The Clean

September 28, 2016 5:03 PM

I knew dimly that I might gain advantages by befriending my wealthier clients, but I wasn’t sure what kind — and I was nervous about seeming phony. I’d occasionally sense that a strange door was open to me: not to friendship, exactly, but to some sort of benevolent leeching, or simply the opportunity to be liked.
posted by Kitteh (60 comments total)

Great piece. Thanks.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:18 PM on September 28, 2016

Well written. The prose is spartan and carries an air of mundane melancholy. Reminded me of Haruki Murakami's writing.
posted by dazed_one at 5:37 PM on September 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

Is this piece fiction or an actual recounting of events? It seems like the latter (and is filed under essays, not something more definitive) but there are aspects that seem made up. Who fills their bathroom with kitty litter several inches deep? Why would an above-knee birthmark be life altering?
posted by axiom at 5:41 PM on September 28, 2016

Who fills their bathroom with kitty litter several inches deep?

It's not uncommon for hoarders to do. Rich people aren't immune to that type of behavior. And people in general can act deeply weird.
posted by emjaybee at 5:48 PM on September 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's odd; even if this is real, i find I don't care that much - the author appears to be painting with words rather than telling a story, and I think I like the painting okay.
posted by Mooski at 5:50 PM on September 28, 2016 [9 favorites]

The snooping through clients' personal writing (diary, novel-manuscript-in-a-drawer) is certainly ugly
posted by Lyme Drop at 6:00 PM on September 28, 2016 [9 favorites]

Not that The Clean
posted by Going To Maine at 6:14 PM on September 28, 2016 [8 favorites]

Yes, I hated the snooping. Yes, she would certainly discover a lot about her clients while legitimately doing nothing but her job, but she had no business going through their desks or reading their diaries and it made me kind of happy that she eventually lost the job, though it was for an unrelated and unfair cause.

Otherwise this piece reminded me of this Salon piece by Rebecca Golden.
posted by orange swan at 6:15 PM on September 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

As someone who does home visits for social work, it reminded me of contrasts in SES and expectations people have for others, but also reminds me of one of the reasons I love doing the work.

Each home really is this odd mix of stories and meaning. Each house is a picture of so many things. It says so much about humanity, and a single person but at the same time tells you nothing about them.

I enjoyed reading this.

Though the under the table weirdness of the whole thing strikes me, though it wasn't the point of the essay.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:18 PM on September 28, 2016 [7 favorites]

I couldn't help but notice the author's blind spot in these two sentences:

* There was the young man with an actual pile of women’s underwear by his bed, whose Google history (discovered when I opened his laptop to stream a podcast) revealed a single search for “rash from too much sex penis.” (emphasis mine)

* I never wanted to spy.
posted by The Gooch at 6:24 PM on September 28, 2016 [14 favorites]

...not to friendship, exactly, but to some sort of benevolent leeching...

The only thing poor folk get from rubbing elbows with the rich, is holes in their sleeves.
posted by 445supermag at 6:27 PM on September 28, 2016 [8 favorites]

Gooch, I gave her the benefit of the doubt on that one on the chance the client okayed using his laptop, but yeah.
posted by Lyme Drop at 6:27 PM on September 28, 2016

The snooping through clients' personal writing (diary, novel-manuscript-in-a-drawer) is certainly ugly

And yet what almost everyone would do, though deny they did, or would ever do.

We're quite awful creatures, really.
posted by rokusan at 6:38 PM on September 28, 2016 [18 favorites]

After than we bomb their cities. Just kidding. I read this piece, it reminded me of babysitting, and using it to learn how other people live. The under the table, aspect of it was interesting to me, how the owner of the business met in odd places to talk about the money. Interesting pyramid scheme.
posted by Oyéah at 6:45 PM on September 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

I want to clean your cups from the inside out.
posted by Young Kullervo at 6:53 PM on September 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Things happen and then we die.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:08 PM on September 28, 2016

Otherwise this piece reminded me of this Salon piece by Rebecca Golden.

and early David Sedaris stories. It's practically a genre. And it's the reason I don't think I'll really ever want to pay anyone to clean my home - they might be a would-be writer.

I mean really. "People let me into their house to perform a specific function, so now I'm going to share all of their embarrassing human foibles with you under the guise of some kind of class narrative." It's not cool.
posted by Miko at 7:59 PM on September 28, 2016 [27 favorites]

And yet what almost everyone would do, though deny they did, or would ever do.


