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
Being torn to pieces by dogs, long hours of work and mask shows are just part of what people who decide to become house helpers for wealthy Russians have to endure. The market for Russian servants, apparently, is not much different from the slave market; its volumes are unclear, salary statistics are vague, and workers’ rights are practically not protected in any way. At the request of the samizdat “My friend, you are a transformer,” the editor of L’Officiel Russia, Irina Shcherbakova, learned first-hand what life was like for the butlers, maids, housekeepers and nannies who serve wealthy people.
“The most common mistake is to make friends with someone from the staff and begin to perceive this person as a member of the family,” says gallery owner and daughter of businessman Oleg Baibakov, Maria, in a column she wrote for Tatler magazine. - Nothing good comes out in the end. As a rule, you lose a good maid, but you don’t gain a sister or a friend.”
Baibakova’s column was published in Tatler three years ago. Maria generously shared her experience: how to competently fire servants (“quickly and in front of witnesses”), who has the right to sit at the same table with the mistress of the house (only her son’s tutor) and why you can’t give the maid “Prada trousers from the season before last” and old “Louboutins” You can give it as a gift if the maid has a daughter. In the crisis of 1914, these tips on housekeeping outraged everyone at once - from the pro-government media and the former press secretary of Nashi, Kristina Potupchik, who threatened Baibakova with a “wolf ticket,” to the most progressive part of Russian Facebook. Quite soon, the scandal took on international dimensions: the London Times, for example, broke out with an article entitled “Tatler teaches oligarchs to fire maids.” It even got to the point that BuzzFeed released the material “Top 13 Life Hacks on How to Treat Servants.” A few days later, Baybakova apologized for the Facebook column, saying that the text was “heavily edited” and that when she “translated it into English, I could see how indifferent and rude it came out.”
However, not a single piece of advice, even the most rude and indifferent, from Baibakova’s scandalous column has anything to do with the conditions under which servants actually work in Russia. “Ethical management,” which the gallery owner calls for, is an unknown thing for most Russians who can afford a housekeeper. And if a film or series were made about a Russian house with servants, it wouldn’t be “Downton Abbey,” which Baibakova mentions, but rather a fresh Zvyagintsev or the old Coen brothers. We will explain why below.
Echpochmak and recruitment agency Lada Dance
A house in a Spanish resort town, owned by a family from Russia; In the kitchen, cooks in white uniforms prepare Tatar food - echpochmak, belish, meat soup. The mistress of the house, a regal woman of about fifty, shouts across the room: she doesn’t like how the table was wiped, and the echpochmaks turned out to be unauthentic. The cook, a tall Georgian woman in her early thirties, apologizes in a quiet voice. After lunch, the cook tells me her story: she is divorced, her schoolboy son is waiting at home, she has been working for the family for several years. Her case is illustrative, but far from the most difficult. A maid who worked for a Russian banker in the late nineties and early 2000s recalls: “He gave receptions at the dacha, sometimes for a hundred and sixty people. At first they forced us to cook, but then the servants from the Mario restaurant began to come. Everyone was terribly afraid of the owner. When there was a mistake, they approached the wrong way, the food was served to the guest wrong - that’s it, right behind the fence. Every morning a car picked us up at Kuntsevskaya. And the driver could just say: “You’re not driving today.” You don't work anymore, that is. During my time, four or five people were fired like this.”
The situation has changed little since then. They still prefer to hire servants in the house unofficially: agreements are oral, wages are in an envelope. This makes it possible to fire someone in one day, without compensation, and labor legislation does not apply here. The main channel for employment is personal connections. Most often, domestic staff are hired on recommendations from friends, neighbors or relatives.
Wealthier homeowners often use the services of agencies. Fun fact: one of these agencies, Impeccable Personnel, has been run by singer Lada Dance since 2006. Dance is proud that she “carefully checks the backgrounds of employees” and states that she was able to find a nanny for Andrei Grigoriev-Apollonov and a driver for Dmitry Kharatyan.
Banknotes in bags and salaries in envelopes
In the nineties and even in the first half of the 2000s, the work of individual housekeepers was paid higher than that of an average music reviewer. “The salary was $600,” recalls the heroine, who worked as a nurse before becoming a maid. - With this money, if you saved for six months, you could buy a good one-room apartment. And after two or three months they gave me another fifty dollars. Money was brought to the man for whom I worked in checkered trunks like these. Several bags at a time, at night.”
