What Am I?
Field notes on the roles the sustains us
I cart into vacated spaces, restoring them to manufactured newness. I strip, I scrub, and I arrange all to create the impression of an environment untouched by previous human presence.
Musculoskeletal injuries, chemical exposure, and repetitive strain are documented at rates that place my profession perhaps surprisingly among the most physically hazardous in the service sector.
I am part of the hospitality economy’s unseen labor. Then again, my invisibility is a major component of me fulfilling my role. You want comfort and escapism? Well, a large part of that depends on me erasing the evidence that there were those before you and that inevitably others will follow.
My earnings bear no proportional relationship to the room rate my labor enables. I do what I do for a guest paying four hundred dollars per night or a guest paying one hundred per night.
My workforce is among the most demographically concentrated in any industry. Women of color, most often immigrants, fill my ranks. It has been culturally coded as domestic, feminine, and low skill since its inception. That coding functions as a wage-suppression mechanism as much as a cultural attitude. The skills I exercise, efficiency under time pressure, quality control across repetitive tasks, the management of physical endurance across a full shift, are real and measurable. The “low-skill” designation is a labor market classification, not a description of what the work requires.
We may be most in need of labor protections but are the least positioned to invoke them, with many of us being undocumented, reporting wage theft, harassment, or unsafe conditions is not a viable option.
Will you think of me the next time you consider the quality of your experience? Only if I do not do my job well. But then I suppose that is just part of the job.
What am I?
The pattern that runs through this role’s needs is The Steward.
The Steward maintains a consistent standard of care and precision across dozens of rooms per shift, treating the work as infrastructure rather than service.
A Note from Geneèn:
I think of this role on a personal note, this work provided for me growing up and the lessons I learned from those that did the work continue to benefit me as I keep my home pristine. During my hotel stays, I find myself wondering about the workers’ lives. I think of who they are feeding, educating and supporting. Are they helping buy their grandchildren shoes? I think about her as I place money in a note card of thanks for the memories and the opportunity to stop and give thanks for who I am and who they are working to become. I remember that for every role there is not just the individual but the community in which they are planted.