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\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\ni do care if someone hires someone to clean though like you can\u2019t just throw that out there as if it isn\u2019t well known that those people that are hired to clean your home exist because they\u2019re poor. wash your own dirty dishes
I understand what you\u2019re saying, but you also seem to be ignoring the fact that people who are hiring these poor people to clean their houses are giving those people jobs. If they weren\u2019t hiring them to clean their houses, these people may not have a job at all.
i don\u2019t agree with this logic. i don\u2019t think we need to settle for a job or nothing, is the same to be said for women who work under slavery like conditions in clothing factories in poor countries? why can\u2019t we fight for change instead of accepting that some people just have to be maids
Before she moved in to take care of her, my aunt hired a maid to come to my disabled grandmother\u2019s house once a week to clean for like 2-3 hours and paid her $80 every time she came over. There\u2019s no way my grandmother, who had a bum hip from a car accident and hobbled around with her walker (back when she could even walk), could clean her own house. Maids provide an invaluable service, especially for the elderly and disabled, and they shouldn\u2019t be eliminated just because you think their jobs are somehow not good enough for anyone to be doing. Many jobs like housecleaners, gardeners, etc., are great for people who may not speak the local language, who may have had a limited education, or who came here as adults with limited opportunities. My grandfather, who could speak four languages fluently but his English sucked, became a janitor at the age of 58 to support his family when they first came to America, and his kids always advocated that you should treat blue-collar and traditionally low-paid workers with respect because those jobs are valuable and even someone who cleans toilets is a person who is trying their best. Basically, we shouldn\u2019t try to eliminate these jobs; they should just be better compensated.
yes i agree! i think that disabled people should have help and that it should be easily available for them but to me that wasn\u2019t what the post was talking about!! i read it as a wealthy people simply hiring help to clean just because they can not because they need to. in an altruistic society people who love to clean could become a maid without having to depend on it, if everyone\u2019s basic needs where met and no one would be walking hungry without their job that\u2019s a different story to me! so while yes we do need to bring respect and wages to these jobs i also don\u2019t think it\u2019s unfair to think about if people actually need their houses cleaned by someone else! some do, including the disabled, some don\u2019t!
But here\u2019s the thing.
By focusing our attention and wrath on people who might buy things they don\u2019t really \u201cneed\u201d (OH the wailing over AOC\u2019s $300 purse) we lose sight of the actual problem (Uber and Lyft spending $200 million dollars to defeat legislation that would require them to treat their workers as employees).
Rich people hiring cleaners because they\u2019re \u201clazy\u201d is not the problem. It is a symptom of the problem. If all rich people started picking up their socks and doing their own dishes tomorrow, it wouldn\u2019t increase the wellbeing or economic security of the rest of us one iota. No small cosmetic change will do that. Only fundamentally changing the legal and economic landscape will do that.
And in the meantime, people\u2019s goalposts for who is \u201crich\u201d and who is \u201clazy\u201d will always be so flexible that it will inevitably hit a lot more poor people with disposable income than actual 1%ers.
I know as a disabled person that we are constantly put under scrutiny to prove we\u2019re \u201cdisabled enough\u201d to afford accommodation so you absolutely CANNOT say \u201cthis is the rule but of COURSE disabled people are excepted uwu.\u201d If the rule isn\u2019t built to accommodate disabled people in the first place, it WILL be used to treat us like shit unless we can meet whatever level of \u201cdisabled enough\u201d a random unqualified stranger has decided is today\u2019s benchmark, and meeting that will mean a constant surrender of our rights to privacy and dignity.
This is all probably useless when talking to someone named \u201c70s lesbian\u201d but I really truly promise you, policing people\u2019s choices and \u201crescuing\u201d people from immoral or \u201cdemeaning\u201d work is not nearly as useful as focusing on improving societal and material conditions for workers and poor people.
As a disabled person, I don\u2019t want to rely on someone being\u00a0\u201caltruistic\u201d to do necessary housework I\u2019m too fatigued and in too much pain to do\u00a0 - and on people deciding I was \u201cdisabled enough\u201d through some arbitrary standard to require help. I get enough of \u201cyou\u2019re just lazy and your pain is made up\u201d already, thanks.
I\u2019d love to be in a position able to pay someone a fair wage to help deal with housework that I can\u2019t do without hurting myself.In the same way, I don\u2019t drive. If I need to go somewhere, I really like when I\u2019m able to pay someone for this service! I don\u2019t like having to wait for a friend or acquaintance to be available, and coordinate their schedule with mine, and take time out of their day, and possibly resent me for it (especially if I need to go several places), and have the option of withholding this help in the future if they decide to be an asshole. (I\u2019ve been in abusive situations before where my basic needs have been used as leverage against me. e.g. \u201cWell, you set boundaries I don\u2019t like, so I\u2019m not going to take you to your doctor\u2019s appointment\u201d.)
If I can just say \u201cHere, have money in exchange for doing this thing I can\u2019t/don\u2019t want to do\u201d, things are a lot simpler.
Relying on other people to help out of the goodness of their hearts isn\u2019t practical or realistic for longterm, day-to-day survival stuff.\n\n(If it was, disabled people wouldn\u2019t be in the shitty situations we\u2019re so often in, and so many of us wouldn\u2019t live in poverty.) It\u2019s a nice IDEA, but it doesn\u2019t tend to happen on a large scale.
Cleaning is unpleasant! I\u2019m sure there exist people who enjoy some aspects of it, but if I had to wait for someone to clean out the cat box because they want to, it would never get done. Because cleaning up another animal\u2019s bodily functions is gross and stinky, and if it\u2019s not your cat you really should be compensated in some way for this.
