Essay
Collin College ENGL 1301 Essay on Nickeled and Dimed On Not Getting By in America Barbara
Collin College ENGL 1301 Essay on Nickeled and Dimed On Not Getting By in America Barbara
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English 1301[Date]
English Paper #3: Not so Hospitable Hospitality
Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote the essay “Serving in Florida”, details her experiences
trying to make a living by working in a few low-paying jobs in her book Nickeled and Dimed. In
the essay, Ehrenreich gives the reader an in-depth view of the working conditions she endured in
a popular restaurant. After years of working in several hotels, I have similar experiences of my
own for which I have learned some interesting details about hotels and hotel rooms that many
people may or may not want to know about. The points that Ehrenreich makes in her essay about
the working class in America is very revealing and very important for people to know about what
goes on behind the scenes in the workplace. Ehrenreich’s essay should inspire anyone who has
ever worked for a living to expose the truth about the conditions that everyday people endure in
order to earn a paycheck. Not only are hotels the most overrated and overpriced places to visit,
they are some of the dirtiest, most disgusting places you will ever step foot in.
Every hotel room that you have ever stayed in is not nearly as clean as you think it is.
First of all, if you do plan on checking into a hotel, you might want to consider taking the
bedspread off the bed right away. The bedspread nearly ever gets washed and is most likely the
dirtiest, nastiest linen in the room. Since it is a bulky and heavy type of linen, it never gets taken
down to the laundry room to get washed. The housekeepers set it aside to remove the dirty sheets
and put on clean ones, but then just put the soiled bedspread right back on the bed. As a
housekeeping manager when I was younger, I can remember the housekeepers complaining
about having to take it down to the laundry room to be washed, and would rarely if ever do it.
When they did bring them down to be cleaned, I can also remember what the dirty bedspreads
, would look like, and more specifically, the type of stains they would have on them. There would
be everything from bodily fluids to food, and everything else horrible that you can think of.
Many people who go to a hotel usually go there for sex or drug use, and would account for a lot
of the stains. Some of the bedspreads would have a black streak or burn marks on them which
seemed to be from some sort of drug use, which sometimes would come out if the bedspread if it
was not damaged too badly by burns.
Another thing to consider if you plan on an overnight stay in a hotel, would be to keep
your socks on. Hotel room carpets are notoriously the most repugnant due to the fact that the
owners rarely spend money on professional carpet cleaning services because they are so
expensive to have done. If by chance the carpets have been cleaned, at most they are done by the
hotel staff by a rented machine and not done correctly with proper soap. I can attest to this
myself since I have worked for many cheap owners that refuse to spend money on this for
several of the hotels that I have worked for. If you require proof of this claim, just take a stroll
around the room for an hour and you will tend to agree by the shade of black that you find on the
bottom of your socks.
Now picture this: A sweaty fat guy in his underwear, eating Cheetos and watching
television. He was sitting in your recliner the night before, and now he has your remote control
in his greasy orange hand. Now what are the chances that the housekeeper took the time to wipe
down the remote control just for your particular arrival this evening? As the old magic 8-ball
would say, “Don’t count on it.” Just another tidbit of information you would want to be aware of,
since the housekeeping staff usually does not have very much time to clean each room, and
wiping down the remote is just one of those things that gets overlooked on a regular basis.
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