Intersectionality in the Workforce

                Although I wouldn’t necessarily consider this a hobby or area of interest, something important in my life that can easily be looked at with an intersectional approach would be my job. I currently work at Fox Hills Resort in Mishicot as a housekeeper in the hotel portion of the resort. In this business, I have come to discover a lot of interesting things about stereotypes people assimilate with housekeepers. I find it interesting because it affects who gets hired, and how guests view the resort.

                First off, gender is a huge controversy. For some background information, the resort has a very high turnover rate of employees (a majority are high school kids looking for a first job). Throughout my four and a half years of working there, I have probably worked with about 80-90 different employees. Out of this huge estimate, I can remember that there were exactly 4 males hired. Between the 4, the longest employment of a male was about 1 month. The rest either quit, or were fired within the first two or three weeks. The first reason that this was an issue was because the department didn’t even have a uniform that could be worn for males to begin with. I feel like this is an issue that should have been thought about before we hired a male. I found it strange that we didn’t have anything to accommodate them and I feel as though the uniform should have been unisex. Some people also made comments when they saw our male housekeepers because cleaning is typically stereotyped to be a woman’s job. Overall, I think it is interesting how gender plays a role in this business.

                Another thing that plays an important part in this business is being able-bodied. We haven’t had anyone that I remember with a physical disability that worked with us. With that being said, it would definitely be a bit more difficult to do some of the tasks required. We have however hired a girl with an intellectual disability within the last year. At first, it was hard to adjust our work to fit her needs. She was much slower at cleaning and it was hard for her to remember to do everything, or work in an organized manner.  With some good brainstorming and some help from her mother whom worked in a different department at the resort, we were able to figure out a plan and position that was able to accommodate her and her needs. I felt really good that my department took the time to do this in order to allow her to work with us while working with her own needs as well. She is a very sweet girl to work with. All in all, I’m glad to see that the place I work at is able to work with those who may be discriminated against at other jobs because of a disability.

                The dynamics of education are also interesting to look at in my department. Many of the people I work with are high school kids, high school dropouts, or individuals that never received a higher education or don’t plan to further their education. Being a housekeeper certainly does not require a college degree or high-school diploma. In a sense, I sometimes feel as though I am inconveniencing the department because they have to work around my school schedule, an issue that only 1 or 2 of the other housekeepers have. I also get questioned a lot as to why I am a housekeeper. Before this assignment, I never really noticed how education played a role in my place of work. I do plan to continue my education because I definitely do not plan to be a housekeeper the rest of my life.

                Lastly, race is very controversial in my place of work. Typically, housekeepers are stereotyped to be minorities.  Although many of the hotels I have stayed at throughout the years had either African American or Mexican housekeepers, I never really thought that my place of work was out of the ordinary until I had a few confrontations with guests. Everyone whom I have worked with there has been Caucasian besides 2 individuals. I remember one day, a Caucasian man walked up to my sister and I and straight out said “Wow you guys are white?”. The statement was very blunt and almost a bit rude. We weren’t even sure how to respond. I can remember another occasion when a man told my sister he would give her a $15 tip if she would knock on his door and say “housekeeping” in a Mexican accent so that he could feel as though he was actually on vacation. We pretty much laughed it off, but it was still a strange request. I actually did an experiment after thinking about this. I looked up housekeeping roles on television and in movies and found many images that represented minorities. Very few of the housekeepers were white, and if they were, they were elderly women. Thus, white individuals were not shown in these roles demonstrating symbolic annihilation: to describe the relative absence of marginalized groups in the mass media (Launius and Hassle 130). With that being said, I can infer that minorities are the ones being unfairly misrepresented in larger more pristine roles in the media (a much larger issue than whites not being associated with jobs such as housekeeping). From this, I learned that race definitely has an impact on the type of experience that different people get in different job positions and it impacts what kinds of jobs people usually end up having.

                In the end, just found it very interesting that there are a lot of different traits about myself that reflected in my area of work. Some of those traits made me fit right in, while others almost appeared to make me stand out, or feel different at work. All in all, this helps me realize how people can experience privilege and oppression in the workforce even when just doing small temporary jobs such as housekeeping.