Quiche and a milkshake

May 7, 2016 6:06 PM

I was Prince's private chef - Margaret Wetzler talks about her experiences cooking for the late musician
posted by a lungful of dragon (68 comments total)

Every little essay or interview with somebody who knew Prince a little bit makes me adore him even more.
posted by entropone at 6:37 PM on May 7, 2016 [15 favorites]

I wish she'd talked about the business side of it, e.g., how was she paid, did she always have to buy the ingredients, how did reimbursement work, were there assistants to help with prep, plating, etc for the big dinners, etc.
posted by carmicha at 6:50 PM on May 7, 2016 [5 favorites]

And three months on 24 hour call with no days off?

I get that if you're a Rock Star who wants 24/7 service, you can have it. But at least arrange your help in shifts. I'm on 24/7 for my family, my partner and my friends, but not for cash. The only person I know who does that otherwise is a parish priest, and the 3 AM calls are from those who need him.

He takes August off, when even God has to go to the locum.
posted by Devonian at 7:08 PM on May 7, 2016 [20 favorites]

The one thing that makes me feel OK about this, Devonian, is that he doesn't seem to have been the least bit upset when she quit after three months, and it sounds like she had the good sense to quit while she could still think of it as "the time I bluffed my way into a job as Prince's personal chef" and not "the worst job I ever had."

And no doubt it'll look great on her resume. Normally when people take a crazy job for the sake of "exposure" it's a terrible idea, but not if it's Prince. Plus she's savvy enough to have gotten this interview out of it, wherein both she and Prince come off looking pretty funny and human, and that can only help her career I'm sure.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:31 PM on May 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Every little essay or interview with somebody who knew Prince a little bit makes me adore him even more.

Someone who treats their staff like utter shit is endearing? Not to me.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 7:51 PM on May 7, 2016 [20 favorites]

Stories from another couple that were chefs to the purple one
posted by strange chain at 7:55 PM on May 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

My understanding of professional cooking is that even in restaurants big and organized enough to have HR people, cooks are kind of routinely exempt from standard labour requirements. I could be wrong about this! I expect MF's restaurant pros to school me if I'm wrong. But the hours are usually much longer than is, uh, legal, from what I've heard, and, if that's true, it would have an inevitable effect on the expectations of cooks employed in households.
posted by gingerest at 8:00 PM on May 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

You're not wrong. And private cheffing is a fantastically weird beast, especially for the truly wealthy. A chef I used to work under had been private chef to two of Canada's richest people, and like a normal day could be wake up and make breakfast for the kids, get started on dinner for the bosses, then get a call from one of the many personal assistants (each of them had two permanently, one personal and one business, and others would float in and out from time to time) saying "skip dinner, car's on the way to take you to the jet, you're flying to Aspen with them tonight" but fail to mention that they'd be stopping en route to pick up Robert Redford (!). He said it was like living the rock star lifestyle without quite so much stress. Not a bad gig for a single person, but he quit (on good terms) once things started getting serious with his now-wife.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:06 PM on May 7, 2016 [22 favorites]

I wonder if Friend Andy was just being a troll, or if he really believed in her. (Not that it matters in the end...)

And of course the tidy correspondence between "amazing opportunity" and "awful, unendurable demands" still holds, I see.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:12 PM on May 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

Someone who treats their staff like utter shit is endearing? Not to me.

Did we read the same article, or are you putting words in the author's mouth?

Prince was very private, mysterious and eccentric but very polite and kind.
...
And of the 75 three-course dinners I made, he returned exactly one dish...more often, he expressed gratitude.
...
on my last night, I wrote a note saying, “I wanted you to know how much I enjoyed my experience, and how much I learned from you.”

Never mind, I can answer that.

Being on call 24/7 is shitty conditions for work, but personal chefs to the rich and famous (hired and supervised by one of several personal assistants) who love their job and make willing short-term sacrifices to do it? Not exactly The Jungle.
posted by entropone at 8:28 PM on May 7, 2016 [18 favorites]

"...I looked around the corner and saw him strutting down the candle-lit hallway to bed, in white boots with clear high heels studded with flashing red lights."

Is there a word for the feeling one has when the truth turns out to be exactly the way one would imagine it, and yet it's somehow even more satifying?

