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You need to stop saying "AI" when you mean "generative AI".

You need to stop inferring "generative AI" when you just see "AI".

By focusing our attention and wrath on people who might buy things they don’t really “need” (OH the wailing over AOC’s $300 purse) we lose sight of the actual problem (Uber and Lyft spending $200 million dollars to defeat legislation that would require them to treat their workers as employees).

Rich people hiring cleaners because they’re “lazy” is not the problem. It is a symptom of the problem. If all rich people started picking up their socks and doing their own dishes tomorrow, it wouldn’t increase the wellbeing or economic security of the rest of us one iota. No small cosmetic change will do that. Only fundamentally changing the legal and economic landscape will do that.

And in the meantime, people’s goalposts for who is “rich” and who is “lazy” will always be so flexible that it will inevitably hit a lot more poor people with disposable income than actual 1%ers.

I know as a disabled person that we are constantly put under scrutiny to prove we’re “disabled enough” to afford accommodation so you absolutely CANNOT say “this is the rule but of COURSE disabled people are excepted uwu.” If the rule isn’t built to accommodate disabled people in the first place, it WILL be used to treat us like shit unless we can meet whatever level of “disabled enough” a random unqualified stranger has decided is today’s benchmark, and meeting that will mean a constant surrender of our rights to privacy and dignity.

In the same way, I don’t drive. If I need to go somewhere, I really like when I’m able to pay someone for this service! I don’t like having to wait for a friend or acquaintance to be available, and coordinate their schedule with mine, and take time out of their day, and possibly resent me for it (especially if I need to go several places), and have the option of withholding this help in the future if they decide to be an asshole. (I’ve been in abusive situations before where my basic needs have been used as leverage against me. e.g. “Well, you set boundaries I don’t like, so I’m not going to take you to your doctor’s appointment”.)

1. First of all, there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with employing a service to make your life easier, whether you need it or not. I feel like we should start with that. A person who hires the services of a maid or cleaning company is well within their right to do so, whether it’s because they can’t do it themselves or it’s because they just don’t want to. That’s their choice! They are paying money for a service! Except in cases where they are hiring someone directly, they do not control how much the employees who clean their homes/offices/businesses get paid!

2. That said, maid/cleaning services may get tipped, but they are still beholden to minimum wage laws. If you want to talk about paying us more, THAT’S how you’re going to do it, not by policing who is and is not “allowed” to hire these services. That said, it might be a good idea to actually do some research into how much a maid or cleaner actually gets paid. I think it’s going to surprise quite a lot of you. Obviously not every person who cleans is going to make a fair wage, but like. Quite a lot of us do, actually. For example, at my part time job, I make $17.50/hour. At my full time job, I’m salaried at $34k/year, with full benefits–and I mean full, including full health, eye, and dental coverage, retirement plan, accruing PTO, the WORKS–and a yearly raise, because,

3. Anyone who cleans in state- or federal-owned buildings are state or federal employees. I’m not sure if the same can be said for municipalities, but I know at the very least, public school janitors are… I’m fairly certain ALL employees of the city in which they work, if not the state. I work as a janitor at a state college, which makes me an employee of the state, which entitles me to the benefits and union protections of literally any other employee of my state. So, like, to make my next point,

4. Please get it out of your head that we need to be pitied for our “demeaning” work. First of all, that is incredibly condescending. Second of all, our work is extremely important! We perform necessary services to society across the board! Please stop looking down your nose at people who clean for a living!! Third of all, I obviously can’t speak for every person who cleans for a living, but from my own personal experience, I have been treated with significantly more respect by my clients at every cleaning job I’ve ever worked than I ever had working retail or food service. Obviously you’re going to get an occasional client having a bad day or who is generally unkind, but even then, they’re almost always appreciative of the work we do. I do not feel demeaned for my work. The only time I have ever felt ashamed of my work is when people TREATED my work like it’s something to be ashamed of.

5. Maybe some people “just have to be a maid,” but like. A lot of us enjoy our work? We take pride in it?? We get a sense of satisfaction seeing something that was dirty and gross NOT BE dirty and gross anymore??? Like, yeah, if I had the choice I’d prefer not to clean strangers’ houses or a bunch of classrooms, but that has nothing to do with the work itself, and everything to do with the fact that I’d just? Like not to work?? But even if UBI were instated tomorrow, I’d still want something to do with my time, and if I, with my level of experience and education, had to choose between the types of jobs available to me, I’d still pick what I’m doing, just because I enjoy it more! I don’t have to deal with vast hoardes of the general public! In fact, most of the time I’m alone! I work at my pace! Nobody’s standing behind me, rushing me or telling me to smile or docking my hours because I’m not up to some arbitrary standard. I LIKE MY WORK!

I know my experiences are not universal. I know there are plenty of cleaning companies that aren’t going to treat their workers with respect, and I know there are even more clients out there who are going to look down on us for the work we do. I know full well that we deserve better wages and better benefits and better treatment for the important work we do (and the fact that none of us qualify for the covid vaccine despite consistent exposure to everything from hospitals to public schools to private offices to private homes is definitely one thing that boils my blood when I think about it too hard).

People can have disposable income because of their saving or spending habits or their living situation, even if they make very little money. And it is not your place to judge their priorities and what they choose to spend their money on.

