The average relationship between the student and the college bedder is a strange one. On paper, it isn’t one which has much potential for a fertile and blossoming kinship. As a student, typical interactions with your housekeeper are punctuated with self-consciousness about the state of your room, occasional misunderstandings, very few words in exchange for lots of knocking, and an all-pervasive awkwardness. The housekeeper is a frequent feature in many embarrassing anecdotes, the person catching you coming out of the shower, with a partner, or with your room ruined post-pres. Alternatively, to many students it can feel like they don’t see much of them at all. The college bedder darts in and out of our rooms unseen and unheard, a mystical entity akin to the tooth fairy, leaving a sparkling bathroom or a neatly arranged kitchen behind.

“This strange cognitive dissonance makes it all too appealing … to unconsciously make them and the work they do invisible”

This uncertain landscape between student and housekeeper is ironic. On one hand, the college bedder is able to enter the sanctuaries of our rooms, and is obliged to report anything which they deem concerning for our welfare, and on the other, they often remain absolute strangers to us. This strange cognitive dissonance makes it all too appealing to go the other route, to unconsciously make them and the work they do invisible. This only tips us further into ancient classisms, where vast numbers of students who have never known a minimum wage job fail to recognise the hard work which goes into their simple daily comforts.

I’ve recently been reflecting on my own complicated relationship with college housekeepers because to me, it feels like these (predominantly) women only become more and more visible. I have also, many a time, suffered from the crawling, uncomfortable feeling I would have when the housekeepers would enter my room, and I would be sat back doing work on my laptop. But, occasionally, this unease would be mixed with delight at hearing Polish conversation between the women as they worked, and my excitement at being able to have a short conversation, exchange a few words, in response. Being able to hear these women chat, gossip, and greet each other around the college in a language which feels several levels more personal to both myself and them, provides a level of support to me which goes much further beyond than just a clean bin. Being Polish and from a working class background, Cambridge often severs these ties to what reminds me of home, and these simple, oddly-placed reminders of it have become incredibly meaningful.

Upon reflection, my own relationships with the housekeepers at my college are indefinitely complicated by the fact they seem to be too close to home. Whilst some of my peers don’t seem to have this personal, unsettled feeling when interacting with housekeepers, I can’t look past it in the same way. It’s more than just awkwardness when I’m able to talk to someone past the language barrier, when their lives and experiences could be any one of my own relatives that moved here to this country. In short, I see the lives of my own mother and aunt in the work that they do.

“My own relationships with the housekeepers at my college are indefinitely complicated by the fact they seem to be too close to home”

I take these interactions with housekeepers more personally because my background is uniquely placed to be able to do so. What these reflections have highlighted to me is how many students fail to achieve this type of insight into the vast numbers of people that work around us on a daily basis. We can do more to recognise the reality that every person we see is a person with their own unique experiences, wisdom, and perspective. It’s not just the housekeepers, it’s also the maintenance staff that come to descale the shower, the bar staff that make your coffee, the porters, the gardeners, and the people that serve you dinner at hall. In particular, the cleaner, who carries a systemic stigma with the job’s ties to low income work and its subsequent ‘feminisation’, makes the people in the profession particularly vulnerable to a normalised neglect.

My message here to everyone: make friends with your housekeeper. Simple conversations foster relationships of respect, kindness, and humanity. Learn your housekeeper’s names, ask them how their day is going, make small talk when you’re waiting for your bagel to toast. Leave a note saying thank you at the end of term, maybe some chocolate if the state of the kitchen is particularly dire, or if something has been replaced for you at your housekeeper’s request. These small tokens of gratitude combat the powers which dehumanise such important work, as well as saving you from lingering in that awkwardness and discomfort which too often gets in the way between the student and the college housekeeper.

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