The estate manager in Atherton quit a position that was otherwise perfect for her because of how the family treated their housekeeper. The estate manager’s own working relationship with the family was fine. They respected her expertise, compensated her well, gave her appropriate authority, treated her professionally. But they talked to their housekeeper like she was beneath them, dismissed her concerns, were casually rude to her constantly. The estate manager watched this for six months before deciding she couldn’t keep working for people who treated anyone that way, regardless of how they treated her personally.
Staff quit over how other staff get treated all the time, and families are usually blindsided by it. The person leaving isn’t the one being mistreated. They’re being treated well. Their own working conditions are good. So why would they quit over someone else’s situation? Because watching your employer treat other people badly tells you important things about your employer’s character, and eventually that matters more than your own immediate treatment.
When you see your principals be rude or dismissive or disrespectful to other household staff, you understand that’s how they actually view household workers. The fact that they’re polite to you probably has more to do with your specific role or their need for your particular expertise than with them actually respecting household staff generally. You’re temporarily in a category where they need you enough to behave better, but the underlying contempt for household workers is there and you’re seeing it directed at your colleagues.
It also creates uncomfortable power dynamics where you’re the favored staff watching the non-favored staff get treated poorly. This isn’t a sustainable emotional position. You can’t build a good working relationship with principals while watching them disrespect people you work alongside. The cognitive dissonance of “they treat me well but they’re awful to her” eventually becomes too much to sustain.
Some staff leave because the mistreatment creates broader household dysfunction that makes everyone’s job harder. When principals treat certain staff badly, those staff members become unhappy, less effective, eventually quit. This creates turnover and instability that affects everyone. The house manager can’t maintain smooth household operations when the principals keep burning through housekeepers because they can’t treat anyone in that role decently. Eventually it’s easier to leave than to keep managing around the chaos the principals create.
Sometimes staff leave because they realize the good treatment they’re receiving is fragile and could disappear anytime they become less useful or cross the principals somehow. Watching how principals treat other staff shows you how they treat people when the relationship isn’t serving them well anymore. The chef being treated wonderfully today knows that could change if the principals get bored with his cooking or find someone they like better. Seeing how they discard or disrespect other staff makes clear that your good treatment is conditional and temporary.
The mistreatment of other staff also reveals the principals’ values in ways that matter beyond the immediate working relationship. When you watch your employers treat service workers with contempt – not just household staff but waiters, delivery people, retail workers – you’re seeing who they really are when they think it doesn’t matter. People who are lovely to people they need and terrible to people they don’t need are showing you their actual character, and eventually you can’t ignore that even when you’re currently in the needed category.
For some staff, it’s a basic ethics issue. They can’t keep working for people who treat others badly just because they themselves are being treated adequately. It violates their sense of what’s right. The paycheck isn’t worth the moral compromise of being complicit in someone else’s mistreatment through continued employment with people who behave that way.
The mistreatment also affects team dynamics in ways that make the work environment uncomfortable. When principals create hierarchy where certain staff are treated well and others aren’t, it creates resentment and tension between staff. The favored staff feel awkward about their better treatment. The mistreated staff understandably resent both the principals and sometimes the staff being treated better. Nobody feels good about working in these conditions.
What’s particularly frustrating is the principals usually don’t realize this is happening. They think each staff relationship is separate. If the estate manager is happy and the housekeeper is miserable, they see those as two unrelated situations. They don’t understand that treating any staff member badly affects how all staff view you as an employer, and that the good staff who have options will eventually leave rather than work for people who treat anyone disrespectfully.
The families who keep full household teams long-term treat all staff with basic respect regardless of role. They understand that the housekeeper deserves the same professional courtesy as the estate manager even though the roles are different. They don’t create hierarchies where certain positions are valued and others are treated as disposable. This consistent respectful treatment across all roles creates stable household teams where people want to stay.
At Seaside Staffing Company, when candidates tell us they left previous positions because of how other staff were treated, we take that seriously as a sign of strong professional ethics. When families ask why they can’t keep anyone even though they treat people well, we sometimes need to examine how they treat all staff, not just the person they’re trying to retain. The mistreatment of any household staff member sends signals that drive away even the staff being treated well, and families who don’t understand this keep cycling through good people who refuse to stay once they see who the family really is.
