Friday, November 24, 2006

Ethics of Maids

The notion of a maid is always one that I've thought worrisome. It seems that if one has any moral obligations, one of them is to clean up after oneself. You made this mess, you clean it up. By hiring someone to clean your house, you are failing to take full responsibility for your own actions. You made that toilet, shower, carpet dirty, you need to know what you've done and you need to make it right. Like the spoiled rockband who trashes their hotel room and leave an accountant to straighten out the situation financially, it seems to say, "I have enough money that I can do whatever I want, so I don't have to care."

It's not that the job is menial or degrading and that by hiring someone to clean your house you are treating them as a less than human tool, there are lots of jobs that suffer from that and while that conversation is an interesting one, this is something different. I'm proposing the idea that there are just certain jobs that you have an obligation to perform. If someone hired someone else to raise their children or serve their jail sentence that would seem to be a similar dereliction of moral duty. It's not just your responsibility to see that it gets done, it is your responsibility to be the one who does it.

Sense here or did I just wash too many dishes last night?