Friday, April 13, 2012
Male labor positions
Growing up my family never had a maid or live in nanny like the ones we discussed, read about or saw in class. However I did grow up having a gardener who worked at our house for the past few years. Jesus traveled to the US from Mexico when he was younger and has been doing outdoor work for families in our area ever since. I know that male outdoor work is not the same has female domestic work but I did notice some similarities when he explained his past jobs to us. For example there was a language barrier, bathroom issues and other various problems. Most of the people in Washington state (where I am from) don't speak spanish and have not taken the time to learn it. Because of this, there were often issues with communication from the employeer to Jesus in explaining what the tasks for the day were. I remember one time when my sister and I were both at school and my mom tried to explain to Jesus to move a fallen tree from in front of our house to the backyard. When she came home from picking us up from school, we opened the garage to find the tree had been chopped up and placed in little stacks inside. Since I was taking Spanish class in high school I later explained to him (in the best way I could) what we meant. However after that both my mom and Jesus used spanish-english dictionaries to help make things easier to understand. He also mentioned that while working for other people some did not allow him to come inside the house to use the restroom. One customer had told him that he had to leave and go to the gas station a few miles away to use the restroom. I know that not everything we learned in class applies to Jesus' job, however I did think of some similarities between the two people and their positions.
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I am very surprised that this people would not let him use their bathroom. This was an issue a very long time ago in the South - that the book, The Help highlights. It is a shock to me that people would still do this today, especially after the hugely popular book and movie.
ReplyDeleteLanguage is always a barrier. My dad too has trouble speaking to many of his employees so sometimes, he has someone translate everything. Sometimes the workers do opposite of what he asks to do and it gets really frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar experience to Tara's. We had a gardener, Domingo, who worked at our house for several years. Even though he couldn't speak English very well, he was a really hard worker. I strongly believe in treating everybody with the same integrity and respect, regardless of their background, and I think it's important to have that respect between the employer and the employed. I remember as a kid I would hang out with Domingo and he would teach me about what he was doing, and when it was hot outside, I'd bring him a cold soda from the fridge. My parents became good friends with him. I think that because of this respect between my family and Domingo, unlike the lack of respect shown in "Black Girl", my family's relationship with him was a good one.
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