My Low Wage Life - Allison

Living a low wage life has never been a struggle for me. Even though, I have had a low wage job life guarding, I have never felt pressure to earn money. I am fortunate enough that I didn’t have to get a job to survive. Instead, I chose to get a summer job to learn responsibility, and save money for college. Growing up in Dover, MA, a very affluent community, I have never had to experience the low wage side of things. My parents work hard to give my brother and me everything we need. Although we are well off, we still see the issues of low wage work.
Ever since I was young, we have hired housekeepers. They would come weekly to clean, change the sheets, vacuum up the dog hair, and even mop the floors. Basically, to make everything look spick and spam. Sometimes my mom would even have them come twice before company came. When I was younger I didn’t understand the idea of a housekeeper. I would constantly ask my mom why I would have to clean my room before the cleaning lady came. She would always explain to me that her job wasn’t to pick up after me, but to vacuum my room and change my sheets. Now, I feel spoiled as I watch someone else clean our house.
Over the years I have gotten to know our different cleaning ladies well, so they feel like family. We constantly giver them food, old clothes, toys, etc. that we don’t want. Our current housekeeper, Claudia, is originally from Brazil, but speaks English relatively well. Claudia cleans houses for a living. Everyday she cleans different houses to help support her family. Sometimes she’ll bring her relatives to help clean the house more efficiently in a time restraint.
Having grown up with a cleaning lady I see the hardships that they face from a low wage life. Our housekeeper lives paycheck to paycheck. Whenever my mom needs to cancel on her she always tries to reschedule for a different day. Additionally, many housekeepers are of a different ethnicity trying to make ends meet. Therefore, she, along with many others, have to deal with a language barrier. Although, she speaks english, there are still some misunderstandings. Housekeepers also have to develop a sense of trust with their employer. This is a dilemma for many workers. It is easy for employers to blame housekeepers for breaking items or items gone missing. We know our cleaning lady so well that she now lets our dogs out to go to the bathroom and we have no problem leaving the house open for her when no one’s home.
I think housekeeping is a very interesting low page profession that many people don’t think of. It is a hard job in order to please their employer and make money while doing so. As we read in Nickel and Dimed its also very physically painful. That’s why I want to look more into housekeeping and create my next hypertext about it.