Looking for a New Cleaning Lady

[onionsoupmix]

In this here article, some dude named Bentzion Elisha from Crown Heights tells us his very sad and woeful tale of how the Evil Spanish-Speaking Cleaning Lady robbed his family of their precious jewelry. Their items were returned to them, but it was still quite traumatic for the poor dears.

After the heart-wrenching story, Bentzion asks his readers

Comments

[happyduck1979]

Sorry, but this time I disagree with you. There are some people who really do need cleaning help. I know I go months without it, but, for example, this is one of my busiest times of year and I would not get through my pessach cleaning without help.

While I see you point about clean your own mess (and for them most part we do), there is something to be said for hiring someone and if you do you need to know something about who you are hiring! I would certainly not pain an entire community with one brush and say no Spanish cleaning help- but then again I do. I would never allow an Aravi woman to be alone in my home. Truthfully, the help I do hire is people from within my own community.

If we, as a community, stopped looking down on people who earn an honest living by doing manual labour, perhaps there would be more places where we could openly hire people we know and trust

[onionsoupmix]

First of all, the family in the article does not have cleaning help just for Pesach.

Second of all, even for Pesach, I have found, it is not that difficult to clean your own house. If I can manage to do it, most people can, those with physical disabilities excepted.

In times of great need, I have hired people for Pesach before and sitting and scrubbing alongside with them makes you that much less likely to "look down on people who earn an honest living by doing manual labor."

As for "I would never allow an Aravi woman to be alone in my home," that is no better than "I would never allow that Jew alone with my money." It's not worth living in Israel if you have to be so bigoted to get through the day.

[ruchel]

Unfortunately, in Israel and even in chul, you have to be wary not necessarily of your Arab cleaning lady, but of her crazy fanatic bro/nephew/son... some can and do go as far as blowing up the "traitor, white people submitted" relative with the aforementioned "white people".

[happyduck1979]

sure it is. I am sorry you do not think so but thankfully I make my own decisions. The truth of the matter, my hesitation is new to once we made aliya- in fact it is even more recent since there have been a number of local attacks recently. None of them perpetrated by Israeli's. That being said, I use students to clean for me, and I do not work along side them. We put money aside to budget for this and do without things that many other's consider normal. Why would I let someone else tell me how to spend my money? I do not have a car. Pay very little tuition. Do very little shopping- so this is a treat to myself to make my pre-pessach easier (easier while I work 18 hour days).

[happyduck1979]

The article is stupid. However the fact that you're against looking down at cleaning ladies, yet at the same time you're saying that we should be doing cleaning up ourselves shows that you yourself look down on cleaning ladies

[onionsoupmix]

It is their choice to do this job and I'm sure they would rather have people interested in hiring them than not.

Hey, if you read my blog, you know that I am usually polite to my readers, even if I disagree. But this? This? Are you on crack? Have you met any little children who tell you they want to be a cleaning lady when they grow up?

It is as much of a choice to be a cleaning lady as it is to be a drug runner. No one does it because it their career counselor recommended it.

I don't look down on cleaning ladies. I feel bad for them. The people I look down on are the ones who have no physical ailments and have a few kids and cannot manage to keep their own crap clean so they have to pay someone to do it. It is extremely elitist to imagine that someone other person should be cleaning the mess you made. My mother taught me that I'm no better than anyone else and that if I make the mess, I clean it up.

[happyduck1979]

Well, sorry to say, but I completely disagree with you. This has nothing to do with what little girls want, most of them want to be ballerinas, but not too many adult women would choose ballerina as the best choice of a profession. Just like so many little boys want to be astronats or fire men or police men, but most likely when they grow up they'll want to be something else.
When I came to America I used to take any job and I remember going and washing dishes for some people and usually they also asked me to wash their cabinets for them, etc... I was thrilled to do it. It wasn't my dream job or something I was going to do for the rest of my life but at that time I needed to make a little bit of money quickly and this gave me an opportunity to do it.
You didn't answer my question about entire 'janitor' profession, do you believe it shouldn't exist at all?

[onionsoupmix]

I would do a demeaning job too. I would be a cleaning lady if that was my best option for feeding my family. Nothing wrong with an honest day's work. What is wrong is people who won't clean up afterthemselves because they are too good to do so.

Janitors- I guess we have to have janitors b/c there are common spaces that people share and will not clean by themselves.

[happyduck1979]

it's not about being too good at all. maybe you have some specific people in mind in your community who think they're 'too good', however it's very common to have a cleaning lady among secular jews and non-jews too, pretty much among everyone, and nothing to do with being too good.

[happyduck1979]

I do know someone who used to want to be a cleaning lady when she grew up. How about people who want to grow up to be professional organizers? I mean, personally I think being a nurse is a truly revolting idea (bodily fluids and I rarely get along) but there are those who dream of it their whole lives. Someone I hire occasionally used to work at a shop and changed lines of work as this was something she was happier doing.

[onionsoupmix]

Nursing has some unpleasant parts to it, but the overall goal is very noble- to help the sick, to help those who cannot help themselves, to help end suffering. I don't know of a similar noble goal with regard to cleaning. I clean to help Mrs. Smith have a lovely toilet? I wash her floor so her guests will be impressed?

But that is interesting that you met someone who wanted to be a cleaning lady when she was little. Did she end up doing that?

Professional organizers are like interior design people, almost architects & artists.

[happyduck1979]

Did she? don't know yet- she is not grown up

[onionsoupmix]

OK, I am starting to get a grasp on our differences. Relining cupboards, doing windows, grout- these are things not on my radar screen at all. As long as the counters are clean, the floor is swept and the house looks tidy, I am all done. If I was going to look into grout and windows, I would probably have to hire a whole country of cleaning ladies.

[happyduck1979]

lol, only do most of those things when my mom or bubbie is coming to visit. regular sweeping, dishes, laundry etc we do on our own. I would *love* to have soemoen on sundays to do all my shabbat cleanup... i can daydream

[onionsoupmix]

Making a fancy meal for someone or doing their nails is not the same as scrubbing someone's toilets, sorry.

[happyduck1979]

why fancy meal? what about making coffee for someone? what about unloading these huge garbage bins? cutting someone's dirty nails I doubt is so pleasant either. there're tons of jobs that are not pleasant. What about being a nurse and physically cleaning up people, dressing people, and helping them go to the bathroom. There're so many jobs that are more unpleasant than cleaning toilets, or washing floors, or vacuuming.