Where is the service in service economy ?

Today I was looking for a different kind of help than yesterday. For simple, manual labor:  a move-out apartment cleaning, carpet cleaning, window washing, loading and unloading those belongings I decided to store and those that will go to a charity, but are too bulky/heavy for me to handle on my own.

Until now, whenever  and wherever I moved withing the USA,  I had no trouble  finding that kind of services as I needed them and at acceptable prices. No such luck today.

Well, yes, I found 10 firms offering cleaning services in town and 12 more around town. So far so good.  But here the “good” part of the story ends. Most of those firms did not answer their phones or did not return my call. Out of the remaining firms I got three bids. One cleaning service wanted $100/hr for two cleaning ladies with a two hour minimum, the second wanted $225 firm price and the third did not really know how much they were going to charge, but they assured me that the price would “certainly be reasonable”!!!  I kid you not!

And no, this is NOT a typo: the service firm wanted $ 100 an hour for sending two cleaning ladies. The cleaning ladies would, most  probably  be Latino immigrants, who would be lucky to get paid $7.50 an hour each – if that much.

Thus the service firm’s direct labor cost  for these ladies would be $15 = 15% of the quoted fee! 

Ok, let’s be fair and add to that some indirect labor costs (though I doubt they carry much, if any, of them) supplies, equipment, transportation (if they pay for it, which I also doubt),  liability insurance, overhead, administration,  advertising, taxes. Let’s be generous (well, they might be less than efficient,lol)  and  assume that the total cost of the service they provide is 25%-30% of the fee they demand. That comes out to a 70%-75% of pure profit! Talk about US still being a land of opportunities!

This pattern repeated itself concerning moving help: similar prices, similar assumed profits.

Where, on earth is any serious, willing to get business competition?  Is there no unemployment, no beginning of a recession? Is this situation now typical for  the USA  at large or just for  this particular corner of the Bible belt? And why?  Questions, questions.

Ah, well, since I can’t get any service from the service firms at a price I am willing to accept, I guess the only thing  I can do is to go tomorrow early morning to a place in town where day laborers gather, talk to them – luckily I speak enough Spanish – and hire myself  cleaning and moving helpers for about $15 an hour.

 I’ll have to do my own  recruiting, hiring and  supervising – but at least the profit will be all mine.

USA has  a well developed service sector – I’m sure you heard that time and time again. It was once true, but does no longer seem to be, even as uneployment is rising.   Sad and unbelievable!

 

Once upon a time

I had some help with filing.  

When a couple of years ago I moved in to Padre Island ( and Shark, a tired and undernourished cat mama, threatened by a hurricane approaching Texas coast, moved in with me bringing her four newborn kittens in her teeth),  I  was busy unpacking and when I opened my cd drawer to file my  cds and dvds, Shark promptly  gathered her kittens…..

and expertly filed them in my cd drawer

…

 

Immensly proud

… to be a  member in good standing  of the UKLC = Undeground Knitwear Liberation Community!

(see comments to To pack… or not to pack)

Visitors to and residents of the tropics: support the ambitions of  sweaters!

Become a member of  Underground Knitwear Liberation Community!

Don’t let your knitwear pine needlessly in your closets!

Take them to the tropics and wear them proudly – without regard for the weather!

 

The time has come to talk of many things?

Sigh, definitively not today!

Today I need to  1) finish sorting  my office and file and refile everything depending on where what stuff goes (to Puerto Rico with me, to Daughter, to storage, to waste basket) and 2) take care of my technical dilemmas.

My  digital camera is broken and needs to be replaced or repaired (but the repair is going to cost almost as much as the new camera, soo….), my  laptop works (after being repaired for the second time within a months), but without  important programs, like photo-uploading and  editing. 

About a week ago I found a way of  ”creatively” procrastinating from all this – soo boring! - sorting and packing  by starting a blog, but now I realize I can’t post any pictures to the blog due to technology malfunctions – and talking of places without pictures???? No fun and no fair.

Last Thursday, while waiting for my laptop to be fixed, I spent some time looking at  new laptops and new cameras. I found  both a laptop and a camera I like, but could not buy anyone of them right away, without the diplomatic contredance of  involving family and “family” tech expertise.

Wait till you get to a certain age  and you’ll see that  family members  (especially children in their thirties who lack own children, because they devote their lives to careers requiring both long hours, disregard for holidays, if they clash with business demands,  an extraordinary  amount of time spent traveling – mostly overseas – and an active leisure  involving an abundance of hobbies and a very active social life),  suddenly decide that at your “advanced”  age you must have regressed both physically and  mentally and  need to  be taken care of. 

