Maids as Low Wage Workers

The summer after I turned eighteen I worked at my grandfather’s hotel as a desk clerk and we had to have a lot of interaction with the maids. We were in constant contact with them in order to determine whether the rooms were clean so that we could check people into them. Everyday, the head of the maid staff would force feed me a large variety of Mexican food. The break room was a place where race didn’t matter and people of all classes and positions in the hotel business. The hierarchy of the hotel is one that depends on each other for the business to thrive.

The owners: The specific hotel that I worked at was built by my uncles, owned by my grandfather and managed by my dad. It is very strange to see your family members in different situations than what you usually experience with them. As soon as my grandfather or father would walk in, the hotel would become the perfect environment with the manager rushing up to them and shaking their hands and saying “Hello, Mr. Barrack.” I was even more shocked when Stephanie, a girl that I worked with at the desk told me, “Your dad is scary.” This experience caused me to see these men that played with me when I was little and cared for me in a completely different way.

The maids at the hotel that I worked at were in a different situation from the ones in big hotel chains because it was not a unionized hotel. It was a small, privately owned hotel. Celina was the head of the maid staff. She started working for my grandfather at one of the older hotels and when the newer one was opened he offered her the job. Her daughter was Stephanie who worked at the front desk with me. The maids worked from 6:30 to 3:00 when all of the rooms needed to be clean for check-in. The hotel was relatively small so a pair of maids would cover a hallway.

I would like to use the methods that Ehrenreich used in her book “Nickel and Dimed” by telling my hypertext like a story instead of a list of facts and analyses. I plan to tell the individual stories of some of the people who I worked with and describe the interactions between the different hierarchies of the hotel business.