Posted on 07/13/2015 4:45:08 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The milk and egg man, the vegetable cart, the guys who would deliver ice, repair your shoes, sharpen your knives would come to your house. You would place your orders for meat and fish and the butcher and fish monger would deliver.
If you were middle class female you used to have at least a "daily" who would come in and help with getting your chores done. Dad usually had his "driver" who would pick him up and take him to work.
So all that is old is new again.
The latch key generation is all grown up...
But now it is only the upper-upper middle class and above who can afford a lot of this.
It was nice while it lasted.
Remember the television show “Hazel” or “The Brady Bunch” and the maids?
And I can log onto the website of my local mega-mart, place an order, charge it to my card pull up outside the store and they will load it into my trunk and it will not cost me any more then buying the conventional way.
I'm not sure how many mid 20th century families had "help", but on TV it seemed pretty common.
It seems to me that if you have money for a maid, I think it puts you above Middle Class.
If you ARE a maid, it puts you below Middle Class.
My definition of Middle Class is that you have enough time and money to take care of your own stuff.
I don't know too many people who are really "independent" in the old style. People pay others to solve their problems for them, or else they live with the problems.
I wonder how many of these ‘shut-ins’ just don’t want to deal with the people that also live in the ‘urban paradise’?
Read later.
Or Family Affair?
Actually I’m getting a TaskRabbit to read this for me.
Do your own chores and the government doesn’t get to tax it and the media doesn’t get it’s cut for advertising it.
So naturally no one will do their own chores in a well-ordered society- by today’s standards.
Some of us cannot physically do all our chores anymore, but I know what you mean.
I think you win FR for today !!
Really interesting story.
Being retired and in the rural midwest, I’m totally distant from this new type of living.
I remember decades ago that in NYC ordering out was pretty common... probably still is. It seems to be a city thing... I order out probably an average of one time per year.
The author of the article doesn’t realize how much even the middle class has outsourced.
Few have nannies, but millions have daycare.
Few have chefs visiting their homes, but many have fast food pickup on the way home from work or buy pre-prepared meals from the grocery store where your only contribution is nuking it.
These services become a boon to the elderly or disabled with limited mobility. From ordering a vet to dinner to medical supplies sent to your home, you don’t have to wait for someone to take you to those services nor schedule a taxi to do it for you.
Guys, entirely aside from being alienated from doing your own chores, if you live in San Francisco (or any big city) and you don’t have time to take a casual stroll around town once in a while, to enjoy the view, to do stuff just for fun, you’re not really milking it for all it’s worth. I might rather be one of the delivery minions.
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