Let them eat cake

Today’s most infuriating headline: Home Economics: Families Doing Own Chores

What? You can do your own chores?? Fuuuuuck.

Thanks, Yahoo Finance, for this incredibly helpful article detailing how a lady in Fayetteville, Arkansas is saving 10k a year by doing her own cleaning and cooking at home. I’m going to apply this immediately to my own life to save… hey, wait, I couldn’t afford any of that to begin with! I’ve been doing my own menial labor for years. Where’s my retention bonus?

I wish that lady would call me so I could enumerate the reasons why she does not, in fact, deserve a ticker tape parade on Main Street for mopping her own floors. Guess what, lady? Nobody feels sorry for you because you can’t afford as many luxuries as you used to. Here’s an ingenious idea: why don’t you GET A JOB… or perhaps a clue. My mom worked full-time AND took care of the house the entire time I was growing up, and not only did it not kill her, but no one ever even offered her a Nobel prize. I hear she wasn't even nominated. We call that “life.” On the plus side, at least that afforded her some protection from Bernie Madoff... Not a celebrity OR a major national bank OR a Nobel laureate? You can keep your unimportant life savings, peon.

The article missed a great opportunity to talk about a real problem, which is that when Mrs. I Can’t Be Bothered With My Own Laundry and all her equally overindulged friends fire their maids and lawn boys, that puts people out of work and creates ACTUAL hardship. I am constantly amazed that the media think the real story about the recession is how it's affecting Suzy (non-home-making) Home-maker and her overdeveloped sense of entitlement, when there are people who truly are having a hard time of it and probably fishing for half-eaten sandwiches in dumpsters and selling their plasma at the local blood center for $20 a shot.

In the article, Fancy Lady notes, as an aside, that her maid calls her all the time and hasn’t been able to find other work. “I feel really bad about that,” she says, as she stands in her spacious kitchen full of stainless steel and state-of-the-art appliances. Sure you do, lady.