Perhaps something in German?
posted by rokusan at 8:29 PM on May 7, 2016 [50 favorites]

I'm on 24/7 for my family, my partner and my friends, but not for cash.

That's a lovely sentiment, but definitely one of privilege. While I know plenty of upper middle class folks with out-of-whack priorities who would do well to heed such "advice" I also know plenty of younger, broker folks on the slowly losing end of the stick who simply have no alternative to basically being "at work" either physically or in their heads 24 hours a day. In plenty of fields, especially IT related ones, the alternative could be anything between getting fewer promotions and smaller bonuses to being straight up fired in a no-new-job-possible economy.
posted by trackofalljades at 8:33 PM on May 7, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm very disappointed to see that there was something other than pancakes made...
posted by Drumhellz at 8:35 PM on May 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

Did we read the same article,

From the article ...

A few afternoons later my phone rang at 3:30 PM. Prince wanted me to do a tryout. In two hours. And serve three courses.

Self-entiltled, prickish, thing to do to anyone seeking work.

“You got the job but you can’t split it, he only wants you. You have to be on call 24-7. Oh and by the way – he’s nocturnal. And you start tonight."


Again with this prima-donna, inconsiderate, the world revolves around me, fuck your meaningless peasant life, utter horsehit. She missed her friend's wedding, just so that this self-centered egotitical dick could exercise his power, for no legitimate reason, but the fact that he can.


"P wants to host a traditional English tea party—in an hour.”

Yep. Still more of this being completely unreasonable, jump to it, or it's your job, garbage.


My only break was the three days he played Coachella. When he got back to the house afterwards, he said, “Where were you? I thought you’d be backstage.”


I explained that his assistants had said I couldn’t come, and he said, “We’ll fix that.”

No time off at all, ever, for 3 full months. Fuck that. That's just rude and inconsiderate. Also highly illegal, here in Canda, BTW. For good reasons. Anyone who treats staff their that way is an asshole. No excuse for it.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 8:55 PM on May 7, 2016 [35 favorites]

Being on call 24/7 is shitty conditions for work, but personal chefs to the rich and famous (hired and supervised by one of several personal assistants) who love their job and make willing short-term sacrifices to do it? Not exactly The Jungle.

Cooking for a living, unless you have hit a point where you can hand the day to day off to a sous or chef de cuisine, is shitty, largely thankless, and draining work. The only way private gigs for the rich and famous differ from the diner down the street is the scenery and, sometimes, the size of the paycheque. It's not luxurious, it's blue collar physically demanding work that is valued by society solely by paying lip service watching Food Network while refusing to pay us what we're actually worth, or giving us decent working conditions (see pay; nobody wants to pay what it would cost for restaurant owners to pay any attention to piddling things like labour laws).

Private cheffing comes with nicer surroundings, sure, and the pressure to be perfect is far more immediate and far more personal. I love my job, it's true. And for the schooling I've had, the on the job training I've had, the responsibility I hold for people's health with every plate, and the danger I face every day, I 'should' be making fifteen or twenty K more per year, and would be in any similar industry. To say nothing of how much the genius I work for 'should' be making.

So like, before you start dismissing being on call 24/7 for three months without a single day off because she loved her job, take a moment to consider what a terrible, shitty working life that is, and how unacceptable it would be in virtually any industry. Shrugging it off as a 'willing sacrifice' is playing right into the right-wing anti-labour playbook, and it's not terribly different in degree from "we can't pay you but think of the exposure!"
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:03 PM on May 7, 2016 [63 favorites]

I hear all of that, I just think it takes gall to read an article by somebody who clearly loved what she's writing about, and declare her mistreated.
posted by entropone at 9:06 PM on May 7, 2016 [20 favorites]

It takes no gall; it takes nothing more than recognizing shitty working conditions. As laid out by PI, above.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:10 PM on May 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

Lovely article. Thanks for sharing.
posted by sallybrown at 9:24 PM on May 7, 2016

Yeah the whole no days off thing is shitty.
posted by wuwei at 9:30 PM on May 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Interesting, I was just reading The Residence and the stuff about the White House chefs really stuck out, being constantly on call, getting deliveries from markets in unmarked vans, dealing with multiple demands from family members at pretty damn low salaries (to ensure they ONLY got the true believer faithful I assumed, chefs would turn down exorbitant salaries in Vegas or overseas to keep working for the First Family, I figure it's like the "small stipends" given to some royal functionaries) but MAN private dining is a hard ass job, I disn't know anyone who does the 365-24 hour thing lasting more than like, a year (dear god if you want that you need to provide a kitchen STAFF, sheesh)

