You asked your private chef to pick up your dry cleaning on her way in tomorrow morning. She looked at you for a second and then said “That’s not really part of my role” in a polite but firm tone. You’re paying her $85,000 a year and she just refused a simple task. Your first reaction is annoyance. how dare she say no to something so basic? But then you start wondering if maybe she has a point, and now you’re not sure if you should insist, back down, or fire her and find someone less difficult.
This exact scenario plays out constantly in household employment. At Seaside Staffing Company, we help families in San Diego and everywhere else figure out the line between reasonable requests and scope creep, and when household staff say no to something, it makes everyone uncomfortable. Sometimes the refusal is completely legitimate boundary-setting. Sometimes it’s unreasonable inflexibility. Sometimes you’re asking for something that’s genuinely outside the role. Sometimes you’re being entitled and don’t realize it. Here’s how to figure out which situation you’re actually in.
When Staff Refuse Things Legitimately
There are totally valid reasons for household staff to decline certain requests, and you need to be able to recognize when a “no” is actually appropriate. If the task is genuinely outside their job description and skill set, it’s fair for them to push back. Your private chef was hired to plan menus and cook meals. asking her to pressure wash the driveway or reorganize your garage is outside the role. If the task creates safety issues or liability concerns, refusing is smart. Your chef declining to use kitchen equipment that’s malfunctioning, or declining to drive your car that doesn’t have proper insurance, is protecting both of you. If the request violates their personal boundaries in a reasonable way, they can decline. Your chef saying she’s not comfortable handling your intimate laundry or picking up your prescription medications is setting appropriate professional boundaries. And if the task is illegal or unethical, they absolutely should refuse. Your chef declining to lie to your spouse about something or falsify meal records or hide food issues from you is doing the right thing.
Timing issues are also legitimate. If you ask your chef to cook dinner tonight and she’s already left for the day and you gave zero notice, that’s not reasonable. If you ask her to stay three hours late with no advance warning when she has her own family commitments, she can say no. At Seaside Staffing Company, we tell families that professional staff knowing their boundaries is actually a good sign, not a problem. It means they understand their role and their limits, and they’ll work within those boundaries consistently. A family in San Diego’s La Jolla asked their private chef to spend the afternoon reorganizing their pantry and kitchen storage during her work hours. She explained that her time was already scheduled for meal prep and cooking for the week, and reorganizing storage wasn’t part of what she was hired to do. That’s a legitimate refusal. She was hired as a chef, not as general household help.
The Scope Creep Problem
Here’s what happens in a lot of households. you hire someone for a specific role, and then gradually expand what you ask them to do until the job is completely different from what they signed up for. You hired a private chef to cook meals. Then you asked her to shop for groceries. Reasonable. she needs ingredients. Then you asked her to meal plan for the whole week. Still reasonable. that’s part of cooking. Then you asked her to organize the entire pantry. Getting into gray area. Then you asked her to handle all kitchen inventory, not just food. Then you asked her to deep clean the kitchen including appliances. Then you asked her to coordinate with your house manager about household supplies. Then you asked her to run errands while she’s out shopping. Each individual request seems small, but collectively you’ve transformed the job from “private chef” to “chef plus part-time house manager plus personal assistant.” Your chef might reasonably say “some of what you’re asking is beyond what I was hired for.”
That’s not insubordination, that’s protecting the job she actually agreed to do. At Seaside Staffing Company, we see scope creep constantly and families often don’t realize they’re doing it because each addition feels minor. A private chef in Del Mar was hired to cook dinners five days a week. Six months later, the family also expected her to cook all weekend meals, handle all grocery shopping for the entire household, meal prep for the week, organize all kitchen spaces, manage all kitchen inventory including non-food items, and coordinate with the house manager about meal timing and dietary needs. She was working twice the hours and handling three times the responsibilities for the same salary. When she said “this has grown well beyond what we agreed to,” the family was actually offended because they thought she was being unreasonable. Neither side was wrong, but the role had expanded dramatically without acknowledgment or adjustment.