I would not. I can't prove that, but really, I wouldn't. It used to weird me out when, in my twenties, house sitting with friends, the friends would want to snoop through personal items in the house. I had no desire to do that. My privacy is so important to me, I can't imagine violating someone else's.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 8:27 PM on September 28, 2016 [23 favorites]

And yet what almost everyone would do, though deny they did, or would ever do.

Nope.
posted by Lyme Drop at 8:43 PM on September 28, 2016 [8 favorites]

...I can't imagine violating someone else's.
How rare would you guess your discipline to be?

I enjoyed the quality of the prose, but enjoy (even more) the critical eyes of MeFites and am entirely suspicious of it now. Sedaris is critical to cite and axiom's suspicions are now my own.

PAUL (cont'd)
Bullshit is a real talent, Auggie. To make up a
good story, a person has to know how to push
all the right buttons.
(Pause)
I'd say you're up there among the masters.

AUGGIE
What do you mean?

PAUL
I mean, it's a good story.

AUGGIE
Shit. If you can't share your secrets with your
friends, what kind of friend are you?

PAUL
Exactly. Life just wouldn't be worth living,
would it?

--Smoke(1992)
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:44 PM on September 28, 2016

WalkerWestridge, that is fair, but I think for me, personally, it's in my nature to snoop if I know they will never know and I know (Which I do know) that it's something I'll never share. It's good I don't get out much, I suppose. But I love looking in medicine cabinets and thumbing through stacks of magazines or unopened mail. Other people are a mystery to me, I'll admit. Maybe I'm just hoping to feel a sameness. Yes, I think it's that.
As a very young child I accompanied my mother while she cleaned seaside homes for wealthy folks. It was magical to me and I have to believe that the snooping of a 5 year old was harmless. I made up families and lives for all the empty houses. I loved it- the vacuum whirring and a strange cat and picture windows of the Pacific ocean. My most vivid memories are of her cleaning in storms- houses warm and silent, the violent ocean below, and the strange details of other magical lives.

Thanks for this post, I haven't thought about that time in years.

Agree some odd moments in the tone (and meaning) of the piece, but overall, if she dances half as good as she can write, she's damn talented.
posted by metasav at 8:47 PM on September 28, 2016 [13 favorites]

This whole part lost me:
My clients’ other employees seemed confident and sassy, unapologetic about their opportunism. They belonged to another rank of professional service work comprising somehow essential people who wore beautiful clothes and moved confidently in and out of their own bedrooms, which were adjacent to their boss’ kids’. Very wealthy people were rarely home, and often I’d interact solely with this kind of staff. Many affected warm proxy personalities that were chummy and distant, like teachers’. They’d appear suddenly, brushing by to snap a bureau door shut, bearing a credit card and pen, and flash me a knowing, toothy smile, as though my presence in the house had been arranged for my benefit and was somehow fun for me.

Does anyone else know what's going on here?
posted by bleep at 9:03 PM on September 28, 2016

I think these are live in personal staff, something like modern versions of butlers?
posted by claudius at 9:26 PM on September 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

The snooping through clients' personal writing (diary, novel-manuscript-in-a-drawer) is certainly ugly

It's ok, though, because she said she doesn't like to spy.
posted by Beholder at 9:57 PM on September 28, 2016

If one thing is certain it is that you cannot tell a snooper from a non-snooper based on their public stance on snooping.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:07 PM on September 28, 2016 [11 favorites]

I don't think I'd snoop. It's not that I'm particularly virtuous, I don't give a shit about the minutiae of other people's lives.
posted by markr at 11:27 PM on September 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

What were the women in the cramped office behind the secret door doing?
posted by hjo3 at 11:30 PM on September 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

What were the women in the cramped office behind the secret door doing?
Hanging on.
posted by Thella at 2:59 AM on September 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yes, I hated the snooping. Yes, she would certainly discover a lot about her clients while legitimately doing nothing but her job, but she had no business going through their desks or reading their diaries and it made me kind of happy that she eventually lost the job

hey. I work in your house and I go through your shit. we all do, all of your servants, task bunnies, etc. hope you enjoy knowing this!
posted by ennui.bz at 2:59 AM on September 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

So much talk about snooping for so little actual snooping—specifically, she flipped through a single (boring) diary, found a manuscript in a desk drawer, discovered a (hardly shocking) google query in an innocent (albeit, perhaps not authorized) attempt to play music.