*best stories from the White House kitchen, the Carters asking for leftovers and casseroles to cut down on expenses and the chef being sad in the switch from Clinton to Bush cause the Climton mandate was nouvelle American cusine with seafood and local vegetables and GWB was ...Mac and cheese and BBQ

** Also apparently the White House kitchen is notoriously cramped and small and anicent and this is a huge pain in the ass even when you don't have to put on a state banquet. (apparently household staff liked the first Bushes, cause they knew how to run a house full of servants and liked thier big formal banquets)
posted by The Whelk at 9:37 PM on May 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

(Actually thinking about it the people I know employed 'Chefs' it was either for one event a week, part of a staff or shift work that encompassed the kitchen, or like three month 24-on call stints either on vacation or "in town" not like, expected to be all the time forever, and even they usually had support staff even if it was just one person)
posted by The Whelk at 9:41 PM on May 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

Why can't there be, say, three chefs who work shifts and coordinate with each other? Is it an ego thing (among the chefs)?
posted by porpoise at 9:41 PM on May 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's a cost thing. Hire one person you work like a dog for 50k, or hire three for 40k each.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:46 PM on May 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

I know one person who does it for people who are only in town for like, a few days out of the year, so he can set his work in advance and be like "okay this week it's MP and then a night at VX and four days while HY is home and then a few weeks with AH cause thier visiting family but I told them I can't do one day cause NK is having a party so they agreed to eat out" and thier assistants pretty much talk about menus before hand and it's more like being an in-house caterer and makes more sense. Also his pay includes sou-chefs and not ...cleaning up the dishes afterwards what

Private on going home dining like this I think requires support staff and other things to not be ..explorative?
posted by The Whelk at 9:48 PM on May 7, 2016

It's literally using employees as cheap, disposable, and replaceable. People like Art Bell are the exception.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:49 PM on May 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just think it takes gall to read an article by somebody who clearly loved what she's writing about, and declare her mistreated.

The logical conclusion of doing anything else is that we get rid of all labour and safety regulation, and only employ people who sound enthusiastic about their jobs.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:49 PM on May 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

I just think it takes gall to read an article by somebody who clearly loved what she's writing about

Well, I'm no HR professional, however it's been my experience that people who "love their jobs" don't quit after 90 days, because they can't stand working there anymore.

The man preached healthy living, and obsessed over food. But he still overdosed on a heroin analogue, and left a $300 million estate. He could have hired a relief cook, or maybe made himself a sandwich from time to time.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 9:58 PM on May 7, 2016 [13 favorites]

Well he did make himself scrambled eggs.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:58 PM on May 7, 2016 [4 favorites]

Like this always gets me into the odd position of defending Edwardian division of labor cause, if you want a constant 24 hour 365 personal resteraunt then you need to support a system to sustain it humanely, yes you need people hired just to clean up and people hired just to sous-chef and no your Head chef is not there to scramble eggs for breakfast cause the HEAD OF YOUR KITCHEN should keep thier eyes on bigger things (like management!) and bigger meals and feasts and everything else can be done by a second tier of ALSO SKILLED WORKERS who are paid according as well as provide relief survice and be perfectly competent in most the damn things you'd notice ANYWAY and they all get weeks off and fat pensions. And have shift replacements.

Cause you want a resteraunt just for you. Pony up the capital and invest.
posted by The Whelk at 10:00 PM on May 7, 2016 [17 favorites]

Yup. You want a 24/7 restaurant, it's gonna cost you three people and 150k a year. And that's just salary. Plus benefits plus vacation plus plus plus.

I mean, if you don't want to be an asshole. When I was looking at moving to London I applied at the Palace, even that was ~$35k/year. But you actually live at Buck House, so given London prices that's the same as making 50, at least.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:05 PM on May 7, 2016 [11 favorites]

If you're rich, and you want to eat well, wouldn't overworking your private chefs negatively impact their job performance? Seems to me that you'd get the best results with well rested staff.
posted by Beholder at 12:08 AM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Is there a word for the feeling one has when the truth turns out to be exactly the way one would imagine it, and yet it's somehow even more satifying?
Perhaps something in German?

