Anyone have a maid when growing up?

[Edward]

I also find it interesting that she has a good education and good job in spite of her obvious incompetence. How could anyone "earn" a PhD and hold down a white collar job without knowing how to type?

The traditional notion of touch typing is dead. Most of us these days are two finger typists. I never learned to type at all, just figured out what worked for me. I can 'type' the way I do infinitely faster than I can handwrite legibly. Whatever works, though.... if stuff is in and on time and clear, not full of typos... I don't think anyone much cares whether it was "properly" typed. I imagine a lot of it has to do with the fact that typing on a computer can so easily be edited, therefore there is not the same need that everythying be accurately put down right from the get go. Another case of a specific skillset being left behind by shift in technology, I suppose.

I tell you what, though, I'm far from the only academic these days who would love to have someone to do a lot of typing and admin for me; because we do everything straight to computer now, more or less, a lot of admin that might formerly have been done by a secretary is now added on to our workload. Still, it's indoor work with no heavy lifting, so...

 

[LizzieMaine]

I paid my sister to type for me. I don't think it cheapened my academic accomplishments in any way.

My friend was an English major. She couldn't afford to hire someone to type for her.

I honestly can't comprehend a world where most people can't touch-type. I'd never have survived in radio all those years without that skill.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I agree with you 100%. Everything she typed, I first had to voice record.

I wrote it by hand first.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I don't know if we "had a maid," but at our last home we did hire a housekeeper to come in every 2 weeks to clean the place up.

When my son was about two, he got upset because some of his toys had been put away where he couldn't find them.

"Just fire her !!" was his solution....

In that sense, I "have a maid" now. She comes in for a couple of hours every other Wednesday to do what I call "heavy cleaning". She does things like clean the ceiling fans and the hardwood floors and the bathroom I haven't used in 12 years. We don't let the dishes and laundry pile up for two weeks at a time waiting for her.

 

[HudsonHawk]

My friend was an English major. She couldn't afford to hire someone to type for her.

I honestly can't comprehend a world where most people can't touch-type. I'd never have survived in radio all those years without that skill.

Well, that's the real world. Or at least it was before the days of word processors and personal computers. Most white collar workers didn't type for a living and were "hunt and peck" typists. And, I don't see where that somehow means they didn't legitimately earn their academic degrees.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Still makes no sense to me -- it's like not being able to drive a car or make toast. It's a ridiculously easy skill to learn, and once learned it stays with you for the rest of your life. I've been a white collar worker since the eighties, and there hasn't been a day in all that time that I haven't used and appreciated that particular skill, first on typewriters and then on computers. In a world where kids are being taught "keyboarding" in grammar school, I just don't see any reason not to know how to type properly.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Still makes no sense to me -- it's like not being able to drive a car or make toast. It's a ridiculously easy skill to learn, and once learned it stays with you for the rest of your life. I've been a white collar worker since the eighties, and there hasn't been a day in all that time that I haven't used and appreciated that particular skill, first on typewriters and then on computers. In a world where kids are being taught "keyboarding" in grammar school, I just don't see any reason not to know how to type properly.

I don't disagree. I learned to type in high school by taking a typing class, which may have been the most useful class I took. And that was years before I ever *heard* of a personal computer. I'm not arguing it's not a useful skill, only that it used to be one that most PhD, white-collar workers did not have.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd think that any academic whose profession requires them to "publish or perish" would need to know how to type. Anybody who writes for a living at any level ought to that skill, if only for the sake of efficiency. Feeding your ideas thru the intermediary of a typist adds an unnecessary step to the process and takes that much longer to get the job done.

When I'm dictator, typing, home ec, and auto shop will be compulsory for everyone.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I'd think that any academic whose profession requires them to "publish or perish" would need to know how to type. Anybody who writes for a living at any level ought to that skill, if only for the sake of efficiency. Feeding your ideas thru the intermediary of a typist adds an unnecessary step to the process and takes that much longer to get the job done.

Well, they would argue that their time is more valuable on the academic part and less valuable on the administrative. That while someone else is typing, they can still be doing whatever it is that they do.

 

[LizzieMaine]

See, I still don't get that. They have to spend their time composing whatever it is that they're writing -- journal articles, responses to journal articles, whatever -- but when they finish doing that it still isn't finished. Somebody has to take it all over again and type it up, and they have to go back and review that manuscript for errors and maybe have it typed up yet again.

When I write for publication I compose the whole thing, in finished form, right at the keyboard - there's no dictating, no umming and ahhing into a voice recorder, no reviewing a typed manuscript for errors, none of that. When I finish typing, the article is done, finished, and ready to be submitted with no further fooling around, and I can immediately move on to whatever else I'm working on at the moment. Seems to me that would be a more efficient way of doing things than messing around with hirelings, but hey, I only write for a living.

 

[gtdean48]

Grew up in South Central Georgia in 60's & 70's. My father was the local dentist, only 1 in 3 counties.
We had a maid & all my friends had maids even though hardly any of our mothers worked outside of our fathers' businesses.
The Help was about 10 years before my time but dead on.

Typing was mandatory at my high school. I made beer money typing papers in junior college for guys who never learned to type. I took 2 years of typing in high school because the typing teacher was hot & class was predominantly female. Oh how a high school boy's mind works...
Signed up for Home Ec too but principal nixed that...

