My day as a housekeeper

Now everyone has done a little housekeeping from time to time, myself included, although my mother will tell you these are skills I was not born with and developed in later life. Most people have also stayed in the odd hotel room, wether it be the Super 8 with the questionable stain on the inside of the bathtub or the Hilton with the questionable stain on the inside of  the family name...

And during our stays we have all had varying degrees of delight over the carefully arranged towels and the little soaps and mini shampoos, some of us finding ourselves so delighted that these hotel conveniences have ended up in handfuls at the bottom of our handbags to be filed in the 'just in case' section of our bathroom cupboards.

But who is the artist behind the towel designs and bathroom arrangements? Who is the person who assigns our mints and mini soaps? It is of course the faithful housekeeper. So I approached the central booking department of the resort town I live in to spend a day in the life of a housekeeper.

A housekeepers day starts at the office where you are given your clean schedule for the day. This is a list of properties with information such as how many beds and bathrooms the property has so that you can pack sheets and towels appropriately.
Each clean is given a time value for example 405 Maple drive is a 5 hour clean. The housekeeper is payed for 5 hours regardless of how long it actually takes to clean the property.

So, once the van is packed with tubs filled with the linens for each property, cleaning supplies, bag of rags, mop bucket and vaccum, we set out to clean the first property on the list.


Once you enter the property, the first thing you must do is check the fridge. A housekeeper doesn't get paid terribly well so your income can be supplemented with left behind food and of course liquor. Once the 'value' of the clean has been assessed you can begin work.
There is no rocket science behind it all, you make the beds - of course using hospital corners because nothing says 'clean' like a tight bed thats impossible to get into.

Then you wipe down all surfaces, mirrors etc. Vacuum all carpeted areas, fluff couch cushions and place novelty stuffed animals appropriately.
The key to housekeeping is to let the client know that you have been there. This can be achieved by moving items such as coasters and magazines to a different position and needlessly spraying cleaning products into the air to give it that lemony fresh smell.

The real art to being a housekeeper though lies in the bathroom. This will make or break the illusion of clean in the clients eyes. Whether the bathtub and shower are actually clean or not doesn't matter, as long as there is no hair. For some reason, even though it covers our heads and most of our bodies, you find one hair in your food or heaven forbid in your bathtub where the most malting occurs and a shiver is sent down most of our spines.
So de-hairing done, it's time for the towel and toilet paper art.

I can now confidently say that I can fan a face washer with the best of them. I can fold the loo paper in such a way as to say to the next occupant, someone has been here, and they've touched the paper your about to wipe your ass with - comforting thought isn't it!?

The key to housekeeping is to get the clean done in far less time than you are paid for while making it look and smell as though you have been there. The perks include having no-one looking over your shoulder while you work and potentially walking away with items such as bottles of wine, left over steak and misplaced articles of clothing. The downside is never knowing exactly what you are going to find floating in the toilet bowl after a bucks weekend... Thank goodness for the flush and of course the life time supply of mini soaps.
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My day as a primary school teacher

Today I was an official chaperon on a grade 1 field trip to see the painted turtles at the provincial park - a job otherwise known in the industry as 'the official hand holder and nose wiper'. I arrived at school at 9:30am, just in time for the daily revision of numbers, days of the week, caterpillar cycles and the weather. After careful discussions between 5 year old billy and his buddy's, it was decided that counting backwards from 100 by 5's was not possible today, which was Thursday and that although it was cloudy and raining, there probably wasn't going to be any lightening... With my size 12 ass notably hanging over the sides of my plastic little persons chair, I settled in to show and tell which today featured a light/whistle for finding your home when you've lost it and a heart shaped necklace that after question time was discovered to have been found in the bedroom but not on the bed, or under it or next to it.

Finally it was field trip time, which as a primary school teacher means all kids must put their inside shoes in the basket and get their outside boots on. Next it's to the hooks where jumpers and coats are put on while Dora Explorer, Barbie, Spiderman and Spongebob backpacks packed with lunch, change of clothes and towel (as the destination was a lake...) are strapped to backs. Last stop is the washroom. 'Even if you don't need to go, just give it a go because we are on the bus for a whole hour and wecan't stop the bus once we're on it.

A full bus of excited kids on the way to a field trip... I'm not sure any amount of university training can prepare you for that. My 5 year old seat buddy said it best when she turned to me, chewing on a cheese stick and said, 'it's pretty wild back here.'

 
 After arriving at the lake we sat down for the turtle presentation. The turtle woman, talking in a slowed down theatrical voice, was making statements like 'the male turtles private parts are hidden in his tale...' With a tiny hand instinctively pressed into mine, I bit my tongue to stop a little giggle escaping and realised that in order to be a primary school teacher, I would need to learn how to speak 'kid'.

Talking kid is not something I've really done since my ass did fit in one of those little chairs and I thought plasticine was a breakfast food...

I learned pretty quickly that 'stop running around and sit down' doesn't work. If however you start chanting 'if you can hear my voice put your hands in the air, if you can hear my voice stop talking, if you can hear my voice put your bottom on the ground', pretty soon you've got 50 quiet kids sitting on the ground, granted they have their hands needlessly hanging in the air but it's a small price to pay for silent seated children.

  

 

I soon discovered that saying 'you can only point, don't touch', although sounding completely reasonable to the adult mind, is another big failure as moments after the words left my mouth I was surrounded by five year olds swirling their arms like windmills in every direction yelling point, point, point, point!!



I also now know that if you want kids to walk in a row and hike around a lake, you will need to convince them that Mrs Fraser is the engine and Mrs Taylor is the Caboose and that they are all carriages in the middle that can't overtake each other... the downside is the random 'choo choos' that you will hear in between the flora and fauna facts; but this is really nothing when you're speaking kid in a provincial turtle park...


 

After the turtle presentation and the lake hike, we had a bit of time before the bus came back to pick us up. Empty time with no activities is a dangerous thing in the world of a primary school teacher because this is the perfect time for sally to give Mr duck swimming around in that lake a quick pat and for johnny to figure out exactly how many acorns he can fit up his nose...

Luckily these primary teachers were old hats at this and had prepared an activity. With brown paper bags stapled with little lists in hand Mrs Fraser said 'ok kids, now we are going to go on a scavenger hunt.' To which in perfect 'kid' a little girl replied 'We're going to kill stuff?'. With the biggest smile on my face I then spent the next half an hour running around with my team of little troopers collecting shells and rocks and feathers and rocks and acorns and rocks and wild flowers and rocks and... bless them, we ended up with the heaviest bag of them all... and rocks wasn't even on the list!! 

To be a primary school teacher you need to hold a degree in primary education. But more importantly you need to be extremely patient, creative and be utterly fluent in 'kid'. You are probably not going to make your millions in this profession either but the pay off is that teachers can get up to three months of holidays per year. The biggest payoff however seems to be the sheer joy that you get watching these kids learn, be fascinated by rocks, fall and get up again and take it all in their little people strides.
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