Politically Correct Cleaning Crew and Wipes Story
The cleaning crew closes my office door every night. I have run into a few of them every now and then. They do a great job cleaning. But because the door has been closed all night, I enter either a freezing cold or boiling hot office the following morning. So I asked the office manager if she would let the cleaning crew know to not close my door. “Just put a note on your door telling them to leave it open.”
And here came the squirming on my part. Not wanting to sound bigoted, but needing to know, I asked if they spoke English. The answer was that one person on the crew speaks English. So I put my note on the door. And sometimes it is closed and sometimes opened when I get in the next morning.
My thought then was to write the message in Spanish and put it on the door, but again, I thought that would be rude assuming that the cleaning crew was all Latino and didn’t know English. So then I thought in fairness, I would write notes in Spanish, German, French, and Portuguese and put them all on the door. I opted for just not leaving notes anymore.
Now all a sudden, everybody in the company, every few days or so, gets a cute little sanitized wipe left by their phone from the overnight cleaning crew. At first I thought it was a condom and LMAO. Then after realizing what it was, I tried to make some connection to why the Latino cleaning crew would leave wipes with American flags on everybody’s desks.
1. They are Mexican-Americans and proud of their country.
2. They are undocumented workers and don’t want to get reported.
3. Wipes with American flags were the cheapest ones to buy.I figured it was reason number three. Of course, I immediately turned the package over to see if it was “made in China.”
Now the only remaining mystery in this whole cleaning crew saga, is why would a company make wipes with a graphic of the American flag? I am thinking that a graphic of Jesus, or Shiva, or Yahweh would be more appropriate, because isn’t cleanliness next to Godliness?
Filed under: Am I Bad?, Place d'employ
Ugh, I hate the P.C. movement. I’ve been meaning to write a post about that. You have a good reason to justify writing your note either in English or Spanish. For English, it’s because this is America and that’s the official language of the country, so it’s not unreasonable for you to expect that people in this country would understand it. If I were a transplant in Germany, I wouldn’t be offended if I found a German note on the door of the apartment I was cleaning. I’d just get out my German dictionary and get to work. For Spanish, let’s face it, most cleaning people in America are Spanish speaking, there’s nothing wrong with trying to cater to that. I hate how the P.C. movement makes people think that they need to dance around everyone’s feelings. To me, the best thing to do is just be reasonable and try to treat people how you want to be treated. The P.C. movement stinks of bigoted people trying to look like they aren’t bigoted by dictating what people can and can’t say or do.
Looks like I got a good start on my blog post here…
Excellent observations Sra. I am so torn because I am pretty damn liberal, but my view on illegal immigration and such are a bit different than what a true liberal should be. I think it isn’t fair to everybody working inside of the “rules” and system, although crappy, that is in place.
Life should be perfect, and it isn’t. And that just sucks.
what exactly is a “a true liberal” & how different is it to act in your best interest? You spent ,maybe 150 words fretting over being accused to be a bigot? WOW By the way, I followed a link to here from countdown’s blog - normally, i have no idea about Utah nor your choice of friends.
Brilliant.
I don’t think you really need to worry about writing in Spanish and offending anyone. If it makes you feel better write in English and Spanish (make it a rough translation so that people who are bilingual understand you are not trying to showoff).
When I lived in California this didn’t seem to be an issue at all - whenever we needed to communicate with the cleaning crew we would ask someone to write notes in Spanish - and the cleaning crew were always happy that we did (I know this because they didn’t leave American flag wipes implying that I should know in America we speak ‘merican and to clean up my act). People wouldn’t think twice about it there and I don’t think any of these people are bigots.
Maybe you could make a graphic that would be understood universally for “please leave door open”– I wonder what would that look like?
@jimbob Huh?
Not touching this with a sanitized or unsanitized ten foot pole.