How to Know If Your Request Is Reasonable
Ask yourself these questions before you decide whether your chef (or any staff member) is being difficult or if you’re asking too much. Is this task related to their core role? A chef cooking extra meals or trying new recipes is reasonable. A chef deep-cleaning your bathrooms is not. Is this within normal flexibility? A chef shopping for groceries for cooking is reasonable. A chef handling all your personal shopping is not. Did you hire them with the expectation they’d do this task? If yes, it’s reasonable to ask. If it’s completely new and unrelated to their role, maybe not. Would you pay extra if this were a separate service from someone else? If yes, it’s probably outside standard scope. Is this an emergency or a regular expectation? Asking for emergency flexibility occasionally is fine. Expecting it constantly means the role needs to be renegotiated.
At Seaside Staffing Company, we help families and staff figure out what’s within reasonable scope and what requires renegotiation of role and compensation. A family in Coronado asked their private chef to occasionally cook extra when they had unexpected guests. That’s reasonable. it’s still cooking, just more of it. The same family also asked her to regularly handle household supply shopping for all non-food items, which started moving into house manager territory and wasn’t part of what she was hired to do. The first request was within reasonable flexibility. The second was scope creep.
When Staff Are Being Too Rigid
Sometimes staff refuse things that actually are reasonable requests within their role. Your private chef refuses to cook a cuisine she has experience with. Your housekeeper won’t clean a specific room. Your house manager won’t coordinate with a certain vendor. These refusals might stem from issues you’re not aware of. Maybe your chef has religious or ethical objections to cooking certain foods. Maybe your housekeeper had a bad experience with the material in that room and doesn’t feel confident cleaning it. Maybe your house manager had a terrible interaction with that vendor in the past. Or it might be that your staff member has decided their role is X and refuses any variation even when the variation is reasonable and appropriate. Sometimes it’s personality clashes creating resistance. they’re digging in because they don’t like how you asked or because there’s underlying tension in the relationship.
You need to ask why when staff refuse something. Not in an angry or accusatory way, just “Help me understand why this doesn’t work for you.” Sometimes the reason is completely legitimate and you can work around it. Sometimes it reveals a problem you can solve. Sometimes it shows that they’re being unreasonable and you need to address that directly. At Seaside Staffing Company, we encourage families to have these conversations instead of just getting frustrated or immediately firing people. A private chef in San Diego refused to cook any seafood, which was frustrating for the family since they’d specifically hired her partly for her seafood skills on her resume. When they asked why, she explained that she’d developed a severe seafood allergy and could no longer safely work with it at all. That’s obviously a legitimate reason, and they worked around it by bringing in a separate chef for seafood dishes occasionally. If they’d just assumed she was being difficult and fired her, they would have lost an otherwise excellent chef over something with a simple solution.
The Insubordination vs. Boundary Question
Sometimes a refusal crosses into actual insubordination, which is different from setting appropriate boundaries. Insubordination is refusing reasonable requests that are clearly within job scope without legitimate reason. Your private chef refusing to cook dinner because she “doesn’t feel like it today.” Your house manager refusing to coordinate a contractor visit that’s explicitly part of her role. Your staff member saying “no” to core responsibilities they were hired to do, with no good reason. This is different from pushing back on scope creep or protecting boundaries. this is refusing to do the actual job.
Insubordination requires immediate addressing. “This is a core part of your role. If you’re unwilling to do it, we need to talk seriously about whether this job is working.” At Seaside Staffing Company, true insubordination is actually pretty rare with professional household staff. What’s much more common is miscommunication about what the role actually includes, or scope creep causing friction, or families asking for things that really are outside the role without realizing it. A private chef in Encinitas started refusing to cook requested meals because she thought they were “too basic” for her skill level and beneath her professionally. The family had hired her specifically to cook family meals, not fine dining. Her refusing core responsibilities because she considered them beneath her was actual insubordination. They had to let her go because she fundamentally couldn’t accept what the job actually was.
