Three Cleaners And One Mop

A couple months ago, my niggas Trav emailed us a link to a Patrice O'Neal stand-up clip on youtube.com. It was hilarious throughout, but he had a segment on immigrants and the way the carry out their jobs. He spoke of this Mexican cleaning-lady at hotels that disregard "I'm Busy" signs or "Come Back Later" tags that you hang on the door. He said the Mexican ladies will continue to kock and when you open the door -- to a crack mind you -- to let them know to come back, they will literally try squeez through.

"I must clean room, I MUST clean room."

That was so comical to me...but comical in a very real way. These immigrants make it their life's mission to handle their biz and nothing will stop them. I HAVE to clean this office space. It's rich stuff.

Because their labor is cheap and they carry on like God will judge them if they do not clean with 189% of their all, immigrants, in a most of the country, have displaced everyone as the primary cleaners.

Except Florida.

Especially areas like mine. Just far enough away from a city to be a real suburb so you find pockets of true, rural America; but close enough to still be considered within the metro area and attract migrant workers.

Here, in West Central Florida, within arms reach of Tampa Bay, you have three different types of people that inhabit cleaning jobs: Latinos that don't speak English; poor negros between the ages 35-55; and retired seniors.

And know that I mean this in absolute terms. You will not find any other demographic cleaning piss off a urinal besides the three very specific groups I just mentioned.

You will not find an English-speaking Latino wiping down a window in West-Cen Florida. Doesn't happen. I mean, why, hire them? That'd break the stereotype. I mean, where's the utility or convenience in being able to actually communicate the following, "Please don't throw out my 20-oz. cup of coffee that has exactly 18 ounces of coffee and is burning your plam and making you wince. Please leave that $2.50 product on my desk, so that I can enjoy my purchase." Communication is not practical, so I can understand building managers insistence on hiring only Hispanics that know more Latin than they do Glish.

You will not find a retired black or a young black. Retired blacks, most likely to be less financially able than their white counterparts, obviously don't need an extra paycheck. Their caucasian brethern with pensions and snow-bird houses up North need these jobs much more. And why would anyone hire a young black to keep anything tidy? Seriously. No BS, no sarcasm, but that'd be the most defeatus hire ever.

And you will NEVER find an able-bodied caucasian working as a cleaner unless you're in a blue-collar town (Buffalo, Baltimore, Philly, Pittsburgh) and the cleaning jobs are unionized and run by the ethnic-whites. If it's the case of an ethnic-white making $20+/hr, then you might see an able-bodied caucasian cleaning. Otherwise, this is something that will NEVER happen. Even in states like South Dakota, they'll go grab a drunk Indian, sober him up with some Folgers and hand him mop.

No-glish Latinos, 35-55-year-old coloreds, retired caucs -- these are the ONLY groups. There is no empirical evidence to support this, other than my infallable and omnipresent observations.

Now, this is getting back to Patrice O'Neals assertion that the West Coast Mexicans clean like their lives depend on it. That's sort of the case here in West-Cen Fla, too. In fact, each group has unique steezes to how they perform on the job and it each comes down to their differing senses of entitlement to the American Dream, a slice of the capitalism-pie...and because they process this entitlement differently, the exhibit it in differing forms. Thankfully, all three different types of workers are all over Hernando County..in fact, three very inidcative examples get paychecks at my Gold's Gym.

Dig...

Lucy is a Latina. She works evening. Most importantly she works hard. Lucy is the type to wipe off seats, armrests and handles almost immediately after the use. She LITERALLY runs over to machines when they're vacated and does her squirt-wipe move. It's a perfect cleaning motion because her rag is hitting the surface almost immediately as the drops of disinfectant hit the surface. You might find yourself wondering if she's manic, a neat-freak or obsessive compulsive. I mean, before I had gotten hip to her cleaning steez, I just remember taking my time getting up from one of those ab-crunch machines and feeling this presence almost hovering over my back. It was Lucy, waiting to clean my nigger-sweat off the crunch machine. She was so eager to clean my sweat -- even though I was planning to do this myself -- that she semi-brushed me away from the rag laying next to the bench and knocked over my water in the process. Which is when, of course, she picked up my bottle and superhamingly-quick threw it in the nearby trash. At which point I tried to communicate that she'd done something wrong. Which, of course, was first met with a blank-stare, only to be interrupted by the sight of someone vacating another machine, to which she sprinted and began wiping IMMEDIATELY after the patron had just finished wiping it down.

This woman does not leave the lockerroom when I enter. She keeps at her job. When she enters the lockerroom she usually shouts, jarringly-loud, "HELLO". That's when I say something or another patron will yell something -- and because we know she can't understand us, it's usually something unintelligle that we yell in respnse, something like, "Someone is here!" -- she typically ignores these masculine voices and sets up shop...unless someone is naked, which has happened before. In that instance, she hunched her shoulders, put her hand over her mouth, set her bucket down and paced the hallway until she felt she could no longer deal with the fact that she wasn't cleaning the lockerroom.

I thought, "Wow. This woman is just way too manic about this. It's more than committment and work-ethic. She has an emotional and social problem. Maybe she's stricken with several phobias."

But one day, I was the last one to leave and headed to my car the same time she did. She was whipping some busted 1987 Cavalier or something and this thing was FILTHY! I mean, DESPICABLE!

"How can this neat-freak/germiphobe even last .02 seconds in that car without cleaning it to a pristine sparkle?" I thought this out loud as she was opening up her door to the Langfield Projects.

