by Asian Views

Created on: August 18, 2008

My mother has always said that occupations hold no discriminations and cannot be classified into good or bad. It is up to the worker to make the best of work, be proud of himself and show what a good worker he is irregardless of what it is that he is employed as.

When I came to Canada and could not get acknowledgement for my accounting qualifications, I took any employment that I could to help my husband out with the bills. I still remember my first part time job as a housekeeper for a family of five. All my life I have been laid back and disliked keeping house, only doing it when absolutely necessary. My eldest daughter was upset with the life that I had chosen over here and kept telling me to go home but I just laughed it off.

Then I landed a temporary housekeeping job at a very small hotel where being the housekeeper also meant that I had to clean all the public toilets and empty all public trash cans. I noticed that some of the people that I had known while working the front desk of the same hotel were not looking at me the same way anymore. It was more a feeling than anything else. Then one day while working the front desk, I told a guest that she was not to go through the manager's office and was met with a rude answer that told me that I had no right to tell her anything as I only cleaned toilets. This guest had never been rude to me before. That barbed retort just took me by surprise but I managed to keep a straight, pleasant face when I told her that I was also currently managing the front desk and she would have to listen or I would report her.

I need the money to make ends meet, thus to only take jobs that do not entail dirty work is not an option. For me, a job is a job and I do it with dignity. Just because I scrub toilets or other people's homes, it doesn't make me any less human or civil than they are.

Even when I was back home and held the position of Financial Controller, I treated my fellow workers, factory hands, security personnel and tea lady in the same way. All of us were workers and we earned our fair wage, only by different means. Although not all of us in management positions shared the same view, I never allowed their judgements to cloud my own outlook and I guess this has helped me to weather my own hard course in life here now.

I believe that you need to get to know a person before you judge. A person involved in menial duties may have chosen it over the stress of office life rather than doing it because he / she was unqualified to do any better. At some points in my life back home, I have wanted to opt out for jobs that did not require me to think or bring my problems home but instead I have always just taken the easy way out, a long vacation before going back to the grind.

Having been at both ends of the scale, I still think that there is no difference in the person. A good person will always be a good person, maybe a bit downtrodden but being resilient is almost always one of the qualities of a good person.

Learn more about this author, Asian Views.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.