 Poster: A snowHead
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Lizzard, absolutely not, until recently I was doing that 7 days a week and had a full time job.
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brian
brian
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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5 days solid skiing, with a luxury chalet where friends can come to stay.
Cooking 2 dinners and 2 breakfasts a week for 4 people (and doubtless wealthy bankers will eat out sometimes), and shoving a hoover around for twenty minutes on a Thursday evening in exchange for free accomm. Or... working in a bar until 3am - standing up, pouring beers, being sworn at by drunk Brits, feeling like death warmed up for months as a result of late nights, and sharing a one-roomed studio between 4, and still paying thousands for the privilege. Hard choice that one.
I assure you, a full-time girlfriend makes more work than the job described above...
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Sigh .. Still no genuine takers. If it helps My kids are well disciplined and mostly nice, brat behaviour is not tolerated.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Sigh, still no takers though. I think its unfair on my kids to assume that just because I might be an Rich Ex pat W**ker (REPW) they will be the same.
Anyhow, do REPW's really make genuine offers on forums. You know sometimes great offers DO actually happen. At least I got some applicants from TGR (allbeit dubious) . Still waiting for a sane applicant.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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nixmap.
I sent you a pm via TGR.
Look forward to reading your response.
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nixmap, I think it would be a good opportunity for someone, but maybe it is quite close to the season to make arrangements to be away for the entire winter (especially the kind of people that you might entrust your property to during the week)? Hope you find someone suitable, but if you do the same for next year maybe advertise a bit earlier to allow more people to make arrangements for being away all winter?
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At least this seems to be a genuinue forum.
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Yes, it is. Welcome to it.  What you've posted is thought-provoking. I think one problem is that it needs someone with substantial resources of their own - because even with "free" accommodation you have to have a ski pass, eat, drink, etc, with no income for a whole winter. And you also need someone with good basic skills to be able to look after you at the standard you probably expect - to plan meals, ensure supplies, etc. If I were doing it, and expected to produce good quality food for a housefull every weekend, whilst also doing child-care, I'd reckon to spend the equivalent of two days during the week preparing for, and clearing up, before and after the weekend. (Because if you're out with the kids on the slopes you'd have to have done a lot of food prep, and all the shopping, during the week. As someone who regularly look after friends and relations in our apartment in the Alps, and has taken over house and grand children during family crises here, I have a fair idea what I'm talking about!). So, three days a week skiing. 2 on average, maybe, by the time you add in the extra weeks you'll be there in school holidays and/or house guests. It's a fair amount of work. I'm sure there are people out there who could do a great job, but they'll be a bit unusual - maybe someone who has considered a mature "gap year", maybe someone early-retired who wants to travel a bit but doesn't have a lot of money.
It might be helpful to add the ages of your children because you really want to find someone who likes spending time with kids, rather than seeing it as an onerous chore.
My son would do a great job - superb cook and fantastic with kids. But he's just got a job paying over 3000 euros a month, with free accommodation and ski pass, cooking for a French family with a chalet in a big French resort. With no child minding and no household chores - there's what he calls a "chalet bitch" for that. 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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nixmap, I would love the job, but my boss might just be a bit naffed off if i failed to turn into work for four months, and it would mean losing out on my annual bonus.
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However, I agree with Pam that it is not financially possible for someone without vast amounts of savings or a retirement income. Free accommodation is all very well, but food, lift passes etc all add up.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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What pam w says is the truth, bit it might suit the right person.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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pam w, it's true to say that other similar private chalet jobs come with wage, food, lift pass and equipment hire.
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brian
brian
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I think pam w sums it up nicely, and if you are expected to be on call from Friday evening until Sunday it can't be a million miles off typical full time hours.
Is that really worth it for free accommodation ? Especially when that free accommodation comes at an opportunity cost to the owner of precisely zero.
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You know it makes sense.
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It really depends on what the deal is.
PamW, I don't see how you could spend 2 whole days a week cooking for a weekend for 4 people - you're cooking the wrong sort of food (and I speak as one who enjoys cooking and does so to a very high standard). It's all about planning and being organised.
I must say I imagined that the lift pass would be included. You wouldn't have to over-cater much to ensure free food all week - an extra pound of meat in the casserole costs virtually nothing, but keeps the chalet boy fed!
