(Untitled)

[pbrim]

I have taken steps recently to fu.fill a life long dream and I find myself distinctly ambivalent about it. When I was little, every Saturday my mother, my sister, and I would clean house. I made up my mind that I was going to get a job that paid well enough to pay someone else to do the housework. I hate it and I am crap at it, because I just

Comments

[pagawne]

You work for the money you pay them. Drop the guilt in the trash can to be taken out and put in a landfill somewhere. I feel sure you can find better things to do with your energy than to feel guilty.

[anahata56]

I've been thinking of doing this myself, for similar reasons.

One of the things that I found astonishing about my time in Africa is that virtually every household has a domestic of some kind. It might just be a laundress, or someone who comes in once every couple of weeks to do a good scrubbing, but everyone does, and no one really has a problem with it--least of all the domestics. When I was at Sun City, there had been a gigantic stink about African women cleaning the rooms, and how that was an "oppression" that still lingered, post-Apartheid. But I remember coming back to my own room finding two women working in it--and they were singing, quite happily. I asked them how they liked their job in the hotel, and they both told me that they loved working there--that they were treated well, and that they often got lovely tips, and that the money they earned had improved the lives of their families in ways they couldn't have once imagined.

They were employees, not slavesUnfortunately, we still live in a world where there are people who,

[teddywolf]

There's a big difference between 'lazy' and 'tired', and another big difference between 'able to' and 'good'.

There's also a big difference between racist classist snobs and you. So... enjoy your clean home.

[nsingman]

"Nickled and Dimed" was written by Barbara Ehrenreich, a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and her perspective is naturally skewed by her socialist politics. When you hire someone to do any sort of work, pleasant or unpleasant, you are giving them an opportunity to exchange their time for your money. If they valued their time more than your money, they wouldn't take the job. If you valued your time more than the money you offered, you wouldn't have offered the job. There should be absolutely no guilt involved as long as all transactions in this regard are strictly consensual. Since you are treating the cleaning staff with etiquette and dignity, not only shouldn't you have any guilt whatsoever, you should in fact feel quite good about yourself for giving them an opportunity to make that wonderful, voluntary exchange of their time for your money.

[johnpalmer]

Keep in mind that the author of Nickled and Dimed didn't *have* to work a minimum wage job. Now, no one likes a minimum wage job, but they seem that much nastier when you're stuck doing them semi-unwillingly.