I want everyone to have UBI, too, so that they\u2019re not in a position where they HAVE TO do it or starve, but that\u2019s a separate issue.Hi, I\u2019m employed part-time by a cleaning service, and I also work full-time as a janitor, and I gotta say, I\u2019m not loving some of the takes in this thread.
1. First of all, there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with employing a service to make your life easier, whether you need it or not. I feel like we should start with that. A person who hires the services of a maid or cleaning company is well within their right to do so, whether it\u2019s because they can\u2019t do it themselves or it\u2019s because they just don\u2019t want to. That\u2019s their choice! They are paying money for a service! Except in cases where they are hiring someone directly, they do not control how much the employees who clean their homes/offices/businesses get paid!
2. That said, maid/cleaning services may get tipped, but they are still beholden to minimum wage laws. If you want to talk about paying us more, THAT\u2019S how you\u2019re going to do it, not by policing who is and is not \u201callowed\u201d to hire these services. That said, it might be a good idea to actually do some research into how much a maid or cleaner actually gets paid. I think it\u2019s going to surprise quite a lot of you. Obviously not every person who cleans is going to make a fair wage, but like. Quite a lot of us do, actually. For example, at my part time job, I make $17.50/hour. At my full time job, I\u2019m salaried at $34k/year, with full benefits\u2013and I mean full, including full health, eye, and dental coverage, retirement plan, accruing PTO, the WORKS\u2013and a yearly raise, because,
3. Anyone who cleans in state- or federal-owned buildings are state or federal employees. I\u2019m not sure if the same can be said for municipalities, but I know at the very least, public school janitors are\u2026 I\u2019m fairly certain ALL employees of the city in which they work, if not the state. I work as a janitor at a state college, which makes me an employee of the state, which entitles me to the benefits and union protections of literally any other employee of my state. So, like, to make my next point,
4. Please get it out of your head that we need to be pitied for our \u201cdemeaning\u201d work. First of all, that is incredibly condescending. Second of all, our work is extremely important! We perform necessary services to society across the board! Please stop looking down your nose at people who clean for a living!! Third of all, I obviously can\u2019t speak for every person who cleans for a living, but from my own personal experience, I have been treated with significantly more respect by my clients at every cleaning job I\u2019ve ever worked than I ever had working retail or food service. Obviously you\u2019re going to get an occasional client having a bad day or who is generally unkind, but even then, they\u2019re almost always appreciative of the work we do. I do not feel demeaned for my work. The only time I have ever felt ashamed of my work is when people TREATED my work like it\u2019s something to be ashamed of.
5. Maybe some people \u201cjust have to be a maid,\u201d but like. A lot of us enjoy our work? We take pride in it?? We get a sense of satisfaction seeing something that was dirty and gross NOT BE dirty and gross anymore??? Like, yeah, if I had the choice I\u2019d prefer not to clean strangers\u2019 houses or a bunch of classrooms, but that has nothing to do with the work itself, and everything to do with the fact that I\u2019d just? Like not to work?? But even if UBI were instated tomorrow, I\u2019d still want something to do with my time, and if I, with my level of experience and education, had to choose between the types of jobs available to me, I\u2019d still pick what I\u2019m doing, just because I enjoy it more! I don\u2019t have to deal with vast hoardes of the general public! In fact, most of the time I\u2019m alone! I work at my pace! Nobody\u2019s standing behind me, rushing me or telling me to smile or docking my hours because I\u2019m not up to some arbitrary standard. I LIKE MY WORK!
I know my experiences are not universal. I know there are plenty of cleaning companies that aren\u2019t going to treat their workers with respect, and I know there are even more clients out there who are going to look down on us for the work we do. I know full well that we deserve better wages and better benefits and better treatment for the important work we do (and the fact that none of us qualify for the covid vaccine despite consistent exposure to everything from hospitals to public schools to private offices to private homes is definitely one thing that boils my blood when I think about it too hard).
But, again, this is not demeaning work. This is not shameful work. And there is no line to say whether or not the work I do is justified. I am being paid to perform a service. Whether that service is in the home of someone who can\u2019t clean up after themselves or someone who just wants their time at home not to be interrupted by chores isn\u2019t my business, and it certainly isn\u2019t the business of someone who\u2019d see me out of a job just because they don\u2019t like that fact.
I hire a house cleaning service once a month, simply because cleaning is a skill I do not have. And yes, it is a skill\u2013I can pick up my dirty clothes and empty the dishwasher and all the other basic adulting things, but really getting into corners and sweeping and scrubbing and all the other minutae? If it were up to me it would happen maybe three times a year. So I pay someone else to do it\u2013not because I\u2019m above doing it myself but because they\u2019re much better at it.
Glad to finally have a version of this post with someone who actually does this kind of work chiming in. Cleaning is absolutely skilled labor. It would take me two days to accomplish what a professional does in three hours and they\u2019d still do it better than me.
Leftists who think the solution is to eliminate certain professions they\u2019ve been taught to look down are literally buying into capitalist propaganda. \u201cPlay the game or you might have to become one of *those* people.\u201d Instead we should treating all workers and all types of labor with dignity and respect and make sure everyone earns not just a living but a thriving wage.
I have someone clean every other week. She helps me clean and she cleans (she can give me a task and I can do it but I get overwhelmed if I clean on my own). Thank you to all the cleaning people, food delivery people, and mail and FedEx drivers who make my life so much easier.
All work is work. Period.
haha can you imagine the world where I disposed of my income
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