And from the way it's written, "occasional" child minding, then I'd guess there'd be weekend skiing too - if the OP is up on the hills with his children (if he's not then child minding is much more than occasional), dinner is sorted, then what else is there to do?
I'd think there might be a lot of ex-Lehmans and similar employees around at the moment who might fancy this.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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pam w,
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My son would do a great job - superb cook and fantastic with kids. But he's just got a job paying over 3000 euros a month, with free accommodation and ski pass, cooking for a French family with a chalet in a big French resort. With no child minding and no household chores
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The French doing it with style
The British trying to do it on the cheap 
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Poster: A snowHead
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James the Last, have you ever actually spent any time "serving" people who have high standards? I can assure you that "pushing a hoover round for 20 minutes on a Thursday" is not what the REW is looking for. We have neighbours in the Alps who visit from Geneva every weekend. Usually just the family of 5, but quite often friends too. They have a sizeable chalet, including three bathrooms, and it is always absolutely immaculate. They look after themselves. I've been in there at tea-time on a Saturday for drinks - been invited up to see their littlest girls new acquisition in their bedroom and been flabbergasted that even the kids rooms are immaculate - always! There will be people having drinks, cups of coffee, strewing crumbs around, all day long and it all needs cleaning up. And they probably won't expect to dine on a Saturday evening off a shepherd's pie you put in the freezer and a packet of frozen peas.
Just doing the weekly shop - even in the unlikely event that there is a good butcher, supermarket etc in the near vicinity - would probably take half a day.
We do some "end of let cleaning" for friends with apartments in our complex (to eke out the old age pension...) and thorough cleaning, even of a 45 sq metre apartment, which has been left in a decent state by responsible renters, takes a couple of hours. How long does it take you to clean an oven? To clean shelves in cupboards? To get the gungy bits out of the bottom of the dishwasher? To get all the shelves out of the fridge, clean and dry them, and put them back? To clear the terrace of a mix of hard packed snow and baguette crumbs? To strip beds, launder the linen and make the beds again?
If you decided to apply for the job on the understanding that this would all take you 20 minutes a week, I suggest you keep your Snowheads name fairly quiet.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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pam w, when we leave our apartment it takes us ages to sort it out for the next visitors. A large chalet would be a full day job.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Helen Beaumont,  I thought it was just me being inefficient. My Swiss neighbours (actually she's French and he's Canadian, though they live in Switzerland) make me feel like a right slut; our bedrooms are usually a heap of ski stuff, spare bit of furniture temporarily displaced from the sitting room (including bedding if there are extra people staying) and if the kids are there it's indescribable. I keep the doors firmly shut when people come in for drinks! After 6 weeks in residence it takes us the best part of two days to pack up. Even getting to the bottom of the food in the freezer and the cave can be a bit of a mission. We never have more than 6 of us there - more often 4 - and I often spend whole days (when the weather's bad) preparing food in advance. I enjoy it, and I would enjoy cooking for appreciative people in the REW's chalet - but anyone who thinks they'd have 4.5 days to ski is kidding themselves and I think the advert is somewhat misleading from that point of view.
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Doing the weekly shop to produce two dinners for four, and two breakfasts would take you half a day??? Lucky you're retired. Half an hour more like.
I take it the rest of your post is similarly credible 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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James the Last, it's likely to be far more than two dinners and two breakfasts. long weekends, school breaks, maybe lunch if the weather is bad. Early supper before they leave on Sunday evenings, dinner on FRiday, special meal on Saturday, maybe with friends joining them. Early meals for the children if they are small, afternoon tea?
If you have supermarket nearby for the shopping fine, but if you have to travel down the valley half a day is more like it. Friday will be spent preparing, and Monday clearing up after they have left. Laundry will need sorting, taking to laundry or washed.
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James the Last, this is a ski resort we're talking about, and not a paricularly big one. Is there an adequate supermarket? Quality butcher? Fishmonger? Because if not it's a drive to the nearest town, which will easily take half a day to get there and back and do the shopping as well.
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pam w, I try hard to keep our place tidy, we usually only half manage it if there are no kids with us.
