An amazing benefit of being a cleaner is the opportunity to observe the world without being seen.
Living in a society where you are defined by what you do, cleaners are usually not only untouchable at times but actually invisible.
This gives us the rare opportunity to observe the world as it is, not as it appears to be. We do not see what the rest of the world sees, we see reality because to many people, we are non existent and they do not have to impress us.
At Zenith Cleaners, we have the honor of having some of the most enlightened clients anyone could wish for.
We have clients who have served on the same board with their cleaners!
We also have the honor of serving clients who tend to treat us like trash while the rest of the world sees them as progressive and enlightened. It makes us conclude that the reason they do so is that they do not see us.
This makes us appreciate the more those clients who dine at the same table with their cleaners.
A number of us who clean at Zenith Cleaners are not traditional cleaners but people who lead in other domains and do cleaning as practice.
Our cleaners have had the privilege of cleaning the homes of people who would eventually submit contract bids to organizations run by their cleaner and neither party expected nor planned it.
We have had cleaners who cleaned for clients they consulted for or organizations they helped run in the past, unplanned. They did it not for economic reasons but because they wanted to see the world through a different lens.
It is hard to come away from such experiences and not be forever changed. We experience the joy of being seen and heard. But the pain of not being seen, not being heard and therefore being trampled upon, makes us go away from this practice determined to see and to hear.
Everyone deserves to be seen, everyone deserves to be heard.
Needless to say, these experiences enrich us much more than we can say and we invite others to participate too, to experience the beauty of non-existence.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Two-way fulfillment
If you ask any Zenith Cleaner, they would tell you one of the reasons they clean is that they like to see the results of their work. Most of us do not want to wait indefinitely before knowing that we are making a difference. With cleaning, the difference you make is immediately seen, not only by you the cleaner but also by the users of the space. You can go home everyday, knowing that today, I made a difference. That is fulfilling.
Since we are in a dance with clients, we give and receive feedback all the time, so that even when we are performing below par, it is noticed and can be corrected quickly. We are not the only ones making a difference to the clients, they make a difference to us too, which has to be fulfilling for them.
All of us who work at Zenith Cleaners do many other things apart from cleaning. For us, cleaning is a practice, which feeds and is fed by other areas of our lives. We are constantly looking for how to make a difference that is seen not only by us but by others as well. In addition, we are constantly looking for how to allow ourselves to be changed by others. It takes the two-way fulfillment in our practice to other domains.
Since we are in a dance with clients, we give and receive feedback all the time, so that even when we are performing below par, it is noticed and can be corrected quickly. We are not the only ones making a difference to the clients, they make a difference to us too, which has to be fulfilling for them.
All of us who work at Zenith Cleaners do many other things apart from cleaning. For us, cleaning is a practice, which feeds and is fed by other areas of our lives. We are constantly looking for how to make a difference that is seen not only by us but by others as well. In addition, we are constantly looking for how to allow ourselves to be changed by others. It takes the two-way fulfillment in our practice to other domains.