The private chef in Malibu got fired because the principal didn’t lose the weight they wanted to lose, despite the chef preparing exactly the meals the principal requested. Low-carb, portion-controlled, nutritionist-approved meals that met every specification the principal gave. But after three months without the results the principal expected, somehow it became the chef’s fault. The meals must be too big. Or not low-carb enough. Or something must be wrong with how they’re being prepared. The chef lost their job because the principal couldn’t stick to their own diet plan.
This pattern shows up constantly in household staffing. Staff get blamed for outcomes they don’t control, held responsible for principals’ choices and behaviors, treated as if they can somehow force principals to do things principals don’t actually want to do. The logic makes no sense when you step back from it, but in the moment families find it easier to blame staff than to look at their own behavior.
The diet situation happens all the time. Families hire chefs to prepare healthy meals, then eat those meals inconsistently, snack throughout the day, go off plan on weekends, drink more than their diet allows, don’t exercise like they said they would. The healthy meals the chef is making are a small part of the overall equation, but when weight loss doesn’t happen, the chef gets blamed. Never mind that the principal is eating whatever they want outside the meals the chef prepares. Never mind that nutrition is only part of weight management. The chef is there, the chef is staff, so the chef gets blamed.
It’s not just about diets. Personal assistants get blamed when principals miss deadlines they were reminded about multiple times. The PA sent calendar reminders, flagged the deadline, confirmed the timeline. But the principal didn’t do the work required to meet the deadline, and somehow that becomes the PA’s fault for not managing the principal’s time better. The PA can remind you something’s due, but they can’t make you do the work. That part’s on you.
House managers get blamed when principals’ lives feel chaotic despite the house manager maintaining excellent household organization. The chaos isn’t coming from household operations, it’s coming from the principal overcommitting, taking on too much, saying yes to things they should say no to. But it’s easier to be frustrated at the house manager for household chaos that doesn’t actually exist than to acknowledge the real source of the chaos is personal choices.
Executive assistants get blamed when principals feel overwhelmed by their schedules even though the EA is managing the schedule competently. The problem isn’t schedule management, it’s that the principal committed to more than they can realistically handle. The EA can organize your time, but they can’t create more hours in the day or prevent you from burning out if you insist on saying yes to everything.
What’s really happening is principals are outsourcing personal responsibility along with tasks. They hire staff to handle aspects of their life, then unconsciously start treating those staff as responsible for outcomes that staff can’t actually control. The staff can support, facilitate, enable, organize – but they can’t make principals follow through on principals’ own commitments to themselves.
The blame usually isn’t intentional or malicious. It comes from frustration with not achieving goals combined with having staff whose job involves those areas. If you hired a chef to support your diet and the diet isn’t working, it feels natural to question whether the chef is doing their job properly. What feels natural isn’t always logical. The chef’s job is preparing the meals you specified. Your job is eating only those meals and handling all the other components of weight loss. When the diet fails, maybe look at your behavior before firing your chef.
Sometimes the blame is more active. Principals know they’re not following through but don’t want to admit it to themselves, so they create a narrative where it’s somehow staff’s fault. The meals were too boring so you couldn’t stick with it. The calendar system was confusing so you missed things. The household organization wasn’t intuitive so you couldn’t maintain it. These stories let principals avoid confronting their own patterns while giving them someone else to be frustrated at.
What makes this particularly unfair is staff usually don’t have the power to push back effectively. When your employer blames you for something that’s actually their failure, you’re in an awkward position. You can try to explain that you did your job and the failure is elsewhere, but that comes across as making excuses or blaming the principal. You can accept the blame even though it’s not accurate, but then you’re reinforcing a pattern where you get held responsible for things you can’t control. Neither option is good.
The staff who stay in these situations often end up accepting responsibility for outcomes they shouldn’t own because it’s less confrontational than constantly pushing back. They internalize that their job is somehow making principals succeed at things principals need to make themselves succeed at. This creates jobs where success is impossible because no amount of competent support work can make someone else change behaviors they’re not willing to change.
Good staff eventually leave these positions because being blamed for someone else’s choices gets old. They find employers who understand the difference between hiring someone to do a job and hiring someone to be accountable for your personal failures. Those employers keep staff for years because they don’t create impossible situations where staff get blamed for principals not following through on their own stuff.
At Seaside Staffing Company, we try to set realistic expectations with families about what staff can and can’t control. Your chef can prepare healthy meals. They can’t make you eat only those meals. Your PA can manage your calendar. They can’t make you use your time well. Your house manager can organize your household. They can’t organize your life choices. Understanding these boundaries helps families avoid blaming staff for outcomes that are actually about the families’ own behavior patterns.