I give you Erwartungsbestätigung.
It is not as poetic in German as you might like. It misses a bit on the more satisfying part but it is a real word and can be used in everyday conversation without embarrasment. I even threw in an Umlaut for free. Erwartung is expectation, Bestätigung is confirmation and the s ties it all together.
Who knows? It might be mentioned in some academic publication by Austro-Hungarian psychoanalysts in the 1920s where it has been overloaded with exactly the meaning that you want to convey.
posted by mmkhd at 1:21 AM on May 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

Ok, I looked it up. Erwartungsbestätigung is used in sociology and seems to mean that your perception of a situation is shaped by your expectations, e.g. if you enter a conversation with a preconceived expectation you are more likely to think that the conversation reflects that expectation. So if you expect Prince to behave very purple, everything he does looks more purple to you.
posted by mmkhd at 1:33 AM on May 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

So Erwartungsbestätigung is confirmation bias?

Not quite what I was after, mmkhd, but I love you for taking my throwaway wankery seriously enough to find that.
posted by rokusan at 2:29 AM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Mod note: A couple of comments deleted. Let's skip the derail-y stuff about his death, and stick more to the actual post topic. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:35 AM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

I don't know if it means much, but reading between the lines (and sometimes right on them) it's the PA who is telling the chef what to do, when, and making ridiculous demands. In the few interactions with Prince himself, he doesn't seem too high on the jerk-meter. A bit aloof, maybe, but I'd expect that, right? It's a short article, and a small sample size.

I have had (and dealt with) some really alpha-charged assistants who enjoy lording and abusing second-hand power. When the boss may have asked nicely for something, such an inflated assistant might translate and relay this desire as "The boss wants it, so do it now, you peon!" and enjoy watching employees jump. Aforementioned boss, insulated from the actual work, doesn't see this translation of power, only sees the result, and is placid and happy. These gatekeeper, dragon-type assistants have value, sometimes, but my do they ever have downsides, most of them related to said insulation.

So my experience tells me that a better assistant would have hired two or three chefs to begin with, noticed/scheduled/assigned vacation time proactively and generally taken care of the person that her boss said that he wanted. And should her boss notice/care, and ask why there's someone else cooking today, say "I wanted her to take the day off so she'd be in better shape and do her best work for you. This is our backup chef, who I arranged, so we're never without someone."

If I daydream and pretend that my own mundane work life is like that of a 24/7 rock star*, that's the kind of assistant I would cherish. Or maybe I'm just HR crystal balling a bit too hard.

* And yes, yes I do. Often. Judge me as you will.
posted by rokusan at 2:37 AM on May 8, 2016 [57 favorites]

Here is a Prince story, because I missed the first thread. My brother was a bartender at a well-known jazz club in Toronto. It's an old, historic place, kind of creaky and falling apart. Prince spent a lot of time in Toronto and one day he showed up at this club. And he had a special request for the owner: "could you release a purple mist above Prince's table". Sadly the answer was "I'm sorry, we cannot".
posted by PercussivePaul at 3:28 AM on May 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

What Rokusan said.
posted by jfwlucy at 3:30 AM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have had (and dealt with) some really alpha-charged assistants who enjoy lording and abusing second-hand power. When the boss may have asked nicely for something, such an inflated assistant might translate and relay this desire as "The boss wants it, so do it now, you peon!" and enjoy watching employees jump. Aforementioned boss, insulated from the actual work, doesn't see this translation of power, only sees the result, and is placid and happy. These gatekeeper, dragon-type assistants have value, sometimes, but my do they ever have downsides, most of them related to said insulation.

Would it be cynical of me to point out this is almost certainly done with the full knowledge and encouragement of the boss?
posted by fullerine at 5:43 AM on May 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

Well, and that boss has been getting exactly what he wants, with increasingly florid details, for years. No wonder his requests have gotten bigger. *shrug*

(One more vote here for cooking being a really hard job, and "personal chef" being one of its toughest variants. I am impressed that the author lasted as long as she did, and I would be pleased for her if she does manage to leverage that experience into a more-humane long-term gig.)
posted by wenestvedt at 5:56 AM on May 8, 2016

It takes no gall; it takes nothing more than recognizing shitty working conditions.