The size of the domestic worker market has not been well studied. The publication Rus2Web, for example, cited the following statistics, referring to the FMS: in 2015, the department issued about 1.8 million patents, while four hundred and fifty thousand people received them in the capital. In theory, the procedure for issuing patents was developed specifically for those who are hired as servants in the home of individuals, but today they are also received by those who work for legal entities - simply because such a patent is easier to obtain than a full-fledged work permit.
Salaries have decreased, but the number of domestic staff still has not decreased. By 2010, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Development, there were twenty million people in the country. According to last year’s data from the Center for Migration Research, seven million migrants work as housekeepers, maids and nannies in the Russian Federation. The average salary of a housekeeper is 30-60 thousand rubles. Some work in several houses at once. For example, Wednesday and Friday are for cleaning a three-room apartment in the historical center, where an employee of the Moscow City Hall lives, and Tuesday and Thursday are the time for visits to the producer, who, in addition to everything else, asks to look after her schoolgirl daughter: sometimes she needs to be picked up from classes or taken to the cinema. . Live-in maids are often paid less. So, on the website arinarodionovna.com, a family without children or animals is looking for a housekeeper with a salary of 30,000 rubles for a house on Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway. Requirements: “Dry and wet cleaning, cleaning bathrooms, washing the refrigerator, dishes, seasonal window washing, washing clothes, ironing with a steam generator.” We need a woman from forty to fifty-five years old, “who can cook well, work with household appliances: a vacuum cleaner, iron, multicooker, double boiler, electric grill, microwave, oven, juicer, electric press for bed linen, washing and drying machines. Responsible, punctual, respectful of subordination.” For comparison: a website editor for a lifestyle publication who works remotely and part-time earns approximately the same amount. And the average salary in Moscow, according to Rosstat, is 59 thousand.
Mask shows and mad dogs (no, not Tarantino's)
The homes of certain wealthy clients are raided, and staff often come under suspicion. “There was a time when they organized a mask show for us,” says a Moscow housekeeper who wished to remain anonymous. - They came at night, I was in my underpants. No one was allowed out of the house, not the housewife, not the mother, no one. The investigators sat down in the kitchen. I got dressed and carefully went out to them and asked if they could have some tea or coffee. One:
- I can have some tea.
The other looked at him like that and asked:
“Aren’t you afraid of poison?”
Staff hired informally are not protected from anything, and being suddenly fired without explanation or an investigator catching you in your underpants is far from the worst thing that can happen. Injuries at work are sometimes not compensated in any way, and even if they are compensated, it is not enough. “The mistress of the house,” says the same housekeeper, “loved dogs terribly. Well, it's just terrible. And she constantly bought these dogs, collected them, or something: she saw them, wanted them, took them, and then all the care about them fell on us. Shorthaired pointers, German shepherds, lap dogs - the house was large, the former residence of Shevardnadze on Rublyovka, where security drove around the territory in a jeep, so there was enough space. No one took much care of the dogs; they were angry and twitchy. The owner would sometimes kick them when she got angry, and also bought collars with electric shocks, and the son would shock the animals when he was bored. And then one day I was bringing out bowls of food for the big dogs - and I saw the small one running across the entire yard. I think that they won’t eat it, I grab it, but they rush at me. When the guards came running, three shorthaired pointers and one German shepherd were gnawing at me. The little dog, they say, was torn to pieces; there wasn’t even anything left of it. And I even had stitches on my scalp. I spent ten days in the hospital, they paid for a junior suite, and that’s it. The stitches were removed and redone. Even when everything started to heal, it was still terrible. I looked out the window and realized that I couldn’t go outside. I was afraid of the air. I was helped by a psychologist who went to see the owner’s mother. The psychologist came, I closed my eyes, clung to him, and together we crossed the threshold of the hospital. I thought the hostess had brought a psychologist, but it turned out that he himself heard what happened and came. Do you know what the owner said when he found out that the guards had to shoot the dogs? “Well, what if we return, and no one will meet us?..” And not a word about me. And only later, when I quit, they told me that he and his wife said that it was my fault.”
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 “ineffective” 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.