Got to thinking about Russell Roberts’ comment in The Price of Everything that today poor people have servants.
Realized I have lots and lots of servants in my life. Here are a few:
- I have a servant that brings clean water to my kitchen.
- I have another servant who keeps water hot, readily available for bathing and washing dishes. Hot water is always available for another servant who washes our clothes. (When my dad was a child, his mother had to heat the water after grandpa or uncles cut, stacked, and carried into the house enough wood to heat the water.)
- After thinking about that, I remembered another servant that gets natural gas and brings it to the house for heating and cooking.
- Ever tour a museum home that is outfitted as it was in the 1800s? Remember those little ceramic jugs in all the bedrooms? Remember what they are for? I have a servant that removes from my home what would otherwise go into chamber pots.
- I have a number of servants, one standing by in every room of my home, that can turn on dozens of candles at the snap of my fingers.
- I have a servant that brings water from the community well and pours it on my lawn in the amounts and on the schedule that I provide. Remarkably precise groundskeeper.
- I have a servant that makes ice for me and makes sure that the ice bucket is always filled. Also defrosts the freezer for my wife.
- I have a servant that will open and close my garage door on my whim.
I’m a CPA. That involves working with lots of numbers and doing thousands of calculations. I print lots of documents and send them to my clients. I’ve hired a lot of servants for my business.
- I hired a servant from Mr. Gates that can do tens of thousands of calculations a second. (You would call that Office Excel – thank you Mr. Gates. The staff person you sent over is quite efficient.) I very rarely use a 10-key calculator.
- I have a servant that answers my phone and takes messages. Tells me who is calling before I take the call, too.
- I have another servant that takes dictation and types my comments almost as fast as I can speak. Sometimes I have to wait for all of a few seconds for my servant to catch up type what I’ve dictated. Unfortunately, I have to keep a close eye on this servant. Accuracy isn’t quite what I’d like.
- I have 4 servants in my CPA firm that can print documents at a speed that would make Mr. Guttenberg green with envy. (Thank you Mr.
HewittHewlett and Mr. Packard) - I have several servants that working together can deliver a critical document to a client across town or across the country in 20 seconds. Takes ’em 90 seconds if they are lethargic.
- I have a file clerk that can retrieve any one of thousands of documents from my filing cabinet and bring it to me in just moments. (Some of my colleagues call that paperless. I call it an efficient staff.)
Don’t tell the state wage and hour department, but I pay those servants a few pennies an hour. Some far less. And I don’t give any of them a morning or afternoon coffee break.
As a small businessman I have a very large volume of servants hard at work. Can’t even count the size of my staff. Nary a complaint from any of them. Once in a while, one of them resigns, but that is quite rare. Can’t really beat the price either.
Yes, people have many servants today. I have a larger staff of servants than even the most filthy rich people from 100 years ago.
P.S. I have four servants that lift up the garage door at the instructions of their supervisor (some of you might call those springs. Whatever.) Had to let those four staff go last week. They were just getting tired and worn out. Don’t tell the state regulators, but I paid the replacement workers enough so they will earn less than $0.02 per day for the length of time I expect to have them on staff.