Pish-tosh. Take your wage-slave attitude elsewhere.
posted by flabdablet at 5:58 AM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I really like rokusan's comment above, and to me it makes a lot of sense.

also, i think the reason a lot of us are sensitive and more aware about the specifics of what it means to be good to one's employee is because we've either been on the other side or we've had the privilege of sites like this one, making us more aware.

i've thought it many times, and I'll say it now - without MF, i'd be an even bigger jerk than I am now.

i didn't know Prince, so I don't know if he was down-to-earth or a divo, but his primary job was not to be an HR and worker rights specialist - maybe someone should have told him that one needs to consider days-off, vacations, health benefits, etc., explain to him that no matter how much one loves a job, one should still have their well-being taken care of, that in the realm of the career, the concept of "investment" is a slippery slope for employers, etc.

i love to hate on jerks as much as the next person, but we always need to give people lots of chances to de-jerkify themselves. I know I regularly need this opportunity.
posted by bitteroldman at 6:18 AM on May 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

> I'm on 24/7 for my family, my partner and my friends, but not for cash.

That's a lovely sentiment, but definitely one of privilege.

Jesus, have we gotten to the point that even saying people shouldn't put up with inhuman crap is sneered at as "privilege"?
posted by languagehat at 7:14 AM on May 8, 2016 [33 favorites]

It's literally using employees as cheap, disposable, and replaceable. People like Art Bell are the exception.

Okay, I just CTRL-F'd the thread and article. How did the Potentate of Pahrump get dragged into this?
posted by entropicamericana at 7:30 AM on May 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

The thing that bothers me aside from the 24/7 hours was the huge disrespect for the craft of this highly trained expert. 'P wants a full English trees in an hour': well, Master is going to get whatever day-old pastries can be had at that hour, not the delicate pastries he wants that the chef would also have loved to make if she had access to a time machine.
posted by Dashy at 7:49 AM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Would it be cynical of me to point out this is almost certainly done with the full knowledge and encouragement of the boss?

Not necessarily cynical, but not universally true, either. Someone like Prince is often hermetically sealed-off from the nuts-n-bolts of running the machine that surrounds them, living in their beautiful optimized bubble world, entirely oblivious to how shitty their handlers handle the help.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:58 AM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think that it's quite likely that Prince (and a lot of other celebrities by extension) get spoiled and don't think about the personal lives of the help in part because the help themselves are too overawed by working for the celebrity and meeting his celebrity buddies to stand up and say, look here, my good man, I'd like a weekend off once in a while. But after a few months, you're used to Jennifer Lawrence or whomever popping in for crepes and you figure you've got your fair share of stories and gossip to dine out on, and you call it a day, and the next chef who's willing to give up their life for a quarter of a year is neatly slotted in. That seems to have been the cycle here.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:22 AM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I can't possibly say it any better than feckless fecal fear mongering did. If you're under the impression that working conditions for kitchen staff anywhere are better than this, you're fooling yourself.

I've been known to say that pretty much everything in my profession is all about "moving forward" and "developing the craft of what we do"; meanwhile our labor practices are stuck firmly in the 19th century.

To build on Thorzdad's comment:

I've done some private gigs for the rich and famous and worked in what was essentially a private dining club for the 1%. One of the things you realize when around people who are rich, travel the world at the drop of a hat, etc. is that they are just never involved in the mundane tasks of living life. Like never. They've got people to handle all of that and while we think the Puple One's reaction to these labor practices should be a certain way . . . chances are he had no idea what proper labor practices and fair compensation for a personal chef are.
posted by kaiseki at 8:24 AM on May 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

Okay, I just CTRL-F'd the thread and article. How did the Potentate of Pahrump get dragged into this?

