My first post in long long time. Feels therapeutic.
Its been a while since I last posted anything on this blog, so here goes.
After an intensely frustrating day of tending to bathrooms at Oakwood for my OJT (yes, tending to bathrooms. Cleaning the toilets whenever “surprises” arise, wiping all the glasses and mirrors that had smudges, and emptying the trashbins of all the bathrooms in the public areas, which makes up about 4 floors, every single stinking time a guest uses the toilet.) and two more hours of waiting for an empty cab to take me home, I can officially say that this has been one of the suckiest days to date.
With so many things going through my mind, only one thought remains to help me cope. There are people who have it worse, yet find enough beauty in life to keep it positive.
Over the past summer, I’ve mingled with the guests, worked with the slightly better off sales executives, served at the restaurant, and cleaned rooms and toilets with the housekeepers. I can pretty much say that I’ve gone through all the social strata.
As much as I enjoyed the company of each group of people, the one that I’ve enjoyed the most is that of the housekeepers. Only a few of them actually planned on becoming housekeepers. Most of them took up a range of impressive courses back in college, from criminology to psychology, to computer science, to engineering. However, circumstances have led them to what they do now. They do probably some of the most demeaning things that I can think of. They fix crazy ass messed up beds, clean up poop, piss, and even the stuff that only lovers should see. They clean the dishes, fix the clothes, the laundry, every little thing that the guests are “too busy” to do themselves. They work incredulous duty hours and get paid minimum wage to do the things they do; yet through it all, they remain the jolliest people I’ve ever encountered.
Now that I’m old enough, I have to worry about things like rent and tuition, and I used to come out a stupid wreck, to the point wherein I end up taking care of neither of them, to my sisters’ frustration. They worry about their rent, their food, their family’s food, their parents’ health, their siblings’ tuition, just about everything, and they make do with their minimum wage.
Who am I to complain about anything at this point? Who am I to think that I have nothing, when, compared to these people, I have everything?
So after this super frustrating day, I’m going back to work tomorrow and I’m going to thank each of these amazing people, and they won’t even know why.
