and a generous number of guest rooms. Admittedly, our present team of four would

manage this programme only with reinforcement from some daily workers; my staff

plan therefore took in the services of a gardener, to visit once a week, twice

in the summer, and two cleaners, each to visit twice a week. The staff plan

would, furthermore, for each of the four resident employees mean a radical

altering of our respective customary duties. The two young girls, I predicted,

would not find such changes so difficult to accommodate, but I did all I could

to see that Mrs Clements suffered the least adjustments, to the extent that I

undertook for myself a number of duties which you may consider most broad-minded

of a butler to do.

 

Even now, I would not go so far as to say it is a bad staff plan; after all, it

enables a staff of four to cover an unexpected amount of ground. But you will no

doubt agree that the very best staff plans are those which give clear margins of

error to allow for those days when an employee is ill or for one reason or

another below par. In this particular case, of course, I had been set a slightly

extraordinary task, but I had nevertheless not been neglectful to incorporate

'margins' wherever possible. I was especially conscious that any resistance

there may be on the part of Mrs Clements, or the two girls, to the taking on of

duties beyond their traditional boundaries would be compounded by any notion

that their workloads had greatly increased. I had then, over those days of

struggling with the staff plan, expended a significant amount of thought to

ensuring that Mrs Clements and the girls, once they had got over their aversion

to adopting these more 'eclectic' roles, would find the division of duties

stimulating and unburdensome.