I meant Art Smith, derp.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:48 AM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

And in my experience of having been an executive assistant for an entitled Miranda Priestly type, relaying the (often utterly insane) demands is something you have to do because you get yelled at.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:49 AM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Argh. Yes, Erwartungsbestätigung would indeed be confirmation bias.
And I even know confirmation bias. It is sometimes horrible when you read about something in one language to transfer it to another language that you know.
I originally tried to find something in accordance to the spirit of your question, wrote about it and then found out that I stumbled on a different concept that I should already have known.
Reading about things in different languages is sometimes like Orwell's doublethink. You hold two different worlds in your head that do not always mesh together.
But enough of this unpurplish derail....
posted by mmkhd at 9:11 AM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

He can afford a 24/7 chef but not a dishwasher uless there are 6 or more guests? So it depends upon the guests chipping in?
posted by Splunge at 9:44 AM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

The assistant was probably cooking the books and billing Prince for a full staff of chefs and sous-chefs and dishwashers and just pocketing the money. Employer wouldn't have known, or wanted to know, as long as assistant got results.
posted by some loser at 9:52 AM on May 8, 2016

That's... a stretch. And rarely do the rich hire full staffs of chefs. The rich don't live like Downton Abbey anymore.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:58 AM on May 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

When very young, I've PA'd a couple of times and hated it - not least because I could never figure out my budget and I never got an answer when I asked. So I erred on the safe side.. Not so much as part of a grand plan as insecurity. And obviously, I had no idea about HR.

Later, I was offered a position as a private chef. The pay was shitty, but there was an apartment included, and traveling around the globe. I still said no. The offer was made by big-boss himself (a "philanthropist") - if I'd said yes, someone professional and adult would probably have been fired and homeless on the spot.
posted by mumimor at 10:14 AM on May 8, 2016

Would it be cynical of me to point out this is almost certainly done with the full knowledge and encouragement of the boss?

In my experience - which doesn't include any restaurant work - the boss is often, consciously or subconsciously, wilfully ignorant of the burden his requests places upon his staff.
posted by delegeferenda at 10:48 AM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was a personal chef to a well-to-do family in exchange for housing in an expensive city. I had plans to use the spare time for my own creative pursuits, but what actually happened--thanks to a combination of my own ineffective setting/policing of boundaries and desire to please, plus their needy/demanding personalities--was that I wound up being a full-time jill-of-all-trades, with responsibility for maintaining the entire house (working with tradesmen, not doing it myself), driving the three kids to their events, caring for the pets, etc.. In theory, I was off between noon Saturday and Monday breakfast, when they tried to reconnect with their kids and didn't really want me around; they cooked or ate leftovers or sometimes I'd make something simple, like a pan of lasagna, in advance for them to heat up. If they needed me for something special, like a weekend gathering, they paid me.

On the positive side, they were really good about making sure I had enough cash/credit cards/pre-signed checks to get whatever the house/kitchen needed, and they trusted me. The kids were a little bratty, but they enjoyed hanging out in the kitchen and "helping." I'd meet with the parents about once a week and go over whatever the expectations were for the coming days. But the cooking was the easy part.

I lasted six months or so, finally giving up when I had to care for a terribly ill dog; he was miserable, and the treatments I had to administer were painful for him. I felt he should be put down--although she could not say, the vet seemed to agree--but obviously that wasn't my decision to make. The family believed the kids would be traumatized by the dog's death. Something in me snapped, and I couldn't be there anymore: their cruelty and obliviousness vis-a-vis the dog's suffering made me realize just how fungible I really was to them.
posted by carmicha at 11:35 AM on May 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

She had to bring her own pots and pans. That jumped out at me.

Is that normal? Is it the same as how you'd expect a mechanic to bring their own tools? Or is it weird, like it seemed to me when I read it?
posted by clawsoon at 12:16 PM on May 8, 2016

It's weird as fuck.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:34 PM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

She had to bring her own pots and pans. That jumped out at me.

Yeah, I missed that one, in the list of dickish things that Prince did to her. Easy to do, when the list is so long. As for the defense that he might not have known how she was treated, this is very unlikely. After all, it was Prince himself who was annoyed at her for not being at Coachella. He was angry that she had the temerity to not be at his beck and call. This excuse proffered really doesn't wash, in this specific case.

I've mentioned here before that I have worked for some years in various capacities in the limousine business; from driving, through booking, planning, dispatching, and sales. I therefore have had extensive interactions with celebreties, and their assistants, in any number of ways, both in person, and at a remove. It certainly is true that some assistants can sometimes be more over-bearing and demanding than their employer. However, responsibilty for this behaviour still rests with the principal, who has the authority to remedy such actions, if they had the moral fortitude to actually care. The dickishness of the assistant enables the demanding behaviour of the client, who gets to play good-cop, to the assistant's bad-cop role in their on-going drama.