It appears that everything else she reports she came across in the legitimate process of thoroughly cleaning the place, including items posted on the fridge (receipt for abortion, letter re academic probation) and "important documents" (no details) left in plain site. I suppose you could speculate that she dug through every desk and hunted down secret hiding places and this is all she found, but that would have meant spending even more time at each job and I believe she was being paid by the job, not by the hour.

Like markr, I probably wouldn't snoop because I lack the required interest, but I'm not inclined to be all that judgemental about those who do. Speaking generally here (I know there are endless exceptions), if you hire someone to clean up after you—something most people consider part of being an adult—and pay them for their time and effort just a tiny fraction of what you would be paid for a similar expenditure of time, they may well be curious about your life and not be all that respectful of your privacy. If you don't want something found, put it behind a lock. It's the price you pay for the class divide.

Disclaimer: when my kids were in preschool and their dad and I both worked full-time, for a year or so we had a service come to clean the house every other week (we kept up the regular cleaning in between, i.e., we didn't simply let the filth accumulated between cleanings). If I had it to over, I would hire an independent (not tied to a service) cleaner.
posted by she's not there at 3:30 AM on September 29, 2016 [7 favorites]

I catsat for an aquaintance recently and my snooping was limited to taking a look at the books she had on her bookshelf, then feeling guilty about it. Contrast this with when I used to babysit as a teenager. I'd go through everything, steal all loose change, and take the kids "sledding" by sitting them down on very expensive-looking Persian rugs and running with them across hardwood floors. The kids loved me but I very rarely got invited back anywhere. I guess what I'm saying is, I've grown up some in the past few years.

Also, I don't think there's anything wrong with hiring someone to clean up after you as long as you pay them decently and treat them fairly.
posted by hazyjane at 3:53 AM on September 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

The problem with snooping is the same problem you sometimes run into in the sciences, with people constructing just-so stories that accord with their own pre-existing biases and expectations. The penis rash search, for example. To assume to know and understand the motives for that search well enough to draw inferences based on superficial observation isn't necessarily fair. Could be the kid searched for that because a peer made a joke about it and he was trying to find out if it was a joke based in reality or not. Or maybe a peer had been humble-bragging about their sexual conquests and the kid had been looking for evidence to debunk the other kid.

Einstein once made an observation on theoretical physics that I think applies just as well to human behavior and social affairs, and in effect, amounts to one of the strongest defenses for the importance and significance of human subjectivity ever made IMO: He compared theoretical physics to being allowed to observe only the behaviors of the face and hands of a clock and having to formulate theories and descriptions about the clock's internal workings. His argument was that it's possible to construct an infinite number of predictive theories to account for the observable behavior of the clock but still be entirely wrong about the actual inner workings of the clock. The observable behaviors of people, too, often have many different possible interpretations and explanations. No behaviors ever self-evidently explain themselves completely. That's why people need to try to understand other people's interior lives and give them fair opportunities to describe their own motives and experiences from their POV. True, people aren't perfectly self-aware, so those narratives may not be fully or even partly reliable. But they are real and they matter. Even in a strictly non-magical, non-superstitious accounting of things. People's interior lives provide additional context that may change the meaning of their behavior, as that meaning plays out in a broader social context. The difference between a well-intended gesture gone wrong and malicious deeds lives almost entirely in that epistemological gap behind the face of the clock, in that subjective space we can only probe and guess at indirectly if we aren't willing to grant first person narrative accounts at least some weight and validity in our attempts to understand reality.
posted by saulgoodman at 4:16 AM on September 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

By all means let's sniff about the poor's gauche violations of their masters' hallowed privacy. This is why I only hire deaf-mutes to clean my filthy manse.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:13 AM on September 29, 2016 [21 favorites]

The company [scheduled to do the week-long performance workshop that the author asked for one week off to attend] sent pictures of themselves to the studio’s administrative offices, smiling and sunbathing on the beach, raising frosty drinks to the camera. “We’re stranded, ha ha,” the email said. I wrote the boss my own email, begging for my cleaning days to be rescheduled, but she never replied.
posted by amtho at 5:24 AM on September 29, 2016

I thought it was going to turn in to 50 shades-type porn. Disappointing.
posted by Coda Tronca at 5:35 AM on September 29, 2016

Strange piece. I enjoyed it, but the more I read, the more convinced I became that it was fiction, or at least highly fictionalized. For example, this:

Once while cleaning a three-story brownstone with shellacked black walls like the sides of a limousine, I accidentally leaned against the glass of a fish tank behind a wet bar and pushed open a secret door. Inside was a cramped office where three or four manicured women, all talking on BlackBerrys, turned to look at me.

reads more like a cleverly-intended bit of mise-en-scene to me rather than an account of an actual memory. Does anyone encountering such a frankly bizarre situation really not remember whether there were three or four women in the room? To me, at least, the moment of opening an unexpected secret door to discover an office full of people within a strangely-decorated residence is the sort of thing that would be burned into my visual memory.

