Low Wage Life

I have been fortunate to have parents that make a good living. They earn a good salary and have been able to spoil us and send us to expensive sports camps, take nice family vacations, and send me to a fancy private university. Because of their success, I have also had an easier time getting goods in school because they can afford good tutors and I have been able to excel in athletics because I have been able to play with the best and most expensive sports teams. Also, they have been able to hire nannies that took care of my siblings and I from 9 to 5 everyday. They also pay for housecleaners and gardeners who come once a week. I do the average amount of chores as any American teenager: taking out the trash, cleaning my room, picking up the house, and doing the dishes at night. I have never had to work at any job to pay for my belongings and I never had to worry where my next meal would come from.

As I began writing my essay, I was thinking about all of the people surrounding me who earn minimum wages. My family and I had never really discussed how my nannies and the housecleaners earned significantly less than my parents and my friends’ parents. So as I actually started to write this essay, I began to think about our housecleaners. Even though my parents pay them a generous salary for cleaning our house once a week, I have no idea how their other customers pay them or how many customers they have in general. Even if they received good money from each of their houses, if they did not have enough customers for the week they would still be having a hard time making ends meet. Our housecleaners are not the average run of the mill company; they are three brothers who drive a mini van with basic supplies and necessities to clean down a regular, pretty clean in general, house. They each have two kids and wives to support with a minimum wage. They can barely afford to pay for their apartment rent so how would they be able to send their kids to college? It is unfair that their kids do not have the same advantages and benefits that I had growing up.

This project opened my eyes to another life. Even though I volunteer at homeless shelters and work with disadvantaged kids at elementary schools, looking through the eyes of people who do labor in my house weekly gave me a whole different perspective on the low wage life. I have a different look at my housecleaners when I actually think about how much my parents pay them affects their lives and their family’s lives. How big my house might affect how long they have to stay away from their kids and how many of their cleaning their resources they use. Even though I do not live a low wage life, I am directly affected and affect people who do.