CEOs may be tough, but cleaning is tougher

Household cleaning is the toughest job I have ever done. It should not exist.

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Preamble

During times when I forget free will is an illusion and we are stardust floating through space I occasionally regret my poor life decisions [⇣][⇣]. However, the advantage of having had both a horizontally and vertically eclectic history is that it widens one's perspective and increases empathy.

Because we work too much and play too little I previously sought only for part-time jobs. After what turned out to be a trickier search than it should be I eventually landed a household cleaning contract for a Belgian general welfare centre, cleaning at homes for people who haven't been dealt the best of cards. It was the middle of winter; the news arrived as a heart-warming present. It wasn't. A blizzard breeze reverberates the Max Payne soundtrack. Having hit rock-bottom you roam the snowy streets of New York. On each step your fingers get colder, your feet more wet. A shiver. The sky turns dark, so does your mind.

🔊 Click to play the Max Payne theme.

—Audio: Max Payne theme.

Toughest job

While facing the deteriorating weather by bike a supervisor accompanied me to every location. Sooner than expected I was left to my own devices and began exploring the premises. “Okay let's do this. At least I'm warm and inside.” I filled a bucket of water. Mopped a floor. Clean as a whistle. “Nice!” Filled another bucket. Mopped a floor and wiped a toilet. Clean as a stinky whistle. “Okay, good!” Filled yet another bucket. Mopped a floor. Clean as a… picks up an oozing ball of hair from a shower drain… “What the fuck!? How the hell did I end up here? What am I doing? What is happening?” For every floor I mopped, I mopped my brain with these thoughts tenfold. Stoicism works well to embrace events out of one's control, but dealing with loss of hope was out of my league.

Day two. One hour before the alarm rang I consciously tried to enjoy every bit of warmth before having to trudge the snow again. Alas. The storm brewing inside mimicked the outside. Fast forward, at the end of the week I quit. The endless monotony gives one's mind free range to spiral. But the finishing blow was delivered by my declining physical health. Even at part-time capacity of daily four hours my knees were hurting after three days, which bled every remaining ounce of motivation, arterially. That says a lot because as a skateboarder I am used to the pain from hitting the pavement or the board battering my shin. Therefore, allow me to compare the two and conclude that repetitive strain during cleaning is worse. Max pain. They're insidious injuries, creeping, striking without warning. Unlike skateboarding the pain doesn't make one feel alive nor does it strengthen the body. One cannot prepare nor simply stop working to recover as one sees fit. This meant a resounding “Nope!” Sports has always been a crucial method of dealing with and finding a way out of adversity. Without it I wither.

But I was lucky. For better or worse I had my parents as a safety net. Many, probably most people do not. There's a mortgage to pay and family to tend do. They have to rinse, they have to repeat. The majority of my acquaintances' family members who clean as a profession have physical health problems. Those that I know do too, and one of them wakes up at 4AM to take the train at 5AM, no fancy working from home. It doesn't take a genius to realise why being on the dole is often preferable. One friend's mother straight up quit without any possibility of severance. It's that bad.

One could argue that it could be worse, “at least they don't have to work in mines or sweatshops.” Well duh captain obvious. By that line of reasoning only the worst off human would be granted complaints and nothing would ever change.

Redundant

Why do we go on like this? Hiring a housemaid is understandable but should it be further normalised? Can't we just live smaller and work less in order to regain the capacity to clean up our own mess? Why buy what one cannot maintain, one is absent from ⅓ of the time, or sleeping in for the remainder ⅓? So many questions. Don't even get me started on the huge amounts of our consumerist waste people on the other side of the planet need to clean or sea animals choke on.

“That's the whole meaning of life isn't it: trying to find a place for your stuff…If you didn't have so much goddamn stuff you wouldn't need a house.” —George Carlin

Nowadays I'd rather live small with optimally used rooms next to a garden I'd just let grow wild—for mowing the lawn is a plague upon society. Wild too is pushing the idea all the way to the workplace. For one, we sit down too much [⇣]. Two, we are fat. Cartman may be big boned [⇣]—coughs inconspicuously—and some people really do have a faulty hypothalamus or thyroid, but besides those rare legitimate reasons gluttony caused obesity is no lifestyle to be proud of. Nonetheless we still manage to let ⅓ of the food go to waste [⇣]—we're the best and worst at obesity simultaneously—eat your goddamn plate. Jezus Christ, I won't even include a source on the resulting cardiovascular diseases.