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And Swiss standards of cleaning have to be seen to be believed - Brits live in slums/hovels in comparison
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Many of the female members of our French residents at Chalet Chamoissiere seem to spend most of the morning cleaning before going out to meet their families for lunch , then ski for the afternoon.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Doing the weekly shop to produce two dinners for four, and two breakfasts would take you half a day??? Lucky you're retired. Half an hour more like.
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Quick flip round the supermarket for a couple of pizzas, an assortment of pot noodles, a bag of ready washed salad and a box of cornflakes? Dinner's gonna be a treat. If the ski resort is anything like the one I live in it could sometimes take you longer than half an hour even to get to the shops. Or to carry the shopping (including the cleaning materials, heavy drinks, toilet rolls, at least two bags of fresh vegetables, salads and fruits, and the special stuff the kids need) up a snowy path from the car and put away tidily in the cupboards. I've sometimes spent almost half an hour just at the checkout in French supermarkets.
And I bet they'd expect their bed linen nicely ironed too.... and it's probably 100% pure cotton, not your nasty polycotton. This is a luxury chalet, not a student pit.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Anyway, I think you're all over-complicating this. It clearly states 2.5 days' work. So, that's what? 17.5 hours' labour; 20 perhaps if your employer takes the last pound of flesh. You can spend five twelve-hour days a week doing the job if you wish, but I think you'll find that OP - who seems a reasonable sort - is fully aware of this: "some basic chores" he states. He certainly doesn't mean the 60 hours work that you're proposing... So if it takes half a day (or more) to do the shopping, then that'll be Saturday gone. If the weekends are four days long, then it's supper and nowt else. If the piles of linen bedding (cotton, ugh!) need ironing, then there'll be no food cooked.
And as a studio (sleeps 4!) in a ski resort, which is the traditional way to do your season, will cost you - what? - £100 a week for the dubious honour of sharing the shoebox with three chundering gap-year kids - this is valuing your time at £5-6 per hour; if you take in the fact that you've got a flat to yourself and plenty of other extras (leftover food; friends to stay etc.), this is valuing your time at maybe £20 per hour.
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James the Last, you may well be right. I'm probably just a suspicious type. He'll probably be fine with pizza and having someone who has cooked breakfast at 07.30 on a Saturday knocking off at 8pm, having already done more than their statutory hours work.
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You know it makes sense.
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Well, I'm not going to be applying; you're certainly not with your 'attitude'! I don't suppose he'd appreciate your endless string of sarcastic comments.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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pam w, well put! I remember a chapter in this excellent book on negotiating http://www.amazon.co.uk/Everything-Negotiable-Gavin-Kennedy/dp/1847940013?tag=amz07b-21 called 'Beware One Truck Contracts'. If the agreement made between the three parties is not made pretty watertight it is very likely to end in tears. I would like to follow up this opportunity but I would need to find someone else to share the risk/reward. PM me if interested?
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Poster: A snowHead
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I'd say the workload is probably somewhere midway between Pam and James, given he's British not Swiss.
I think the worst problem being it's already too late. Too close to the season that most of anyone who would qualify had already got a gig lined up.
And whoever left over still jobless are not worth hiring. Never mind leaving your children under their care.
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I'd think there might be a lot of ex-Lehmans and similar employees around at the moment who might fancy this.
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That's a testiment of ignorance.
Anyone who has half an once of brain wouldn't let those wild ones get near their home!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Don't feel too sorry for nixmap.
I replied to the offer via the TGR forum and asked for a response via this thread.
To my knowledge the position hasn't been filled and yet I've not received a response.
I think I'm suitably qualified and have all the bases covered:
2 seasons working as a chalet host (cooking breakfast, afternoon tea and evening meal for 20 people 7-days a week)
Sole cook at an 'a la carte' restaurant in Wales offering dinner for 30-35 covers
Certified ski instructor
13 summers working in the US summer camp industry
And as an aside, when I worked as a chalet host my colleague and I skied 5 days a week all season between 10am and 4pm. It's called organisation.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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It's called organisation
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.......... and lack of childcare responsibilities.
The amount of work involved will depend entirely on what level of service/how much childcare/what standard of catering this bloke wants. Anyone taking it on would need to meet with him and his wife in advance and go into it in detail - both the family and the housekeepers want to have a fun season, so it's essential to make the whole arrangement absolutely clear in order that everyone knows what to expect from the deal.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Lizzard wrote: |
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It's called organisation
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.......... and lack of childcare responsibilities.