That said, it has been my experience that a celebrity who stipulates that the help are to not look directly at, or speak to the principal, as Prince does, is typically an asshole, and almost always both ungrateful and cheap. Yes, I'm look at you, Sylvester Stallone.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 1:27 PM on May 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

ok then gotta ask: who was the diametric opposite of the asshole behaviour?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:44 PM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure what to make of the rumors that Prince demanded his staff make no eye contact. It certainly contradicts the stories coming out from former staff of how much they adored and respected him. It's hard to imagine that they were able to foster such devotion while avoiding looking him in the eye. This article seems to directly refute it.

Then again, Prince was an eccentric little guy that went through a lot of phases, maybe one was a "though shall not look The Purple One directly in the eye" phase.

His chefs of the past 3 years speak of him fondly as well.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 2:20 PM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

who was the diametric opposite of the asshole behaviour?

Quite a few.

Most celebreties are actually pretty damn nice, in my experience. But, I'll go with Kevin Costner, for one. Picked him up in Whistler, where he had been fly-fishing. He asked if it was okay to sit up front with me. He was fascinated with the trivia I pointed out to him on the drive down, and asked if I wanted to join his party for dinner, as he wanted to learn more about Vancouver's history. When I explained that this was absolutely verboten, he called the company owner on his cell, who authorized me to accept, but only if I wanted. They booked another driver to pick us all up at meal's end.

Someone whom you wouldn't necessarily expect to be super nice was Vince McMahon. His assistant wanted to book a car to take him from the International Arrivals terminal at the YVR to the car-rental lot. I pointed out to the assistant that this was directly across the street from International arrivals, and that this was a complete waste of both time and money. After some back and forth, which basically consisted of her insisting that those were her instructions, I booked the car.

Since I was expediting pickups that afternoon anyway, I decided to take this "trip" myself, so as to not waste a full car and driver's time. I meet Vince at customs, and as we're trundling off to the limo holding area, about two blocks away through the crowded concourse, I point out the Rental zone across the street.

"Yeah, I overheard my PA arguing about this with someone in your office, I told her to just book it anyway."

"Actually, that was me. I didn't want to see you waste your time and money"

He laughs, takes the luggage trolley from me, pulls out a couple of hundred-dollar bills, hands them to me, and says "Well, that's what I get for being such a dumbass. I guess I can make it on my own from here!" Winks, and walks off laughing.

I've mentioned Robin Wiliams here before.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 2:22 PM on May 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

I think the Coachella detail is taken out of context and edited in this thread to make Prince look bad. In the story, Prince regretted that she couldn't be at Coachella to see his performance and sits down with her to watch it. This isn't a boss demanding that his employee be at his beck and call, and the story is edited in this thread to make him look bad.
posted by pxe2000 at 2:33 PM on May 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

[insert clever name here]: It certainly contradicts the stories coming out from former staff of how much they adored and respected him.

I've gotten the impression that they let him get away with being unthinking to themselves and others because they adored and respected him.
posted by clawsoon at 3:12 PM on May 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Jesus, have we gotten to the point that even saying people shouldn't put up with inhuman crap is sneered at as "privilege"?

Especially after a couple of recent metas I think it's important to state again and again that pointing out a viewpoint might come from a place of privilege is not sneering, that pointing out privilege is not a personal attack, and that having privilege is not a moral failing.

Its frustrating when it's taken as such, because it immediately inflames the situation, and we end up concerned with angry feelings about sneering right-on types instead of the actual matter at hand.

In this particular case, I think it was OK and worthwhile to point out that a lot of workers don't get the chance to be on call 24/7 for family and friends only.

All said with due respect and etc, as a big fan of language hat's work here.
posted by ominous_paws at 5:01 PM on May 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

He was apparently a fan of macaroni and cheese and cake frosting.
posted by 4ster at 5:27 PM on May 8, 2016

I am quite certain a number of 1% ers read and follow the Blue so please take note of this and don't be a prick to your help. Make your own damn sandwitch sometimes and break this Elvis/MJ/Prince cycle. Your obituary will thank you.
posted by shockingbluamp at 7:03 PM on May 8, 2016 [4 favorites]