Getting Down and Dirty

Gwen Carpenter

            Room nine was an absolute mess.  It looked as though it was going to take a solid hour with Spic and Span.  But it was Saturday morning and Friday night had much more pressing issues.  Peggy, the gap-toothed, corn-rowed, head honcho was at a meeting for all the department heads at the conference center, so a deviation from work would go unnoticed. 

            The conference center is a place often packed with youth groups and people in search of higher truths. This loosely translates to its employees going unnoticed and staying out of contact with the guests as much as possible, and in the rare occasion that you are sought out or discovered you are to act with more manners than a Cotillion instructor and guarantee them what ever they have asked of you. 

            With Peggy in a meeting, the attention spans of the middle-aged housekeepers of the conference center were far from anything involving cleaning.  We headed to the roof, where the secret of the nonexistent alarm had spread through housekeeping, to smoke and gossip.  Robin, the grandmother, always had pains from the prior night’s dancing and drinking, while Vicki, with her signature braids and limp, was always hung-over.  Cheyrl, the youngest spirit, always had the latest news and the most eventful evening to relay as best as her memory could serve her. 

            The chambermaids of the conference center hated cleaning, hated the pay, and hated not only coming to the job, but the job itself.  Yet none of them quit.  They all felt aged and unhealthy, but never missed a night of drinking at Pufferbellies with people younger than their kids, or passed up the chance for a Newport cigarette. They lived off of 17 hours worth of work for minimum wage, yet always needed a new outfit for Friday theme nights.  Yet their flaws were matched by their strengths with finding joy in the little things and never losing hope.

During allotted breaks, we would sit around the staff table in the cafeteria.  One morning Robin, not having eaten breakfast, had a bag of Lays Potato Chips, bacon, and Honey Nut Cheerios.  After finishing her Lays, bacon, mini-sandwiches, the bowl of cereal was devoured.  Yet as the number of Cheerios neared zero, Robin began to look upset.  Once only the honey nut milk remained, Robin looked almost distressed.  I asked her what was wrong, and she replied, “I feel bad throwing away this milk, because there are kids starving all over the world.”  Here she is working at minimum wage, unable to buy food without stamps, thriving off the 15 minutes allotted for a mid-morning break, and she was worried about the starving children around the world…  To be resourceful, she poured the milk into a cup and went outside for a cigarette, tossing her trash without a crumb or drop to spare.

Having formed a bond with the ladies, I invited the crew for dinner.  I allowed them to choose the meal to be served and the date.  That day at lunch, I noticed a much more observant group around the table.  As I put my napkin on my lap, laid my fork to the left of my plate, and my knife to my left, I looked around to see a table of copy cats. They were sitting up straight, waiting to indulge in their turkey pot pie until I had.  Finally the silence was broken, when Cheryl turned to me releasing her breath: “We have to act like white people.”  The ladies let go of their composure and laughed deeply.  For the rest of lunch I answered all their questions about manners and demonstrated table behaviors.  That night, my dinner table was enriched with four middle-aged women, with the etiquette of royals, and the personalities of four housekeepers with more to bring to the table than any duke or prince.

            I enjoy being a housekeeper, sitting outside on the fire escape of the Craigville Conference Center because I love these ladies and their stories.  The discussions on the might make a nun faint, but they are discussions that teach life lessons.  Anyone who passed the tests of trust and secrecy to hear such tales would revel in the humanity within each story.  Ranging from fights in a parking lot to the death of niece, deeper messages could be extracted and to help open my eyes, react with my heart, and put the things that matter first. Sometimes Room nine just has to wait until the butt goes out.