In the end I thought it was very well-written, but it didn't really have very much to say.
posted by biogeo at 5:47 AM on September 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

Having cleaned houses (as well as having been a nanny), this strikes me as fiction. It's hard for me to explain exactly why, but the details just ring false.

Some random thoughts, though: rich people often have quirky or persnickety cleaning requirements, and I can't imagine that a person who couldn't resist the temptation to snoop would be able to resist writing about the precise angle a client wanted their throw pillows placed, and how they needed to overlap the adjacent pillow by 2.5 inches; or the strict instructions never to use ice from the icemaker when getting a glass of water, because the husband didn't want anyone touching the ice but himself, so there's bagged ice in a container on a shelf in the freezer, which everyone else in the household uses.
Or the mother in law who follows you around every time you're there, asking you about your bowel habits.
Rich people's houses are usually already spotless, so you're not really cleaning, it's mostly passing a duster and a damp mop over things, because they have you do it at least twice a week, so things never get dirty.
Nowadays, rich people have spycams everywhere, or you think they might, so you're not gonna snoop.
And the bit about only vacccuuming if the client owned a vacuum - in my experience, rich people are obsessive about their floors. They vaccuum, or have someone else vaccuum, constantly. Kitchen floors often get washed every single day, or even twice.
They worry whether people will think they're dirty if they don't use a fresh towel every day.
And what's with all the buckets? Steam mop for the floors, and spray bottles for the homemade cleaning solutions for countertops and mirrors.

It was an interesting read, but I don't think it was true. I think it was written as sort of a character study/slice of life.
posted by MexicanYenta at 5:55 AM on September 29, 2016 [9 favorites]

Does anyone encountering such a frankly bizarre situation really not remember whether there were three or four women in the room?

Given the many, many studies that have shown how flawed our memories are, even of things that are weird and "should" be burned into our minds forever, saying "three or four" makes this seem more truthy to me, at least.
posted by Etrigan at 6:06 AM on September 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

this strikes me as fiction

To me it seems like she might have done this job for a very short time, a few weeks, and just didn't have that much material. The secret room with three or four women is an entirely bizarre detail and at a gut level, I doubt it.

Rich people's houses are usually already spotless

This was not my experience housesitting for a handful of very rich people. In fact, I found they had a very cavalier atttitude toward creating filth, because they never had to clean it up. I would routinely come in to find that they had left for their travel in the morning and left days' worth of old bowls of cereal milk, discarded undergarments, dropped Kleenexes, and in one case an entire chicken carcass buzzing with flies sitting out on surfaces. Those who had dogs also seemed to have consistent problems housetraining the dogs, so coming in to find poop on the floor was fairly common as well.

I am very much over pieces like this. It's "look at these assholes" with an uncritical tinge of class dynamics. am really not sure what the author expects us to think or learn from this. Are we supposed to line up for some hate about how privileged and rich these people are? How is their lifestyle more precious than someone who obviously has a really hard time accepting the fact that they are cleaning houses for a living while pursuing a career in dance in an expensive city? What is left about the lifestyles of the affluent to surprise us? Why does mocking someone's apparently harmless underwear kink or cat hoarding problem become appropriate fodder for an essay? I just imagine if this author had gone to AskMe before writing this to say she had gained access to intimate information about the lifestyles of people she cleans for, some of whom have quirks or apparent mental illnesses, and wants to write about it for publication. It's easy to predict what that string of answers would look like.
posted by Miko at 6:23 AM on September 29, 2016 [7 favorites]

I realized what gets under my skin most about it: the unstated sneering notion that this work could never have dignity. Some "new left."
posted by Miko at 6:26 AM on September 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's total 'middle class person does working class job for a bit, ho hum'. You would be better off with Bukowski or even George Orwell; hardly any other literature takes on the theme of manual work.
posted by Coda Tronca at 6:42 AM on September 29, 2016

and early David Sedaris stories. It's practically a genre. And it's the reason I don't think I'll really ever want to pay anyone to clean my home - they might be a would-be writer.

