So The Queen Has Cut 400 Summer Jobs Since Buckingham Palace Will Remain Closed To Visitors
If your summer plans included traveling overseas to London, despite COVID-19 dangers (a “reverse Madonna”, if you will), you can forget about dropping those pounds on a tour of The Queen’s London pad. Buckingham Palace has corona-canceled its seasonal summer tour, forcing The Queen to lay off hundreds of temporary employees. Yeesh, this grand castle isn’t big enough for all these people to stay six feet apart from one another? How… paltry.
About 380 people had been hired as tour guides and to help with the annual summer exhibit. The exhibit runs from late July to October. The Queen opened Buckingham Palace to visitors 27 years ago, when she needed the money to repair Windsor Castle after a fire caused $62 million in damage (hmmm, is there any way they can blame that on 11-year-old Meghan Markle pulling a Firestarter?).
via People:
A spokesperson for the Royal Collection tells PEOPLE, “The roles were for around 380 temporary summer staff on three-month contracts. They were recruited earlier this year for the Buckingham Palace opening, which now isn’t going ahead.
“They have all been given the option to carry over the offer for next summer.”
I’d be pretty pissed if I were one of those laid-off employees. Giving swanky royal tours of Buckingham Palace sounds like a sweet summer gig. Better than my teenage summer jobs, which included ice cream scooper (gained so much weight), hotel maid (cleaned up so much hair and shit), then back to ice cream scooper (doubled down on that weight gain).
But give The Queen a break, OK? She is graciously employing 22 servants while quarantining at Windsor Castle, while the rest of us callously chose to lay off our chefs, nannies, chauffeurs, and butlers. God, we’re selfish.
But it’s not just Buckingham Palace tours that are being shut down:
Frogmore House (where Meghan Markle and Prince Harry had their evening wedding reception two years ago) and Clarence House, the London home of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, will not open during the summer either.
Shit! Meghan and Prince Harry were relying on that tourist money to pay off their Frogmore renovations! Add another decade to their already eleven-year repayment plan…
If you’re dying and your last bucket list wish is to get an inside look at Buckingham, you can take a 360-degree virtual tour at this link. I suggest sipping on some Earl Grey tea, choosing to ignore the pesky little fact that your son is a perv, and passive-aggressively despising any non-Stepford-female who dares to marry one of your precious male descendants. That way you’ll get the full QUEENLY experience.
Pic: Wenn.com