Hard Work
For God’s sake, tip the maid
Where I come from, we don’t go to college. “Bettering” yourself meant trying to get a union job and those were already going away back in the last century. I came out of high school with two skill sets: drawing compulsively and being able to clean a house.
Guess what I did to pay the rent?
For well over a decade I was a maid. Ok, a housekeeper as we were called in our gray uniforms, pushing those gigantic carts loaded with toxic cleaning supplies and neatly folded sheets.
I cleaned nursing homes, hotels, motels, assisted living facilities, and offices. My first job after I got to the big city of Cleveland, Ohio, was in the housekeeping department of St. Augustine’s nursing home on Detroit Avenue. Two of my favorite people growing up were my great grandpa, Nick, from Italy and, on the other side of the family, great grandma, Lu, who married her sister’s widower and raised her kids. They both lived 104 years. I grok old people so the nursing home gig was great.
After that there were years of motels out by the airport. Those were pretty grim places. Ramada Inns, Marriotts, Motel 6, they all…
