the rich / eat

[jadelennox]

Dear Good Job,

I work as a household manager for a very wealthy family. My clients are very kind, and I love working for them, but the mom, “Carol” has some habits about buying things that are kind of impeding how I do my job. Buying groceries, pet food and household supplies is supposed to be my responsibility and I know what the family likes to have in stock and how often various things need to be replenished. But Carol is a compulsive shopper.

She randomly orders groceries up to four times a week. If she runs out of one yogurt, she orders 10 more despite already having six in the fridge. We have a year’s worth of cat food, dishwashing liquid, and probably 18 bottles of honey in the pantry. She orders three gallons of milk from the grocery store, forgetting that the next day we’ll have 4 gallons delivered by the local dairy. But they only drink maybe 2 gallons a week! The two refrigerators in their house are stuffed full, as is every cabinet in their very large pantry.

I have lots of interesting projects I’d like to spend my time on, like getting the garden ready and redoing the kids playroom, but I spend SO much of my time putting away grocery deliveries, tossing expired food no one could ever get to, and reorganizing everything again and again to make it all fit. Ideally, we would have a fully stocked but not-overflowing dry storage, and I would run to the store and farmer’s market twice a week for fresh things like berries, bread and veggies. But Carol can’t seem to let go and trust that I won’t let her run out of anything —or that even if we do run out of something, I run errands literally every day and can get anything they need within 15 minutes.

I’m well compensated and I really do love my job, so, ultimately, if I spend half my life on this absurd sisyphean task, it’s fine! But I’m morally opposed to the excess and the waste. Not to mention that I find it terribly boring, and I would just feel better making this part of my job more efficient given that that’s the whole point of my role! Can you help me figure out how to address this with her? She’s very kind but a little spacey and would not bother to look at an inventory or just give me a list. She’d really rather just click the buttons from her office than go look to see if they already have eight bags of popcorn before ordering three more. I also thought about just making an executive decision to start taking bags of overages to the local community fridge but I fear Carol would just order even more things to fill the void.

—Drowning in Excess

---

Dear Drowning,

This year is the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, and your question reminded me of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description of Tom and Daisy as careless people, and his quote that the very rich are different from you and me. It is difficult to imagine being so oblivious about the value of a gallon of milk that you constantly order multiples of what you need and never notice that they spoil. But you are an astute narrator and Carol sounds more complicated than a filthy rich fictional character.

If you haven’t spoken with Carol about this problem directly, that’s the first play. Ask her to schedule a short meeting with you, for 10 or 15 minutes, so you have her attention and she treats it like a professional business occasion. Tell her you are concerned that your buying strategies aren’t sufficient or clear enough, and you want to make sure you’re doing your job to her satisfaction. (You presumably know how to speak Rich People Language fluently, so flatter her as necessary and make it clear you wish to serve.) Review your buying plans and show her the refrigerators and pantries so she has visual as well as spoken information that your kitchen runneth over. Ask her if she’d like to set up a shared grocery list spreadsheet or app so she can add things to your list whenever she wants. Or would she prefer to see a running inventory? Perhaps she would like a daily check-in to review menus? She may turn all of this down, but asking her questions means she has to process the consequences of her binge-buying more deeply and might be able to stop an impulse purchase in the future. Popular in Advice

You suggest that Carol’s buying is compulsive. Her bulk buying might well be a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder or another psychological condition. Does she have hoarding tendencies? Was she raised poor and food insecure? If so, she may be like a Depression Era baby who stockpiles food. It’s possible her food shopping is an expression of a poorly controlled eating disorder. Or maybe spending recklessly is just a way she enjoys her wealth. Handling these possibilities is above your paygrade—or at least outside of your mandate and expertise as a house manager—but it might lessen your annoyance if you consider that there could be a deeper wound here. Simply being rich doesn’t make you happy and content, after all.

On a practical level, though, if she rejects your suggestions about how to coordinate shopping, I think that’s a great idea to take the excess to a food bank. Ask her permission to deliver food that will go bad before her family can consume it. You can even say that you’ve been reading about the extremely-common environmental problem of household food waste and you think her family could be part of the solution (leaving out that she has also specifically contributed to the problem). You might find a food bank willing to do regular pick-ups, especially if Carol makes a recurring donation. Supporting a local food bank so others might eat might help her conquer her own fear of hunger by helping others.

—Laura

link to Good Job

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I feel like the first half of this advice would fit friends or housemates better than a boss-employee relationship. Carol hired LW so she doesn't have to think. LW is an indulgence Carol can afford by being rich. If LW tries to make Carol think Carol may respond by getting rid of the thing bothering her to think, i.e., LW.

I'm sure Carol is kind but will she be kind when it causes her inconvenience? Especially the recurring inconvenience of having to think about how much she spends on food?

If I were LW I would quietly make arrangements with a food bank, and ask if the pickups can be done with the best looking car available.

(Also, LW, I'm sorry this part of your job is boring, but well, it's a job.)

[green_grrl]

Yeah, I wouldn’t expect a very wealthy woman to take it well that she has a problem (or is a problem), no matter how tactfully put. The whole time, I was just thinking Food Bank—and not telling Carol.

[ashbet]

This reminds me so much of my daughter’s father, who is our on-and–off housemate (he usually just stays with us over the holidays, because his job of the past 18 years had him on the road 10/11 months per year, but he got laid off and has been here for 6+ months now), and it’s a constant cause of household friction.

I know that he’s a hoarder, I know that it’s compulsive, I do appreciate that he buys groceries, but we are constantly wrestling with him overbuying, the freezer leaking because it gets overly full, food spoiling and getting thrown away, etc.

It drives me absolutely nuts, because I hate food waste, and my executive function issues mean that I prefer to keep the fridge where it isn’t stuffed to bursting, because then I can see what’s in there (it’s overwhelming and hard to deal with, I’m a lot more likely to just walk away from it and eat a bowl of cereal.)

And it’s not like we actually have unlimited funds, especially since his layoff — so, it’s more of a stressor than it would be in a rich household like the LW is talking about.

I don’t have an answer, but I know it’s definitely a mental health issue (he dealt with a lot of poverty and food insecurity in his youth, his father was also a hoarder, and shopping is his big dopamine kick), and I don’t expect that it’s going to get resolved by anything other than him going on the road again.

I hope the LW can find a way to get some of that food to a food bank, which is what I do when the dry goods get overwhelming, or I have a bunch of stuff that’s going to expire before we can eat it.

[princessofgeeks]

I am so sorry you are dealing with this, it sounds awful!!!! Hope he can find another place to live and/or a job soon!!!!!

[princessofgeeks]

What others have said and also if Carol has the hoarder tendencies and is not just thoughtlessly ordering stuff because she finds it compelling in the moment, a logical conversation won't fix this. Nothing the LW can do will fix it.

I agree the LW should just take steps to manage the storage issues and food wastage issues and not try to engage Carol. If Carol can't stop herself from doing these things, a logical conversation about problem-solving is not going to help.

[conuly]

Look, if Carol's husband was writing in I'd tell him to encourage his wife to see a shrink who specializes in hoarding, and perhaps a psychiatrist in case medication is helpful. (Maybe a support group as well?)

But LW is not Carol's husband, nor Carol's kid, nor Carol's friend. LW's Carol's employee, and is getting paid to put up with Carol's bullshit. Carol is not going to take constructive advice from LW, Carol is just going to fire LW.