Simply Too Busy? Hire a Stand-In

If you’ve joined the ranks of those who seemingly do nothing but work, eat and sleep, take heart. A number of Los Angeles area personal service companies have sprung up that will do almost everything else for you--make a personalized apology, take the pet to the vet, deliver homemade chicken soup to a sick friend, pay a traffic ticket, wait at your home all day for the plumber.

Although a couple of personal service organizations have been operating here for more than 10 years, a spate of new ones have opened their doors, particularly in the past few months.

To Lila Greene--whose 15-year-old Renta Yenta may be the grandmother of them all--the reason is simple: “Our lives have become so complicated that we need someone to do these things for us.”

The latest to get started is Hollywood-based Apology Accepted.

If you’re tongue-tied when it comes to saying “I’m sorry,” Apology Accepted representatives will make your regrets, according to Loren Harris, a musician who founded the company in mid-October.

Sometimes “all people need is some outsider to throw in a white flag for them,” Loren said. “And that’s where we come in.”

Harris and his partner, Brian Brasher, have made all of their apology-for-hire appearances in person, so far, but said they would do a telephone apology if a client requested one.

“I tell people that the success of the apology is contingent on their sincerity, especially with husbands and wives,” Harris explained. “Apologies are specialized for each client. And I always ask, ‘OK, Joe, on a scale of 1 to 10, how mad is she?’ I don’t want this to be the kind of business where people are not involved in their own apology. That’s why we call the service ‘the tailored approach to saying I’m sorry.’ ”

‘Something Special’

Harris says he has done several corporate apologies as well as personal ones. “And we always do something special. We try to find out what the person likes, or what they relate to or if there is some special thing they would remember from the past. With this service, we are helping not only to resolve, but to release bad or negative experiences in a positive and unique manner.”

Since each “I’m sorry” is geared to the client’s special situation, the price for apologies varies considerably. “So far, we’ve done everything from $25 to $900,” he said. “And that $900 one was a corporate account where we gave the person a huge granite clock.”

On a more mundane level, if you’re looking for someone to wait at your home for repair people, sit with the cat while you’re out of town, or do your laundry or grocery shopping, Hassle Busters, started in July, will do just that--and many other kinds of errands, according to owner Kate Mims of Venice.

Mims said that her fees are made on a case-by-case basis, because “each service is different, and travel time and distance figure in.” She charges $25 to wait at your home for deliveries, $20 to stand in line for tickets, $20 to do laundry, $10 to pick up dry-cleaning. Other prices vary with the task and length of time it takes.

Although Mims says she did a lot of housecleaning in the beginning, most of her clients now have more esoteric requests. Recently, she fed two cats for a couple going out of town, staying with the animals 1 1/2 hours a day “because one cat was 18 years old and they didn’t want it to be alone all day.”

‘Waste of Time’

Declaring waiting for deliveries “one of the worst wastes of time,” Mims said she recently charged $25 for waiting in a client’s home for a couch delivery, “but that was a lot less than it would have cost her staying home from work or wasting a vacation day.”

“I’ve taken pets to the animal hospital, run different errands for people and stood in line for tickets to an Elton John concert, where you have to get there at the crack of dawn.”

Mims performs most of the services herself, but when Hassle Busters’ schedule gets too hectic, she has a part-time employee to help out.

Renta Yenta founder Lila Greene of Sherman Oaks now hires part-time workers, often students, to fill her service orders--everything from “getting someone to line someone’s kitchen shelves” ($25 an hour) to “unpacking boxes for people who have just moved from back East and putting the house here together like they’d never moved” ($100 a hour). She’s even “rented an elephant that roller skates.”

Specialized Services

Greene has branched out in recent years to offer her customers a catalogue of specialized services. It includes homemade chicken soup for “when you need a little love,” which costs from $55 and is shipped anywhere by air overnight. One of the “more extravagant” Renta Yenta offerings is a rental hot tub delivered to your house and set up for the evening. At $500, that also includes dinner for two.

Her soon-to-be-released holiday 1988 catalogue includes a personal shopper for all of your Christmas gifts ($35 for two hours) to someone who will play a purple harp with cherubs at your holiday party for $150 to $200 a hour.

According to Los Angeles agency sources, most personal service personnel are bonded, insured or both, and have a list of references for prospective clients to check. To be on the safe side, always inquire about insurance and bonding.

For example, all 60 branches, nationwide, of Home Sitting Services share in the insurance and bonding costs for their employees, according to Linda Crowley, a former accountant who owns the Beverly Hills branch of the company.

Three-year-old Home Sitting Services of Beverly Hills will send a retired man or woman to live in your house while you are on vacation or out of town on business. The service costs $30 a day and up, “depending on the number of pets and things to be done at the house,” said Crowley. The company also offers elderly companion care at $70 a day.

Exclusively for pets, D. J.’s Pet Taxi in Hacienda Heights will take your dogs, cats or birds to the groomer or to the vet for shots, Monday through Friday, any time between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., for about $30 round-trip. Nights and weekends are devoted to emergency animal transport to veterinarians for injured or sick animals. The fee for an emergency trip is $66 one way.

Dirk and Joline Van Voris, who operate D. J.’s Pet Taxi, also give a $5 discount to senior citizens.

Barbara Kay and Dinny Miller of Executive Runaround generally charge $15 an hour for their services and “w do everything--everyday mundane errands like picking up the dry-cleaning, paying traffic tickets, buying gifts to hiring household staff for people or setting up corporate apartments,” said Kay, who started the company 10 years ago.

Kay said the bulk of Executive Runaround’s clients use their service more than once, and some on a weekly basis.

“Most are busy people, executives or housewives with lots of children, who don’t have time to do all the things they have to,” she said. “We have car keys and house keys and credit cards from some people. So, if they call us and want something, we go buy it and use their credit card.”

If a client request takes them out of town, Kay and Miller offer the customer a flat fee for the trip and service. And any time business backs up, they have five employees--all bonded--who work for Executive Runaround on a contract basis.

“When I first got started, all my clients were in the movie business,” Kay recalled. “They were the only ones with the money and frivolous enough to do it (hire personal service companies). But now, in the last two years, most of our clients are regular, conservative people. People who just don’t have enough time to do everyday things anymore.”

For more information:

Apology Accepted: (213) 876-8059.

Hassle Busters: (213) 827-5779.

D. J.’s Pet Taxi: (818) 968-0311.

Renta Yenta: (818) 907-7807 or (800) 537-0485 outside California; $35 a year for a catalogue subscription.

Home Sitting Services: (213) 826-6049 in Beverly Hills; in the San Gabriel Valley, (818) 441-3888).

Executive Runaround: (213) 734-4017 in Los Angeles; in Encino, (818) 501-6466.