About cleaning hotels

This is a post I've been planning to write for a long time. Let me take you back to the beginning. When I first arrived to Sydney as a young girl full of hopes and dreams, my first job was cleaning 4.5 star hotels. It was a job that made me totally lose faith in humanity and partially lose faith in getting what you pay for.

Let me tell you.. First of all the agency recruiting the cleaners tried to pay us piece rates. According to fair wok website piece rates don't apply to cleaning services, they apply e.g. in agriculture where it is legal to pay per bucket. For cleaning services, normal hourly salary applies. This was the first reason to resign during the first week. I'm done being treated in an unfair manner. In addition I should have signed a 6-months contract with the agency. Had I left earlier they'd made me pay for the training expenses. Once again, illegal.

Reason number two was bad equipment. How come the employer doesn't even provide disposable rubber gloves for the employees to wear? How expensive can the gloves be? When I studied the rights and obligations of the employee and employer for my next job, they clearly stated that the employer should provide a safe working environment and all the necessary equipment needed to perform the job. Well, I don't feel safe cleaning shitty toilets and showers without gloves. 

Reason number three is that even in a luxury hotel your towel's been used to clean the toilet and shower room floors and walls. Of course the towel is washed afterwards but I still find it disgusting to think that after a shower I'll wrap around myself something that has been used for cleaning purposes. It's like wearing a dirty mop. From now on I will travel with my own towel.

And the reason number four, my favorite one. The cleaning job was exactly the kind of corporation full-of-shit job I've made a promise to try to avoid. Every morning we had to go trough the ”morning shaming”, to listen the manager tell us every detail that had gone wrong the previous day, every complaint the hotel had received regarding cleaning. When I listened the annoyed manager whine about the bad quality of cleaning, I decided to run as fast as I can. It's better for the manager to take the vacuum cleaner to his own hands and start cleaning himself. After all, it is common knowledge that if you want something properly done, you should do it yourself.