Why is it wrong for Hilly to have rules for her own employees?

She was insulting and demeaning about it. She was treating the black maids as subhuman. She also was inflexible and expected her maid to go outside to the other restroom with a storm so bad it was flooding and there were tornadoes. Hilly's own mom thought she was being unreasonable.
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Those substandard restrooms did not even have a small sink for a maid to wash her hands, I notice. Watching the movie right now.

Also, Hilly was the leader of the other white women in that area. If a maid stood up to her, Hilly would make sure she was unable to get another job, which is what she did.

Now, do you really think Hilly would have had a problem if a white maid used her main bathroom? I think not. I've cleaned houses before and no-one ever told me what bathroom I could use, if I needed to go.

If she doesn't want them using her bathroom, I think as an employer she has the right to tell the people she hires to use a different facility.

Because she wasn't just designating a particular bathroom she wanted her employees to use. It's perfectly reasonable to ask someone to use, say for example, the bathroom in the hall instead of the one in your master suite. However, she was treating her maid like some kind of disease ridden animal. She insisted Minnie, who had to go so badly that she was doing the potty dance, go outside during a dangerous storm, to use a toilet in a half finished room that didn't even have a sink so that her own rosy asscheeks never had to sit on the same toilet seat as her black maid. And then she expected the maids to be grateful about having their own bathrooms! THAT is wrong! And stupid since that same "disease ridden maids" were preparing the food, doing the laundry and taking care of the children.

Minnie worked for Mrs. Walters, Hilly's mother, before Hilly moved her mother in with her and got rid of her previous maid. I think Minnie only stayed for Mrs. Walters, even if it meant putting up with her daughter. Hilly hired her, because she is a highly sought-after cook. The bathroom incident was the straw that broke the camel's back.

"It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves."

I've been to weddings that were held at private homes, where they would place portable outhouses around the outside, to prevent wedding guests from traipsing in and out of the house to use the facilities. This I can understand since a lot of the time, the people hosting the wedding, are not going to be totally familiar with EVERY attendee, and may be uncomfortable with strangers in their home.

What Hilly did, was totally unreasonable and unrealistic.

@cocacolaistherealthing
"I don't see a problem with her making her own rules about the maids she hires".

There is nothing wrong with it.Employees have separate facilities. When was the last time you walked into the restroom at a fine restaurant and saw the Executive Chef taking a dump?

It's just something more to cry about.

1) It was a nuisance and impractical. Using a separate toilet would be fine, but putting it outside so the maid would have to go out into a tornado, which killed 18 people, is ridiculous.

2) It was unhygienic. There was nowhere to wash your hands; the maids were working with the children and cooking food.

3) It wasn't done for a good reason. It was done to be demeaning to black people. That stops it from being an acceptable way for an employer to behave and instead becomes an act of bullying, which is unacceptable even if you are an employer or it's your own home.

If Hillary had wanted a separate toilet for the maids, but was willing to let her use the in-house toilet in extreme cases, that wouldn't have been so bad. Or, if the toilet had been in the house with a sink, even better. Most of all, if she had made her decision based out of genuine health concerns, it'd be ignorant, but understandable. However, considering the toilets were gross, and she was happy to eat whatever her maids made for her, and her general behaviour, the toilet issue was a power-play and nothing more.

You have to remember, though, that Minnie was Hilly's MOTHER'S maid, and when Hilly had her mother come live with her, she brought Minnie along because Hilly had just fired another maid (or the maid had run off, can't remember). While it isn't mentioned in the movie, it sure seems as if Hilly's mother [the Sissy Spacek character] was a lot less rigid when it came to rules for her maids, and I'm sure Minie had used any bathroom she needed to at Mrs Walters {name?] house.

Hilly might be able to make her own rules in her own house, but the reason she was pushing for everyone to do it was she simply did not want to visit any of her friends' houses and have to use a toilet that perhaps one of the Negro maids had used. And I use the word "Negro" because it was the term of the times.