Sorry, I lied. Lucky for me tangents are not a sin—winks in trigonometry. Please stop.

Three, recent research showed that about 35% of Canadian employees are bored at work, the “boredom boreout syndrome” [⇣]. While the numbers don't necessarily reflect the rest of us, it wouldn't be surprising. So how about a change of pace by spending perhaps a meagre thirty minutes each day to clean up after ourselves so we all live healthier? We'd spread the load of a shitty job among everyone, so some one doesn't need to. We'd decrease spine injuries. And if work is already boring, we'd intersperse it with something else boring, but meaningful and necessary. Want to bet it would actually increase productivity? Just remember the creative explosion one experiences when forced to sit down and study.

Increased productivity is something CEOs salivate about. So do I. Not for increasing profits but for decreasing work hours. Anyway, what I wanted to quickly address despite my reservations of those in power, unironically, is that being a CEO must indeed be tough. Likewise any other high-responsibility high-consequential managerial function. They're not all leaning back counting money. Disregarding sociopaths who are drawn to such functions [⇣], making high consequential decisions is stressful. Having to do that often even more so. People depending on you is stressful. Always being on call is stressful. Being surrounded by mask-wearing cut-throats is stressful—to anyone for that matter. I could go on, but that's not the point here. Being a CEO is tough, but cleaning jobs are tougher. As aforementioned it directly deteriorates ones physical health. The cleaning staff largely go underappreciated, disrespected even*. But most importantly, though it can be done [⇣], past a certain age there's hardly any light at the end of the tunnel, there's hardly a way out.

“Now, hospital policy is to stay home if you're sick. But if you're making $8.00 an hour, then you kind of need the $8.00 an hour, right?” —House M.D., Pilot [⇣]

– – – – –

* This observation has no bearing on my employer.

“They took our jobs!”

Before being burned at the stake for ideas that might seem preposterous, I do not wish to rob anyone of their livelihood. I simply argue that by making the household/office cleaning profession redundant by doing it ourselves we can provide more vacancies in cognitively stimulating fields. To those who claim that there will always be a large portion of people too stupid for more intellectually demanding jobs:

“C'est celui qui dit qui l'est.”

Come now, ye of little faith. Two hundred years ago they thought only a select set of humans were capable of reading and writing, which is obviously false, we now know nearly everyone can [⇣]. They thought slavery was necessary to get things done, which is also false, but unfortunately still present through outsourced labour. The same “oopsies” hold true for women's suffrage, smoking, apartheid, and so on. So, what in one hundred years? Will we look back with equal disgust on carnism, car centrism, consumerism, and another plethora of et cetera? My god I hope so. Just think of our progeny, what wouldn't you wish upon them which is ubiquitous today? More tangibly, if you were born today, unable to choose genes or geography, would the world be okay, or can you envision something better?

—Angelino Desmet; 17 January 2024.

Latest edit: 18 January 2024.

• 2024/1/18: 1. Adds source: The Corporation (2003).

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Sources

1. Robert Sapolsky: Do We Have Free Will? | Robert Sapolsky & Andrew Huberman.
2. Cosmos: Carl Sagan - We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.
3. Vivienne Gucwa, Flickr: New York City - Snow at Night - Empty Streets - Upper East Side.
4. Roger Frampton, TEDx: Why Sitting Down Destroys You | Roger Frampton | TEDxLeamingtonSpa.
5. South Park: I am not fat, I am big boned!
6. Amy Quinton, UC Davis: Why is one-third of our food wasted worldwide?
7. Our World in Data: Causes of death, World, 2019.
8. Linda Nazareth, The Globe and Mail: It is time to recognize the major issue of ‘boreout’ at work.
9. • YouTube: The Corporation (2003).
   • The Movie Database (TMDB): The Corporation (2003).
10. VRT NWS: BEKIJK - Van poetsvrouw tot eremagistraat: hoe het Tweedekansonderwijs het leven van Alice helemaal veranderde.
11. House M.D.: On Foreman's First Day.
12. Sal Khan, TED: Let's teach for mastery -- not test scores.

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