Overprivileged

[ailbhe]

So the house is very very tidy, because we are of the overprivileged few who have somoene else come in once a week and vacuum, wash floors, and dust, polish, clean paintwork etc etc etc. I don't want to hear about how overprivileged that makes me, I feel more than guilty enough already.

I have also done a load of laundry and am about ready to eat; the weather continues charming and this morning I will study in the garden.

No, really, I will. I wore shorts especially for the weather.

Comments

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Privileged, certainly - just as anyone reading this is (literacy yadda yadda access to the Web yadda yadda). The free-market argument, frankly, would be easier to stomach if the dice weren't so ridiculously loaded from the word go.

But over-? I'm not so sure. As long as you're paying a decent wage to this person, it's simply (OK, not simply - this isn't simple) an example of the division of labour.

Your consciousness that it is a privilege presumably ensures that you treat this person with the respect and consideration due to any employee, rather than, say, making judgements or assumptions based on the relative social status of the work you each do. (Note gender-neutral language in previous sentence - out of interest, is this a he-cleaner or a she-cleaner?)

Oh, and read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, if you haven't yet. Does anyone know if the book on similar issues in Britain is out yet? (My memory is whispering "Julie Burchill", but it could be talking bollox.)

[ailbhe]

I don't currently work; I came -><- this close to having a nervous breakdown and am now recovering and planning the wedding and studying, but not working. The cleaners are she-cleaners; they work in teams and get what I think is well-paid for the skill level, and badly paid for the yuk-level. I don't treat them with any level of anything, as I feel so guilty about the whole affair that I tend to avoid interacting with them at all. That's possibly very rude; I'm not sure.

I'd feel better about a he-cleaner, I think. Interesting.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

I don't currently work; I came -><- this close to having a nervous breakdown and am now recovering and planning the wedding and studying, but not working

Not working for a salary, perhaps, but from your entries over the past while, you don't appear to be exactly idle!

Me, I intend to investigate the option of a cleaner as soon as the house is in a state where it could conceivably be cleaned by someone who didn't have a stake in its contents (*breaks into a chorus of the More Storage Space Song*)...