Tight with the help
As a teenager I spent 2 summers working as an ‘Au Pair’ aka very badly paid personal slave. Now most people who have live-in home help have a few pounds, you would think, and for the most part they did - big houses, multiple cars nice things etc - they also gave much weight to the old adage – take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

Mrs A refused to pay me the weekly princely sum that we had agreed (about £20 p/w) before I went over because I was younger than she expected.

Mrs A used to ask me how many potatoes I would have as part of my dinner as she would only put on the exact number for the family dinner!
'My husband will eat two potatoes - how many should I put on for you?' (5 please Mrs A! I like potatoes!)

Mrs A gave out to me for being too generous with the ‘nice’ biscuits because I gave the cleaner chocolate biscuits with her tea! (I was only allowed to give her ‘a’ plain biscuit!), she then started monitoring the number of biscuits in the cupboard!

The following summer, I had not learned my lesson, I went back for more this time to another family.

Family B had a weekly nice dinner with wine etc on Friday nights, I was normally included in this dinner (woo me didn’t have to eat with the kids!) sometimes they would have friends over and open nice expensive bottles of wine. Mrs B on one occasion tried to avoid pouring me my usual half glass of wine because she said it was too nice to give to me, ffs!

Mrs B also deducted the phone calls that I had made home to my family (and no I was not on the phone for hours every day – a quick chat on alternating weeks as my mum called me) from my last weeks wage.

On reviewing this, I think Mrs A was tight; Mrs B was just plain mean!

/unlurked
(LittleRock is planning her next meal, Sat 25 Oct 2008, 14:01, 4 replies)

welcome aboard
i do hope you shagged her husband and pissed in her tea
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Sat 25 Oct 2008, 14:30, closed)

:-)
no...was a bit young and naive for that type of thing...though looking back that might have been one of the reasons they were mean!
(LittleRock is planning her next meal, Sat 25 Oct 2008, 14:45, closed)

Good grief; I always thought stuff like that was apocryphal
I've some friends who used to have au-pairs (a different one each year), and they made a point of providing a generous allowance and treating the au-pair as part of the family, not as a glorified servant. They'd still have au-pairs except that their boys are now 14 and 16, with all the raging hormones (and horniness) that implies.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 9:42, closed)

Truth...
Stranger stuff happened...not relating to this QOTW, these people were mean/tight in these instances,not always it has to be said.
I am sure it is not the case for everyone,however you never know what goes on behind closed doors and that is the truth.
(LittleRock is planning her next meal, Mon 27 Oct 2008, 0:08, closed)