prismatic-bell:

akinmytua2:

homoqueerjewhobbit:

musicalhell:

leopharry:

jabberwockypie:

star-anise:

70slesbian:

jellybeanforest-a-go-go:

70slesbian:

raging-fan-human:

70slesbian:

i do care if someone hires someone to clean though like you can’t just throw that out there as if it isn’t well known that those people that are hired to clean your home exist because they’re poor. wash your own dirty dishes

I understand what you’re 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’t hiring them to clean their houses, these people may not have a job at all.

i don’t agree with this logic. i don’t 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’t 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’s house once a week to clean for like 2-3 hours and paid her $80 every time she came over. There’s 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’t 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’t 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’t 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’s basic needs where met and no one would be walking hungry without their job that’s a different story to me! so while yes we do need to bring respect and wages to these jobs i also don’t think it’s unfair to think about if people actually need their houses cleaned by someone else! some do, including the disabled, some don’t!

But here’s the thing.

By focusing our attention and wrath on people who might buy things they don’t really “need” (OH the wailing over AOC’s $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’re “lazy” 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’t 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’s goalposts for who is “rich” and who is “lazy” 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’re “disabled enough” to afford accommodation so you absolutely CANNOT say “this is the rule but of COURSE disabled people are excepted uwu.” If the rule isn’t 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 “disabled enough” a random unqualified stranger has decided is today’s 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 “70s lesbian” but I really truly promise you, policing people’s choices and “rescuing” people from immoral or “demeaning” 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’t want to rely on someone being “altruistic” to do necessary housework I’m too fatigued and in too much pain to do  - and on people deciding I was “disabled enough” through some arbitrary standard to require help. I get enough of “you’re just lazy and your pain is made up” already, thanks.

I’d love to be in a position able to pay someone a fair wage to help deal with housework that I can’t do without hurting myself.

In the same way, I don’t drive. If I need to go somewhere, I really like when I’m able to pay someone for this service! I don’t 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’ve been in abusive situations before where my basic needs have been used as leverage against me. e.g. “Well, you set boundaries I don’t like, so I’m not going to take you to your doctor’s appointment”.)

If I can just say “Here, have money in exchange for doing this thing I can’t/don’t want to do”, things are a lot simpler.

Relying on other people to help out of the goodness of their hearts isn’t practical or realistic for longterm, day-to-day survival stuff. (If it was, disabled people wouldn’t be in the shitty situations we’re so often in, and so many of us wouldn’t live in poverty.) It’s a nice IDEA, but it doesn’t tend to happen on a large scale.

Cleaning is unpleasant! I’m 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’s bodily functions is gross and stinky, and if it’s not your cat you really should be compensated in some way for this.

I want everyone to have UBI, too, so that they’re not in a position where they HAVE TO do it or starve, but that’s a separate issue.

Hi, I’m employed part-time by a cleaning service, and I also work full-time as a janitor, and I gotta say, I’m 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’s because they can’t do it themselves or it’s because they just don’t want to. That’s 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’S how you’re going to do it, not by policing who is and is not “allowed” 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’s 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’m salaried at $34k/year, with full benefits–and I mean full, including full health, eye, and dental coverage, retirement plan, accruing PTO, the WORKS–and a yearly raise, because,

3. Anyone who cleans in state- or federal-owned buildings are state or federal employees. I’m not sure if the same can be said for municipalities, but I know at the very least, public school janitors are… I’m 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 “demeaning” 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’t 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’ve ever worked than I ever had working retail or food service. Obviously you’re going to get an occasional client having a bad day or who is generally unkind, but even then, they’re 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’s something to be ashamed of.

5. Maybe some people “just have to be a maid,” 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’d prefer not to clean strangers’ 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’d just? Like not to work?? But even if UBI were instated tomorrow, I’d 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’d still pick what I’m doing, just because I enjoy it more! I don’t have to deal with vast hoardes of the general public! In fact, most of the time I’m alone! I work at my pace! Nobody’s standing behind me, rushing me or telling me to smile or docking my hours because I’m 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’t 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’t clean up after themselves or someone who just wants their time at home not to be interrupted by chores isn’t my business, and it certainly isn’t the business of someone who’d see me out of a job just because they don’t 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–I 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–not because I’m above doing it myself but because they’re 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’d still do it better than me.

Leftists who think the solution is to eliminate certain professions they’ve been taught to look down are literally buying into capitalist propaganda. “Play the game or you might have to become one of *those* people.” 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.