Someone with a higher income may choose to put all their money in investment, may choose to retire early and become a full time homemaker, may clean to relax, someone with lower income may decide that cleaning is too overwhelming for them and hire someone to do it. You simply cannot judge someone’s financial situation based on how they choose to spend their money. (Excluding things like rigging the market or buying up multiple investment properties.)

For example, I make much more money than I did 3 years ago. However, I have less disposable income than I use to due to having a mortgage. I also have the spare time and energy to truly enjoy doing chores because I am working in a less stressful job. My past self, who was overworked and overwhelmed, needed to hire cleaning service. My present self do not.

SOME PEOPLE LIKE CLEANING

SOME PEOPLE LIKE GARDENING

We can’t rely on altruism. We do right now and it isn’t working, and we know better than to think we are anywhere NEAR the top of the list as far as allocating resources is concerned.

Why someone does or does not hire a cleaning professional is way less important than them finding a company that TREATS their employees like human beings providing a valuable service and PAYS them as such.

The way people on this post talk about hiring maids reminds me of the way anti-sex work people talk about sex work. As if there’s something inherently suspicious about hiring someone for a task that isnt strictly necessary for your survival.

And in both cases people act like they are defending the workers in question. Because obviously these jobs are inherently degrading and morally evil and by hiring them you are complicit in sex trafficking/slavery!!!!!

And the people making these statements, 9/10, are not former or current workers in the industry. They are morally outraged by an industry and proclaim themselves defenders of people they don’t actually listen to. Because if they did, they couldn’t be the saviors they see themselves as. They’d have to admit that the situation is complicated and workers can have various feelings about their work and maybe their moral outrage is fueled more by ingrained biases than anything.

For one, it’s some weird Calvinist shit to act like it’s bad to pay people for a nice experience. Like yes, disabled people do benefit from both cleaning services and sex work, but also it’s just. Fine to pay someone for pleasure or a clean house.

And two: we need to recognize how easily someone “defending the working class” (or working class women specifically) just re-stigmatize an already stigmatized industry. Often by reusing already bigoted tropes, but in the workers “defense.”

People think of sex workers as disposable things to buy? SWrs say that, no, just because we are sex workers does not mean we are disposable or that you are buying us instead of the service we provide, you need to have respect for us. as workers Anti-SW people say actually, everything they said is right, and the solution is for your job to not exist anymore :)

People think of maids as slaves to treat terribly and demean? People working in cleaning services say no, just because we do literal dirty work doesn’t mean you have the right to underpay us, control us, demean us, you need to have respect for us as workers. Anti-cleaning service people say actually, everything they said is right, and the solution is for your job to not exist anymore :)

If you can’t imagine a world in which people can do sex work or cleaning work with safety, respect, and good pay, that is your failing. You have so little respect for the people in these industries that you can only see them as respectable if their jobs no longer exist? You think the reason why their working conditions are often poor is because of some inherent moral failing in the work itself, and not because it’s often done by people society views as expendable? You really don’t think that your views on these issues may be influenced by the very same bias that normalizes the abuse of these workers?

Gardener here. I’m also an elementary school librarian with a degree but I’ve been working for a landscaping company doing everything from educational programs about butterflies for kids to Just Digging Holes And Lugging Mulch in 90-degree heat for hours. Done it full-time, done it part time. I do it because I love gardening.

It’s funny to see my job being debated in a post about what’s considered demeaning work. I know rich assholes will see me with mud on my knees and turn their nose up, but I didn’t think I’d see it coming from the other side too.

But turning to the dark side changed his physical appearance. Most notably his eyes, which became yellow (a very typical Sith transformation in many species)

And while I know that Wookies are not supposed to be able to be force sensitive and therefore cannot become Jedi or Sith, all I am saying is that

He walks through the trees, the sun sifting through his beard. Here I am, just a kid, a father with his favourite child. He looks so much like a dad. Here we are: birds flying; a pulsing river; a ravenous picnic; and that smile, a mouth wide open, his child, newly awakened, wrapped around his neck like rosary beads clinging to his body. I loved him long before I heard of his body failing, and I held him so. Trusting that my love is enough.

Reading only Dead gives:

My dreams every night turn to spiders that all have his face. There is a campfire burning out, and me, the white dust of only ash in my hands. In the real world, standing next to his bed again– he doesn’t look like a body about to burn to pieces. Dead silence– no voice, only an echo not quite gone yet. The pills are down his throath, the morphine into his stomach, his body only for the disease, the wound across his back becomes filled with blood, and me, standing next to the body. Grief has hands twisted, tightening in prayer: the last breath like a final amen. I could speak the prayer a thousand ways– still, God will answer for only God, never for the living.

And reading them both together gives:

He walks through my dreams every night. The trees turn to spiders that all have his face. There the sun is a campfire burning out, and me, sifting through the white dust of his beard, only ash in my hands. Here in the real world I am standing next to his bed, just a kid again– he doesn’t look like a father with a body about to burn his favourite child to pieces. He looks dead. So much silence– no voice, only an echo, like a dad not quite gone yet. Here we are: the pills are birds flying down his throat; the morphine a pulsing river into his stomach; his body a ravenous picnic only for the disease; and that smile, the wound across his back becomes a mouth wide open, filled with blood; and me, his child, standing next to the body. Newly awakened grief has hands wrapped around his neck, twisted like rosary beads tightening in prayer: clinging to the last breath, his body like a final amen. I loved him long before I could speak. I learned the prayer of his body failing a thousand ways– and I held him, so still, trusting that God will answer for my love. Only, God is never enough for the living.