You're looking at it the wrong way. If I were an eccentric millionaire living in the West Village, I'd hire multiple cleaning services, and create exciting backstories for each to discover over a period of months or years. For the Craigslist-ad cleaner, perhaps an ever-expanding library of sex toys, progressing from large to unwieldy to belief-defying. For the woman running her own agency, spare change scattered in unlikely places, of ever-advancing age, until finally she's picking up ceramic Sumerian currency from behind the couch cushions. For the bohemian dancer-cum-ecological-cleaner, I'd leave out travel postcards, signed by a woman's hand and originating from increasingly remote places, recounting a decades-long search for an unknown paramour.

You're going to be the story someone tells, no matter who you are or what you do. Might as well control your own narrative.
posted by Mayor West at 6:44 AM on September 29, 2016 [22 favorites]

This is a well-written piece in which the author perceives and fetishizes extreme wealth through her own lens of class insecurity and defensiveness. It's just a POV! I don't feel bad for her clients (as they're not named or otherwise identified) and I don't feel any animosity towards her, regardless of the moral ambiguity of some of her (alleged) actions. Is it fiction? Is it real? Who knows! Is it a requirement that everyone who write about their time as a house cleaner write it with reverence for the profession? No it is not. If you're expecting people who are pursuing an artistic endeavor to love their side jobs, you're barking up the wrong tree.

That it is provoking strong reactions here is a testament to the effectiveness of her prose and the well-defined nature of her perspective. I look forward to her next essay.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:07 AM on September 29, 2016 [7 favorites]

Pieces edging on voyeurism have their place as much as confessionals, and with complementary detractors. How we see behind the veil of how others live: not the cost of their possessions or the number of employees they have, but what personal habits and interests they express through their living spaces, has some sort of allure.

Cleanliness and organization are such weird habits. To an extent, everyone has their own standard, cultivated over the years but very much a product of their upbringing, itself a combination of prior households. You can see the clashes every day, even now, the reddits and quoras of the web perpetually surfacing questions about why a significant other doesn't think immediately loading the dishwasher is important, and why they insist on hanging shirts that should be folded. Some are negotiated things that may not matter, others seem some indicator of deep tension in the home.

To be sure part of it is the division of household labor and finding a common standard, especially when you have two working adults sharing the household duties. Other things seem like the edge of neurosis -- asking why your spouse doesn't flick the extra water from the toothbrush into the sink before putting it back in the holder because not doing so is disgusting. I'd never thought either way about such a thing, although I guess I do it.

I once read an article about a music celebrity who was complaining that he had a guest that didn't wipe down the sink after washing her hands. That is, he has paper towels (or some sort of towel) near the sink, and after the soap, water, and rinsing, he wipes out the sink leaving it dry and spotless after every use. What the hell?
posted by mikeh at 7:49 AM on September 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

This rings very true to me, as I spent a short time as a housecleaner, and also some time as an assistant in one of my boss' homes, the family manse where they'd lived since they built the place out of the planks of the Mayflower that brought them to America, or whatever. The tedium, the small details that turn out to be not so salacious, the general apathy about details (rich people are very used to things just being done the way they want without much input on their parts) and the hangers-on who seem to have no job but to be a barrier level between the Masters and the Bottom-Level Servants.
posted by xingcat at 7:58 AM on September 29, 2016

She’d asked for “special attention” there, and this was why: all the bathroom’s surfaces — tub, sink, and floor — were obscured by several inches of soiled cat litter. She must have been dumping new bags of it straight onto the floor. I spent several hours loosening urine-soaked clods of litter from the tub and matted tufts of hair from the sink drain.

Wowowow. I feel much better about my cleaning habits now. I would not consider myself a clean person (unwashed-but-rinsed dishes, piles of paper), but the last four houses I've been in were at least as messy, if not messier than mine, so I'm surprisingly above average. I lived with a moderate hoarder for awhile - just a few notches better than the cat litter lady - and I would not wish that on anyone.
posted by AFABulous at 8:01 AM on September 29, 2016

I learned my lesson on snooping while housesitting for an older couple as a young adult. They said it was okay to use their computer and gave me the login. Out of curiosity I looked at their bookmarked sites and discovered one or both of them had a fetish that was not illegal but was disgusting to me. From then on, I was very careful not to open any drawers or cabinets unless I was sure they had something I needed (e.g. towels, dishes), lest they contained something I wouldn't be able to unsee. I worked with the woman and I was forever awkward around her after that.
posted by AFABulous at 8:23 AM on September 29, 2016

Could they have been technologically unsophisticated enough to have picked up those bookmarks accidentally and not realized it, because one of the things a lot of spurious/less ethical porn and SEO farm/malicious sites will do is trick users into bookmarking sites when they think they are dismissing a pop up dialog. Especially in the very early days of widespread internet use, technologically unsophisticated or careless users could easily end up with bookmarks they never meant to create or may not have even noticed. I see that all the time with the in-laws and other older relatives who just aren't prepared for how deceptive and deliberately confusing navigating online territory can be.

