To be a cleaner in a big city is often to feel like a ghost. You’re overlooked and unseen, a shadow, or a rumour rarely glimpsed, and the service you provide – which is crucial – can be easily underappreciated. For a profession that barely pays a living wage, it can be grindingly hard work, and so it helps, says Maria, a 52 year old originally from Romania now living in London, if you actually like the job. She does.
“Back home, I used to be an accountant,” she says. “I don’t know if you know this, but in Romania wages are very, very low, and so that’s why I came here five years ago – with my husband, who works in security – to find different work. I didn’t speak good English when I came, and so cleaning was the only job. Also, I just love cleaning. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but I love it.
“I clean offices every day, eight hours a day, in a big insurance company in the centre of London. There are maybe 30, 35 offices on six levels of a tower. The people in the insurance company, they are very friendly, very nice, and I love them all. Every day, they say to me: ‘Good morning Maria, how are you, how is your day going, would you like some chocolate?’ English people are very polite, I like this.
“But,” she continues, “the cleaning company that employs me, they are not treating their cleaners well. How to explain? They don’t provide enough for us, and if we complain, they think we’re troublemakers, and so we have to go through the union. But why? Why can’t we complain direct to them?
“I was lucky during the pandemic because I was furloughed – although I did get very bored, and must have cleaned my own flat at least 100 times! – but when we came back to work, we asked for gloves, for protection against the virus.
“The cleaning company gave us just one pair, and one cloth – for a whole tower. This is not right. We need to wear a uniform for work, but they give us just two pairs of trousers. I’m a woman, and for four years I’ve switched between these two pairs of trousers, from Monday to Friday. This isn’t normal. Also, they expect us to clock in exactly at 8 o’clock, and out again exactly at 4 o’clock. It’s like being in jail, or something.”
Cleaners can sometimes find themselves in even more uncomfortable situations, unpleasant ones, too. If the atmosphere within an office environment is bitter, then the cleaner will have to deal with the fallout. Rosi, a 48-year-old from Spain, who has cleaned both private homes and offices, was once faced with the fallout from, of all things, a dirty protest.
“Someone made a poop on the floor of the WC, right there on the floor, in the middle of everything, between toilet and sink,” she says.
“Why? Because they can, I guess. People in offices, they don’t care so much. They don’t care what you are doing, and they don’t care what they do, too. But this? Nobody would make poop on the floor at their home, I am thinking.”
Rosi had been about to head off on her lunch break. “But I had to stay to clean it.” She quit shortly afterwards, altogether traumatised. Maria has been luckier, so far.
“Oh, the workers are sometimes messy, yes, but not that messy, nothing that would make me want to die, you know? I like the work I do, it’s good. But it is busy, and it is hard. Looking at my watch now, it tells me I have 50,000 steps. I don’t use the lift, you see, I take the stairs, and so I am up and down them all day, all the time. It makes me pretty fit, I guess, but also very tired.
“When I get home, all I want to do is relax: eat, watch TV. Sleep. But I am not complaining. I like my work, and I like it here. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in Romania, a long time since I’ve been an accountant. I don’t feel at home there any more, and this is fine with me. UK is my home now, and I want to stay. Life is good here.”
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