Butling: yet another career in demand

Why waste your time trying to develop valuable technical skills at ITT Tech? Why bother with an online MBA from the University of Phoenix? Don’t even think about shifting gears and learning how to drive an 18 wheeler.

If you really want to prepare yourself for the brave new world, in which a relative handful of global elite kabillionaires live large, while the rest of us live and work out our miserable existences at their sufferance, you’ll want to consider becoming a butler. And, come April, you’ll have a place state-side to learn how to do so. That’s because,

Come April, Ms. [Dorothy] Hamilton, the founder and CEO of the International Culinary Center, will inaugurate an Estate Management Studies program, its mission, according to a press release, being "to Train a New Caliber of Household Staff." (Source: WSJ Online.)

Right there in New York City. On Broadway.

The dean, if that’s the right term, is Christopher Ely, who was a footman at Buckingham Palace, and the butler to the late Brooke Astor. (Who’s on your cv?)

The program will ultimately cover as many as 20 skill sets within the framework of household cleaning and organization, and culinary and laundry essentials. These include silver polishing, pressing, stain removal, organizing closets, packing, making beds, creating healthy meals and, perhaps most important of all, doing no harm to your employer's Warhols, Chippendale chairs or 18th-century Limoges dinner service.

Well, I could probably waive out of laundry, as I’m actually pretty okay at it. (Although, admittedly, I’m not the world’s foremost iron-er). Being able to waive a course will save me about $1.5K, which is the cost for a unit (which takes a week to get through). By waiving out, however, I would have to forego a certificate, suitable for framing. But, what the heck’s a colored printer for, anyway? I could probably forge make my own laundry certificate.

Here’s a link to Butler U. (No, not that Butler U, the one that made it to the NCAA basketball finals last year. The other Butler U. The one where you learn stuff like silver polishing and making beds.)

I do think they should have a unit on bed bugs, by the way. Just saying.

Although they don’t yet do bed bugs, specifically, they are considering a course for the nouveau riche who may be ordering around staff for the first time.

I do want to point out that I copped on to the coming demand for butling way back in April, 2008, when I wrote about:

Charles MacPherson, president of his own placement and consulting agency and former head of the International Guild of Professional Butlers, [who] has declared a nationwide butler shortage.

The Guild is going to start a school "to help offset the lack of supply."

(Am I a trend-spotter, or what?)

As for The Guild, they did, indeed establish a school: the Butling & House Management School and Agency.  For Americans, it’s not as conveniently located as the NYC program – it’s in Holland, at:

Kasteel Oost (literally translated Castle of the East) is beautifully located in the historical city of Valkenburg (officially the city is called Valkenburg aan de Geul) in the south of The Netherland.

But, hey, you get to go to school in a castle.

They welcome applicants of all ages, and have had a graduate as old as 68, butling, perhaps, being the one profession where  advanced age may actuallycount for something. No time to go back to school to learn butling? You may want to settle for self-paced, eLearning on Napkin Folding over at the Butler’s Guild. (I must away. As I do not (yet) have a butler of me own, I want to master the Cardinal’s Hat before my next dinner party. Fortunately, I have plenty of time.)

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