Missing a pal? This bud’s for hire
You’ve likely thought about it, argues one expert, pointing to interactions with hairdressers
He was 67, a former race-car driver living in a retirement community. She was 23, vibrant, attractive and happy to listen to stories of past glory. It’s not what you think. Her name is Tara, she lives in Los Angeles and she’s available to be your best friend — in a strictly platonic sense — for $20 an hour through RentAFriend.com. She met the retired race-car driver in an L.A. coffee shop and conversed for three hours.
Don’t judge, says Tara, whose first name is being used for privacy reasons. “You don’t know what it would be like for you, in their shoes.”
Ever needed a best friend but didn’t have one handy? Ever thought of hiring one?
You probably already have, says Rebecca Perlman Coniglio, a licensed clinical social worker in the New York City area. Consider your hairdresser, the bartender, your housecleaner. The concept of hiring someone for a task but interacting with him or her as a friend has been going on for decades but is more prevalent now, she says. In an ever more electronic world, people are increasingly hungry for contact in person.
Suppliers who work one-on-one with clients in a personal setting know this well. Mary Carlomagno is an organizer who writes and speaks on the topic and just published her novel Best Friend for Hire (Post Hill Press, 2017). “Most of the people I work with tell me a lot more than they need to for the job,” Carlomagno says, who adds she sometimes feels like a therapist.
One woman emailed her: “Could I talk to you about what I need? I don’t know what to do with my life. I lost my job two years ago. I am 70 and still need and want to work.”
Another woman hired her to help organize, but it soon became clear the problem was deeper than clutter. “As I was working, her husband began to wander in,” Carlomagno says. “Eventually I worked with the two of them, but the wife was less and less in the picture.” The wife wanted a baby, but the husband would not clear out the room meant for a nursery.
“He couldn’t make room for her,” Carlomagno says. “Our final meeting, he called me in not to work but to tell me they’d broken up.”
Boyd Sloan, 31, is a private stylist and personal shopper in New York City, with a client list that includes celebrities and politicians. He has permission to shop high-end stores on consignment, taking merchandise into a client’s home or hotel for choosing. “We spend lots of one-onone time during fittings and while shopping. Clients vent about things or spill gossip they’ve been dying to dish on, but wouldn’t dare with women they know.” Mistresses, inheritances, thoughts of money laundering — Sloan has heard it all.
“Sometimes clients are lonely or angry and want someone to listen.”
In most cases, that’s fine with the supplier. “A huge part of my job is about the relationships I form with my clients,” Sloan says.
But after a certain point, Carlomagno says, it has to be one or the other.
“One of those valves has to be turned off. You stay as a friend or you stay as a worker.”
There’s nothing wrong with getting afriend via hiring, Coniglio says. “But it’s better to strive toward the confidence where you can make a true friend and realize someone would be happy to be your friend for free.”