Work for a Song

Some random house

I was raised with an interesting philosophy…if you can make money, any amount of money by working, you should do it. When I was a teenager, I worked at Taco Time for a couple of years. When I finally quit that job, I needed to figure out a way to make a little money. I wanted to take some voice lessons and even at a discounted price they were $10 each.

Grandma got tired of hiring me to help out at her house, so she started talking around with a few of her cronies to see if anyone had any work I could do. I didn’t want a full-time job because I was already stretched to the breaking point trying to attend high school and college at the same time. I was a member of the choir, in the musical, on the Youth City Council…you get the idea.

So Grandma had a friend. She was an old spinster-type who lived alone in a big old house on Main Street. We rarely saw her even at church, although I knew who she was by sight. Anyway, she was looking for somebody to clean her house. Since Grandma had taught me to clean so well for money, we both thought this might be a good way to bring in a little cash.

Grandma arranged everything and all I had to do was show up on Saturday and work until it was done. The problem was that there is no way I could have cleaned this lady’s house in a month full of Saturdays! It was a total disaster!

I started with the kitchen. It looked like it nothing had been touched for at least a week. The sink and counters were piled with dishes, many of them still containing spoiled food. Some pots and pans had fallen to the floor and no one had bothered to pick them up, their contents spilling onto the faded linoleum. There were boxes and packages and wrappers here, there and everywhere. Some empty, some not.

Not our house

It took me about 4 hours just to clean up the kitchen. She didn’t have a dishwasher, so everything had to be washed by hand. Because of all the rotten food, I had to keep changing the water. By the time I was finally finished and had mopped the floor, my fingers were shriveled up like little prunes.

I moved on to the living room (and of course found more dirty dishes) although it wasn’t quite as bad as the kitchen. It only took me about an hour and a half before I was able to vacuum. By that time, I was extremely tired and ready to go home. Unfortunately, my commitment was for 8 hours and I wasn’t there yet.

I walked passed the bathroom without even opening the door and headed for her bedroom. In hindsight, that was probably a bad choice. The room was rather dark, with heavy curtains covering the windows. The TV blared in the corner and the room was mostly filled with a large bed…and she was in it! I switched on the light and she glared at me although she didn’t say anything, just harumphed and rolled over.

I don’t remember the type of flooring in the room, but it wasn’t carpeted, unless you count the garbage that lay all over it. I headed back to the kitchen and started looking for a trash bag. I finally found one and stomped my way back to the bedroom. I was getting angrier by the moment. This was not what I had bargained for!

picture credit

Thankfully, almost everything on the bedroom floor went straight into the garbage bag. I will spare you the details, but the worst thing I pulled out was halfway under the bed…a half-eaten pie, moldy, with a fork still stuck in it. As the minutes ticked away, I swept the remaining crumbs (and there were a lot of them!) into the dustpan. I was finally finished. As I turned to go, she demanded that I take care of a few more random items and then mumbled something about getting the money to Grandma. I washed my hands in hot water right before I headed out the door. I was so glad to be rid of that place!

A couple of days later, Grandma brought me an envelope with my pay. I opened it up and out dropped a ten-dollar bill. “She wants to know if you can come back next week,” Grandma smiled. I turned the bill over in my hands, hoping that it was stuck to another bill somehow. Just enough for one voice lesson. “My days as a maid are over!” I vowed. Yeah, right.