gossip. At first, everyone seems quick to say that gossip is superficial and bad. McKinney consistently prods that assumption. Her implicit point is that sometimes word of mouth can communicate meaningful interactions that remain unpublished in the public record. Interactions that occur under circumstances that may feel ambiguous, often within which the teller, in some inflexible position, might not be believed and might have something to lose.
Me: No, I’m so sorry I’m not comfortable doing that yet. And if I need to do it now, I won’t take your time.
The Lady Explaining to Me: I mean we can interview you I guess, but still.
Me: No worries, thank you so much for your time, so sorry.
In hopes of a graceful exit, and also because I am a masochist, I tried to wave to my Phone Gentleman, who was still at his desk. ¼ sandwich remained. He seemed not to see me and I felt okay with that.
I buzzed out of the building , my nervous system registering a catharsis of escape. I processed as I walked. Was that bad? No, I didn’t sign anything thank God. Was it a waste of time? Definitely not, this was so bananas.
Strutting towards the subway, I got a call. It was my Gentleman again.
Gent: Rosa, what are you doing?
Me: Thank you so much for your time!
Gent: You know if you don’t sign it, you don’t get a job?
Me: I do know.
Gent: *petit laugh* So you don’t want a job?
Me: I guess not.
It felt good to hang up, but not in the way Anne Hathaway does at the end of The Devil Wears Prada. Something had felt weird and tense. To get a foot in the door of that office is not nothing, and it’s even more to turn them away. Where might I locate this sinister feeling of potential? Well. What if I hadn’t been a native English speaker? What if I hadn’t been documented? What if I was carrying not just my little self around, but a family? What if I didn’t have my health? What if I didn’t have the luxury to let the implicit cues of a potentially-negative interaction drive my decision-making?
It is moments like these that are the least contrived realizations of gratitude: understanding my choice to cook. Understanding the blessing of being able to treat experiences as adventures.
Bursting with the story, I called my boyfriend and recounted the whole thing. It felt so good to tell. He asked if I was going to write about it. My thought at first was maybe, but it sounded intense and also would anyone care?
Then I considered the weight of that room and normal gossip and my own time and other people’s time and all the things that might happen to someone if they don’t necessarily know what they’re signing off on and how I really hope that the base nature of humanity is to treat each other well but I know that doesn’t always happen and then I thought about how I was hungry and had a whole day ahead of me that I could do whatever I wanted and likely still be okay and said “Actually – it’s a pretty fucking real waste if I don’t”.
~~~~~~~~~
Big thank you this week to my legal friends (you know who you are!) who were patient and generous with their brilliance and helped me learn about the Letter of the Law! Love ya!