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I don't disagree. I learned to type in high school by taking a typing class, which may have been the most useful class I took. And that was years before I ever *heard* of a personal computer. I'm not arguing it's not a useful skill, only that it used to be one that most PhD, white-collar workers did not have.

"FDSA space, JKL, semicolon, space..."
Heck, I remember taking typing in junior high school. We learned on those clunky, '60s vintage IBM Selectric typewriters.

 

[Doctor Strange]

My parents worked together in the family photo biz, and we had a Hispanic cleaning woman who came to the house once or twice a week for several years in the sixties/seventies. But it wasn't anything like a maid in those fifties TV shows with the mother in a perfect dress and pearls, as we were firmly working class with no pretensions otherwise.

I also took typing in high school, and while I never became a really fast or accurate typist, I did end up as a professional tech writer, so I'm very glad that I don't just hunt and peck with two fingers. As others have already said, I consider it a pretty necessary adult skill, like driving or cooking.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Still makes no sense to me -- it's like not being able to drive a car or make toast. It's a ridiculously easy skill to learn, and once learned it stays with you for the rest of your life. I've been a white collar worker since the eighties, and there hasn't been a day in all that time that I haven't used and appreciated that particular skill, first on typewriters and then on computers. In a world where kids are being taught "keyboarding" in grammar school, I just don't see any reason not to know how to type properly.

You don't get it for sure. Rich people have servants to do that sort of thing. At work, more underlings to do the actual work. All they do is take credit for other peoples' work, skim off the lion's share of the profits, and jet away to Aspen or the Hamptons for the weekend.

It took me a long time to get wise. I used to want to be of some use in the world until I noticed that the people that do the actual work get the least money, the least respect, and the worst working conditions. While the more useless you are, the better the working conditions and the higher the pay.

For years I have been working on the problem of becoming useless, to stop doing anything of value in the world and become a pure parasite. I know I will never rise to the heights of a Wall Street banker, but am now making a good return sitting in front of a computer trading stock options. Which is probably the least useful thing I have ever done, the easiest, and the most lucrative.

 

[jamespowers]

"FDSA space, JKL, semicolon, space..."
Heck, I remember taking typing in junior high school. We learned on those clunky, '60s vintage IBM Selectric typewriters.

Yes, we learned on those monsters too.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Yeah, and I remember thinking how high tech they were compared to the '50s vintage manual typewriter we had at home. lol

 

[LizzieMaine]

We had Royal Deluxe manuals at my school, which gave me a very percussive stroke. I destroyed several computer keyboards in later life before getting the hang of the light touch modern equipment requires.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You don't get it for sure. Rich people have servants to do that sort of thing. At work, more underlings to do the actual work. All they do is take credit for other peoples' work, skim off the lion's share of the profits, and jet away to Aspen or the Hamptons for the weekend.

Come the revolution, guess who'll be begging in the streets.

 

[Stanley Doble]

If you mean what I think you mean, the revolution is already here. Every plank of the Socialist Party platform has been implemented. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are dead letters. Government surveillance is everywhere, 1984 style. Government goons grope your women and children in airports while you meekly submit. Government controls every aspect of your day to day life. Nearly 50% of the American populace receives some form of government assistance. It is impossible to carry on any form of business without government approval, while their criminal friends steal billions with no fear of arrest.

This is it. Look around. How do you like it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I used to be a Socialist, in the Norman Thomas sense of the word, but 2008 made me a Jacobin. You can't have a real revolution without tumbrels.

As far as the Socialist platform is concerned, here's exactly what it stated in 1932. There isn't an item on it that I wouldn't have enthusiastically supporte, then or now, with the possible exception of the Supreme Court plank. A six hour day looks pretty good to me, who often works eighty hour weeks.

. . . A Federal appropriation of $5,000,000,000 for immediate relief for those in need, to supplement State and local appropriations.

. . . A Federal appropriation of $5,000,000,000 for public works and roads, reforestation, slum clearance, and decent homes for the workers, by Federal Government, States, and cities. . . .

. . . The 6-hour day and the 5-day week without a reduction of wages. . . .

. . . A compulsory system of unemployment compensation with adequate benefits, based on contributions by the Government and by employers.

. . . Old-age pensions for men and women 60 years of age and over.

. . . Health and maternity insurance.

. . . Improved systems of workmen's compensation and accident insurance.

. . . The abolition of child labor.

. . . Government aid to farmers and small-home owners to protect them against mortgage foreclosures and a moratorium on sales for nonpayment of taxes by destitute farmers and unemployed workers.

. . . Adequate minimum wage laws. . . .

. . . Increased Federal and State subsidies to road building and educational and social services for rural communities. . . .

. . . Proportional representation.

. . . Direct election of the President and Vice President.

. . . The initiative and referendum. . . .

. . . Abolition of the power of the Supreme Court to pass upon the constitutionality of legislation enacted by Congress. . . .

. . . Federal legislation to enforce the first amendment to the Constitution so as to guarantee freedom of speech, press, and assembly, and to penalize officials who interfere with the civil rights of citizens.

. . . The abolition of injunctions in labor disputes, the outlawing of "yellow-dog" contracts and the passing of laws enforcing the rights of workers to organize into unions. . . .

. . . Legislation protecting aliens from being excluded from this country or from citizenship or from being deported on account of their political, social, or economic beliefs, or on account of activities engaged in by them which are not illegal for citizens. . . .

The enforcement of constitutional guarantees of economic, political, and legal equality for the Negro and the enactment of a stringent anti-lynching law.