But that's when it hit me: this woman is just really that committed to doing her job well, so she can send money back to her fam keep the water on.

Immigrant-Americans (new demo-term for u) seem to have their own sense of entitlement -- they feel entitled to pursue the American Dream. It prolly goes something like this, "I, as human being, am entitled to living a suitable life and sometimes I ain't gettin at it in my native country, so I'm gonna go to America, where I'm not entitled to ISH, but if I work hard enough, I'll be entitled to fair pay and fair treatment." That's general and surface, but about as accurrate as a nigga like me can get at...I'm not an immigrant-american, but you can somewhat get the idea of how the human spirit is working in these circumstances.

But that's how this group generally behaves. They almost end up over-cleaning. They invade your space to keep cubicles/machines/elevators clean. They throw out things not meant to be thrown out. They can even sometimes inspire brief panic, when they're frantically sprinting somewhere. It's like, "Wait, is there a fire somewhere? Why is this portly Dominican woman running-top speed, with flopping-breast? Oh...she's picking up that dirty paper-plate that just fell off the edge of the garbage can...gotcha."

Mr. Sir's sense of entitlement leads him to do other things. Mr. Sir is what I call the 50-something black man that cleans at the gym. I, in fact, only know he's a cleaner because I asked one of the trainers once. Because, for all I know, he could be sort of like the Norm of the Spring Hill Gold's Gym.

Instead of cleaning, he does things like (LITERALLY) park his rear-end on one of the low-seated excersize bikes and watch television. I'll walk by him on the way to a treadmill and he'll point at the TV, like, "Look, brotha, the Knicks is on!" Or he'll lean against the credenza in front of the wall-to-wall windows and check out the 3-on-3 pick-up games or oggle the women jazzercizing.

Once, he was leaning against the railing, watching Making The Band...I was a few feet away. One of the gym-workers asked him to check the lockerroom. He reacted in subtle-exasperation. Then he eyes started roaming. He was searching for something. That's when he found me, and shook his head a bit, as if to say, "Can you believe these white-folks, youngblood? Got me workin' up in this bish." I felt like saying, "And I better not catch your grown a$$ watching television on the clock again."

It was a classic black moment. We like to seek-out sympathizing blacks in those type of situations, thinking that common heritage will lead the other black to disregard the fact that were being derelict in our responsibilities. It can be a problem.

Ultimately, Mr. Sir and many of the other black-cleaners I've come acrossed all have similar dispositions -- they don't really wanna clean. Their senses of entitlement basically say, "My 40 acres and a mule is you giving me this paycheck while I do other things, like relax." They want that paycheck "for the price of on the house". And the fact that immigrants are now inhabiting that bottom-ring of the American social caste system is making their sense that they're entitled to not have to work as a cleaner for a paycheck is becoming heightened.

I told you before that senior citizens have the oddest jobs in Florida. I mean, you're liable to catch a 70-year-old folding clothes at Urban Outifitters. I'm serious.

Nothing is worse than the seniors that take your money at toll booths. First of all, there are huge signs broadcasting their meager pay: "We Pay Our Toll Collectors $6.50/hr."...or something to that effect.

But its always kind of depressing to be passing through a booth at 2:30am and handing some wrinkly-hand senior name Sue your 50 cent. They always look sad and depressed. You gotta think that they don't believe they should have to do this. That 1.) US Social Security nd 2.) their children should not allow them to have to take dirty quarters for 8 hours a day.

Plus...I mean, they're white. That has to really get their bloomers in a bunch, dampen their diapers.

White people like to play the self-righteous role. They like to point out other ethnicities deviant senses of entitlement and draw conclusions that indict the other groups as lazy/delusional/bad human beings. Their immigrant stories and boot-strap lectures are tiresome, duplicitous and hypocritical. White people have their own senses of entitlement. America was built on this sense and still operates based on the sense that WASP's should rule the world. Yes, that's boiling something very complex down to something very simple (even a little innacurrate), but u get the gist.

The seniors that clean Gold's Gym feel like they shouldnt have to work. They hate the fact that they need to work to maintain their two houses and such. They also feel that since theyre forced to work, they are entitled to your FULL cooperation. That means don't sweat at the gym. That means, don't put your hands on any glass at the office-building.

Any action that creates work for these geezers is met with the most soul-piercing exasperation and dissapointment possible. Their reactions, because it's always mixed with this maternal-paternal condescension, can make you feel sort of stupid and worthless.

And the seniors will even throw their jobs back on you, because -- ideally, they shouldn't have to lift a finger.

Grandma that works at Gold's will actually ask you questions like, "are you going to keep spilling your water?" And the patron will looked a little puzzled, like, "I can't be worried about harmless water falling on the floor as I'm jogging."

Grandma does alot of audible sighing if she has to wipe down a machine. If she needs to clean the lockerroom and you're still in it, she'll ask questions like, "well are you going to be in there for too much longer?"

Their words, actions, gestures, everything is colored with a disposition that says, "This is America. I'm white. I'm old. This is so not me."

Which begs the question: There's a latina, a black man and white senior cleaning the same office floor and a boss drops a mop down as says, "Someone needs to hit the pantry floor when everything is done."

What would happen?

The white senior would say, "I'm not cleaning up after those slovent young brats. Tell them to make sure they don't drop their dirty knifes with hippie-peanut-butter on the floor. My job description says nothing about being their mothers"

The black man offersa flippant smirk and says (sincerely excuse the language), "Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit."

The latino woman grabs the mops and engulfs it with her arms and bosom like a mother-lion guarding her cubs.