At one point I was summoned by my host and employer, who often asks me to help when she struggles on the computer. It emerged that she had received an email from her sister recommending that she look at a range of evening dresses online, and she wanted me to find them. Once I had, she phoned her sister and spoke to her, while I was asked to remain attendant. My job was this: with the image gallery open in front of us, I was to click 'next' or 'previous' according to whether Madame, who was sitting next to me, pointed right or left. It seems worth mentioning that she was using a hands-free kit to call her sister.
I don't want it to seem like I'm complaining - this is a very comfortable job, and I'm being paid well. That's just it though; I realised as I stood clicking that I've been flown across the globe, put in a hotel at considerable expense and paid a decent wage to do the work of an index finger. I'm drawn irresistibly to the conclusion that when you've got so much money you never need a job again, your job becomes thinking of ways to spend your money. If you lack imagination, this job seems no easier or harder than the job I'm doing. Certainly the family enjoys benefits unavailable to me, but once you've got a member of staff for each digit, where do you go from there?
I thought I might include a passage from East of Eden that bears coincidental relevance to the subject. The extract is from a conversation between Samuel Hamilton and Lee, a Chinese servant in California at the turn of the 20th Century. Most of the conversations between these two characters read like Confucius and Forrest Gump exchanging weird metaphors and inscrutable proverbs, but I quite like this bit. Samuel has just asked Lee why (since he is an intelligent man) he is content to be a servant:
"I don't know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love. I can't understand why more intelligent people don't take it as a career - learn to do it well and reap its benefits. A good servant has absolute security, not because of his master's kindness, but because of habit and indolence. It's a hard thing for a man to change spices or lay out his own socks. He'll keep a bad servant rather than change. But a good servant, and I am an excellent on, can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, whom to marry, when to divorce, reduce him to terror as a discipline, or distribute happiness to him, and finally be mentioned in his will. If I had wished I could have robbed, stripped, and beaten anyone I've worked for and come away with thanks. Finally, in my circumstances I am unprotected. My master will defend me, protect me. You have to work and worry. I work less and worry less. And I am a good servant. A bad one does no work and does no worrying, and he still is fed, clothed, and protected. I don't know any profession where the field is so cluttered with incompetents and where excellence is so rare"
(John Steinbeck, East of Eden)
I may as well try to be a good servant, for all the trouble it would give me; during the eight hours I was at the house on Wednesday I gained as much from my host's wealth as she did. It's unlikely I'll be mentioned in the will of course, but that's only because in four months or so I'll be moving back to the UK, eventually to start a job that makes some sort of sense.
Identikit