I mean, a fetish has a technical definition: somebody with a fetish literally can't achieve sexual satisfaction without their required kink being involved. Lots of people, anecdotally, seem to be more sexually fluid and flexible than that. Maybe it wasn't a fetish your client had. Maybe it was evidence of nothing more significant than a one-time casual sexual fantasy sparked by exposure to something else culturally that sparked the passing interest, or maybe it was an accidental byproduct of exploring some unrelated sexual interest. Either way, the physical evidence alone can't resolve the ambiguity. Somebody needs to ask the person who actually did the thing and at least consider their account of why to understand what the evidence actually means, even if their answer ultimately turns out to be ego protective bullshit.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:47 AM on September 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

From then on, I was very careful not to open any drawers or cabinets ... lest they contained something I wouldn't be able to unsee.

That is exceedingly wise.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:39 AM on September 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Somebody needs to ask the person who actually did the thing and at least consider their account of why to understand what the evidence actually means, even if their answer ultimately turns out to be ego protective bullshit.

Why on earth would I ask them about their perfectly safe, legal and almost certainly consensual fetish? The entire point is that I don't want to know what people do behind closed doors. I am absolutely not a prude; I ran a BDSM social group for years. The bookmarks (there were 15 or 20) IIRC mostly went to forums and personal pages, not porn sites. It was not a virus.
posted by AFABulous at 9:41 AM on September 29, 2016 [7 favorites]

You wouldn't if you didn't crave epistemic closure. I wouldn't either. But not everybody is comfortable or capable of leaving that much uncertainty just sitting there unexplained, hence snooping behavior.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:48 AM on September 29, 2016

The "you" above was meant impersonally, like "one." You claimed to believe your client had a fetish. I'm like you, "who cares?" But to even really know that much, we'd need more info is all I'm trying to say.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:09 AM on September 29, 2016

Yikes, I didn't mean to shit the thread, damn. Sorry.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:12 PM on September 29, 2016

And yet what almost everyone would do, though deny they did, or would ever do.

I pet-sit. I am left alone in people's houses for days on end. I do not snoop. At most, I open cupboards etc to look for, say, where they keep the extra toilet paper. It's not some kind of proud virtue... it's just that I am an introvert to the point that I really do not give a single damn about these people's lives, other than what I need to do to take care of their pets (and keep my own bottom clean, ok)
posted by The otter lady at 6:32 PM on September 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

By all means let's sniff about the poor's gauche violations of their masters' hallowed privacy. This is why I only hire deaf-mutes to clean my filthy manse.

Sure, it's just fine to disregard basic respect for others' privacy if one is poor. That makes a lot of sense.
posted by Lyme Drop at 8:33 PM on September 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sorry, I'm awash in Trump anxiety this week. That was too aggressive. Basic point stands, though.
posted by Lyme Drop at 8:35 PM on September 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

..I can't imagine violating someone else's.
How rare would you guess your discipline to be?

It's not even discipline. I'm just really not interested in knowing.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 9:19 PM on September 29, 2016

This is why I only hire deaf-mutes to clean my filthy manse.

My ship is named Silence.
posted by rokusan at 9:38 PM on September 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

I really enjoyed this. I like this sort of unselfconscious, factual writing style. Reading this reminded me of the years I used to subscribe to Granta. It feels a lot like a Granta story, many of which I remember being biographical accounts. It makes me want to write and be hyper observant in my own life.
posted by Dragonness at 3:40 PM on September 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Dragonness: I really enjoyed this. I like this sort of unselfconscious, factual writing style. Reading this reminded me of the years I used to subscribe to Granta. It feels a lot like a Granta story, many of which I remember being biographical accounts. It makes me want to write and be hyper observant in my own life.

I have issues with the piece but I really like this comment and I had to pull myself away from new-to-me Granta to finish it.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:23 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]