I usually don’t mind very much, because, in fact, a certain amount  of “being taken care of”   is a refreshing change for someone, who I  – like I -  has been a widow  = solo and totally independent – for over a decade.  It is darn convenient to have someone else  install your programs, repair your stuff,  carry heavy bags of garden soil to your huge second floor balcony/terrace, that you decided to turn into a riot of plants, take you on a cruise, to a spa, invite you to a theatre, opera, symphony, when you are visiting or happen to live nearby, make you buy totally unneeded and “a tad” too young (let’s face it: can women in their fifties wear current “baby doll” style without feeling ridiculous???) clothes and accessories, because “mom you dress as if it still were the ninetees” etc. etc.

But in order to secure future “taking care of mom”  services,  of the desirable variety, I need to be diplomatic.

So I dispatched emails to both Daughter and Ex-son-in-law  of what I think I need, what I think I want and …. the answers – probably technically correct – came with choices of stuff I do not really want: buy an Apple…………… while I wanted an HP – its sleek, has a larger screen that Apple,  the Best Buy people assure me it will competently do everything I want it to do and more ( although, they, too, recommended Apple due to its ease of use : ” I use it in an elementary school” said a Geek Squad guy…  and I am sure he thought that for a “little old lady” it should have been a decisive argument,  since surely I must be intimidated by anything else than an elementary school appropriate technological device, lol), it costs less than Apple and would not require me to learn  a whole bunch of  totally different software at once,  since I have always used a pc.  I know my ex-son-in-law hates Microsoft and Windows, and at present seems to be particularly set against Windows Vista, but….

Ok, let’s take some more rounds of this  diplomatic contredance, while sorting  office and let the blog wait a while longer for pictures.

 

To pack or not to pack…

… all  38 (!) sweaters  (how on earth did I manage to accumulate so many???) for the tropics?  5 winter coats? Boots? Wool business suits? 

Decisions, decisions.  Every move begs for purging, for simplifying  – though not  oversiplifying, as it  can have an opposing effect.

Although I think that I can safely give away  ( to Dress for Success and to a local women’s shelter) most of my cold climate winter clothing, and stash some of the remainder  in Atlanta –  as I am most likely to fly to most west USA destinations through Atlanta – I need to take at least  a few sweaters, business suits, a coat and boots to the tropics, because I’ll have to make business trips to Europe and New York, and there I am most likely to fly directly from Puerto Rico.

When moving  I desperately try to be reasonable and  travel light, especially when I am not sure for how long I am moving ( this time I have committed to six months with possibly unlimited extensions) and the move is – literally – over-SEAS, thus precluding stuffing everything in a moving van and driving it across America.

However, lightness can have its dangers. I remember vividly groups of American students descending  on Monteverde, Costa Rica in sandals, shorts and tshirts… and freezing their tootsies… and not only tootsies… off in the middle of a tropical summer… on top of the continental divide!

I also learned the hard way that trying to simplify your life can cause your family and friends some unnnecessary worry.

About a decade  ago I decided on a “gypsy” life .  I spent a few years in Europe after Erik, my spouse, died of a brain tumor, barely 42 years old. I left our house in Austin, Texas to my daughter and her spouse to live in, while they were studying at UT Austin.  But after graduation they decided to move to Colorado, so I came back to Austin, got rid of the house and most of the other stuff and some time later arrived in Colorado bearing family silver, fine Meissen china, crystals etc. etc. and gave it all to Daughter.

I noticed that  – with each unpacked box of goods – my Son-in-law seemed to become increasingly worried, which surpised me, so  finally I went to Daughter, which was busy cooking, to find out if he had anything against those gifts, because he, himself did not want to share with me the reason of his worry. Daughter called him to ask him and returned laughing. “Mom” she laughed ” tell him why are you doing this, because he is afraid that you are sick and  preparing to die”. 

Now it was my turn to laugh. “No, son” I said, “don’t you worry, I am not preparing to die, I am preparing to LIVE, unencumbered, unburdened from possessions. I am preparing to be movable. Have brains, laptop, adventurous spirit – will travel! “   

…So how, ten years and more than ten moves and ten ”simplifications” later I somehow became a proud (?) owner of such an abundance of  sweaters???