The amount of work involved will depend entirely on what level of service/how much childcare/what standard of catering this bloke wants. Anyone taking it on would need to meet with him and his wife in advance and go into it in detail - both the family and the housekeepers want to have a fun season, so it's essential to make the whole arrangement absolutely clear in order that everyone knows what to expect from the deal. |
To a certain extent with the childcare responsibilities.
I cooked in what was classed a 'family' chalet and would regularly have two sittings for dinner. One for the younger children and one for the older children and adults.
As for the rest of your advice, absolutely.
Kind of tough though when the employer disappears. 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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And as an aside, when I worked as a chalet host my colleague and I skied 5 days a week all season between 10am and 4pm. It's called organisation.
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I have no doubt whatsoever that you could do that in this job too - you should have no trouble getting the work done in the hours after skiing. You'd have four evenings to get the cleaning/laundry/shopping/cooking done. If you w couple of evenings cleaning/laundry, couple of evenings shopping/cooking, one evening putting your f, plus two very long days at the weekends. Indeed, if you were organised you'd have a very pleasant time, assuming the employers were reasonable, particularly during the time the chalet was empty and you had it to yourself. But that doesn't equate to just 2.5 days work a week and - another small point - you're actually having to pay out some of your own money to do the job (for ski pass, living expenses, travel costs, every beer and snack on the mountain even assuming that you could feed yourself all week from the chalet budget). My purpose was to suggest that anyone who thought that "20 minutes with a vacuum on a Thursday night" and "half an hour shopping" would get the job done hadn't really thought it through.
Mike Pow, sorry you've not had a response. But it's not been long - maybe the REW actually has to work all day rather than play around on snowheads! Or perhaps he's just a bit rude - you do sound very well qualified. I would have thought you'd have no trouble getting a proper job in the Alps, with pay
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Agreed pam w
Was hoping that responses on this and other forums and discussions with the employer would lead to a him re-evaluating the offer
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>>But that doesn't equate to just 2.5 days work a week
Indeed it doesn't. You are inventing a different job spec to that advertised.
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I don't think this is an unreasonable deal, (subject to the observations that Lizzard, makes about absolutely nailing everyone's expectations.) for the right person/people.
The problem with it is I think less the 'job' itself but that it's appeal is to a fairly small niche market that falls somewhere between working a season full time with a tour operator or similar with all the 'extras' thrown in and not working at all save what you might 'pick up'if you're lucky and looking for it in resort but financing the whole deal yourself. In either event the one thing that is almost certainly already sorted out is the accommodation. Few people I would have thought would be in the position this late in the day to substantially finance a season on a whim.....and as has been pointed out, the likes of Mike Pow, excepted, those of the appropriate calibre especially in the child care and several steps up from Pizza stakes have been long snapped up even if the offer were to be a little enhanced.
A few months ago I would have been VERY interested in a part time proposition like this, even allowing for the fact that 2.5 days may well be a bit 'moveable' - though the 10 year old in tow may have put a spanner in the works. As it is we've now got all our arrangements in place via the self financing route.
Good luck in your quest!
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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You are inventing a different job spec to that advertised.
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The basic problem is that the words and numbers in the job spec don’t agree. The advertiser wants someone on hand full time when the family is in residence to cook, clean and look after the kids. That will entail full time between early Friday evening and very late Sunday evening – lets call that 2.5 days work.
But he has also said that the family will be there for longer during school holidays (of which there are quite a few in a ski season) and that sometimes they will have houseguests.
So the numbers already stop adding up, without “inventing” any additional job spec. It is most definitely NOT looking after 4 people for 2 days a week.
I agree that I have “invented” the additional requirement that the family will expect to arrive to a chalet which is spotlessly clean throughout, and with their beds made up. Perhaps they won’t. But the failure of the advertiser to clarify his requirements (or reply to Mike) does not inspire confidence.
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Pam, you're not reading the same ad as I'm reading. There is an utterly unequivocal statement:
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| What that means is you work on weekends then get to ski or do your own thing for the other 5 days of the week of the week. |
No doubt, as a successful expat, OP will be in the habit of managing expectations, managing people and managing their time in order to achieve exactly what he wants.
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FAQ