When the Refusal Means You Have the Wrong Person
How do you know if the refusal is reasonable boundary-setting or a sign that this person isn’t right for the job? If the refusal is about protecting reasonable role boundaries and you realize you’ve been engaging in scope creep, the staff member is right and you need to adjust your expectations or increase compensation for the expanded role. If the refusal is about reasonable flexibility within role scope and they’re being too rigid, you need to discuss expectations and see if you can reach an understanding. If the refusal is about core job functions that they just won’t do, you have the wrong person. A chef who won’t cook the types of meals you need isn’t the right chef for your family, regardless of whether they’re good at other things. And if refusals are constant about everything, the working relationship just isn’t viable anymore regardless of who’s technically right.
At Seaside Staffing Company, one or two refusals with legitimate reasons behind them are not a problem. Constant pushback on everything signals a fundamental mismatch between what you need and what they’re willing to provide. A family in Point Loma had a private chef who seemed to refuse something every week. Wouldn’t cook certain dishes. Wouldn’t accommodate schedule changes. Wouldn’t try new recipes. Wouldn’t adjust shopping lists. Every single request was met with resistance or flat refusal. Some of the requests were reasonable, some weren’t, but the pattern showed that this particular chef just didn’t want to work the way this family needed. They parted ways and both were happier. she found a family whose style fit hers better, they found a chef who was more flexible.
Requests That Cross Professional Boundaries
Some requests are inappropriate regardless of role, and staff are completely right to refuse them. Don’t ask household staff to lie for you, handle intimate personal items, participate in anything illegal or unethical, work in genuinely unsafe conditions, or do things that violate their religious or ethical beliefs. If staff refuse these things, respect that refusal immediately. A private chef has every right to refuse to lie to your spouse about what you ate or when you were home. A house manager can refuse to falsify expense reports or hide financial information. Staff can decline tasks that violate their values or put them in compromising positions. At Seaside Staffing Company, we support staff in refusing inappropriate requests and we tell families that pressuring staff into boundary violations will destroy the working relationship even if they cave and do what you asked.
A family in San Diego asked their private chef to tell visiting family members that the catered meal was homemade, to maintain the fiction that someone in the family had cooked it. The chef refused because that’s asking her to lie, which crosses professional boundaries. The family pushed back and insisted it was harmless. The chef quit over it because she wasn’t willing to be dishonest even about something that seemed trivial to the family. She was absolutely right to refuse and to leave when they wouldn’t respect that boundary.
Having the Conversation When Someone Says No
When staff decline a request, how you respond determines what happens next. Ask why. “Help me understand your concerns about this.” Listen to the explanation without immediately getting defensive or insistent. Actually hear what they’re telling you. Assess whether their concerns are legitimate. Is it genuinely outside role? Is there a safety or boundary issue? Is there a solution you can find together? If their concerns are legitimate, respect them. “You’re right, that’s not within your role. I’ll handle it differently.” If you disagree, explain your perspective. “I see this differently. To me, this seems like a reasonable extension of your role because…” and see if you can reach understanding. If you can’t reach agreement after genuine discussion, you decide. “I understand your perspective, but I need this handled. Let’s talk about whether we need to adjust your role description or compensation to include this, or if this position isn’t the right fit.”
If they still refuse something you genuinely believe is legitimately within their scope, that might be a termination issue. But at Seaside Staffing Company, most household staff are willing to be flexible and reasonable when families approach refusals with curiosity rather than anger. A private chef in Solana Beach declined to cook vegan meals when the family said they had a vegan guest coming for dinner. The family asked why instead of just insisting. She explained she had zero experience with vegan cooking and was worried about doing it poorly for an important guest. That’s a legitimate concern. They worked it out. she researched vegan recipes, did a trial run of dishes before the dinner, and successfully handled it. The initial refusal led to a productive conversation instead of a blow-up because the family asked instead of demanded.
When your private chef or any household staff member says no to something, don’t immediately take it as disrespect or assume they’re being difficult. Ask yourself honestly: Is this actually within the role I hired them for? Am I being reasonable? Have I been gradually expanding their responsibilities without acknowledgment? Is there a legitimate reason they’re pushing back? Figure out which situation you’re in before you react. Good household staff who know their boundaries and can articulate them professionally are valuable. Don’t lose someone good over mismatched expectations that could be clarified and resolved.
