Illustration by Rachel Wada
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There is no method of building character better than cleaning other people’s toilets.
Working for a summer as a housekeeper at a luxurious wilderness resort in the Rocky Mountains, I spent hours kneeling on sticky tiles, scrubbing the insides of toilet bowls with a grimy brush and bottle of spray. The only thing more dehumanizing than the cleaning itself was the criticism I received from supervisors regarding the quality of my toilet polishing. Despite four years of studying liberal arts – a field in which criticism is constant and often deeply personal – I was unprepared for the brutality of being told that I didn’t excel in the art of housekeeping.
I moved to the mountains in hopes of becoming the kind of carefree, outdoorsy girl I’d always secretly imagined myself to be. I was 22 and confused about the future, seeking happiness without stipulation, adventure without consequence. The life I wanted was at once bohemian and entirely Instagram-worthy. I’d pose gamely for pictures on mountain peaks and lounge on patches of grass reading classic novels. But this, of course, was not the reality I encountered when I showed up to my first day of work and had a feather duster thrust into my hand.
There’s a lot to be learned from making people’s beds and spritzing their showers, from witnessing the state of disarray they’re comfortable creating in a room that isn’t really theirs. The experience made me tidier, more organized, more likely to leave hefty tips for people in service positions. I developed stiff knees and a sore back from hunching over beds and bathtubs and toilets. My skin broke out from sweating profusely in my thick uniform and my hands developed rough callouses. Worse than the physical manifestations of my unhappiness were the uncomfortable encounters with guests who saw me as little more than a means to an end.
One particularly depressing evening, during a turn-down shift when housekeepers offer bed-making services and water bottles to guests, a man answered his door and listened intently to my offer of “evening services.”
“You don’t look dressed for evening services,” he said with a smirk, eyes raking over my unflattering uniform. I walked away in discomfort. In the next room a guest berated me for not having left enough clean towels. She wanted six and I’d only given her four.
You won’t be surprised to learn that I spent much of that summer crying and drinking, often at the same time. Surrounded by beautiful, snow-capped mountains and glittering aquamarine lakes, I should have been revelling in my youth and relative freedom. I’d graduated university, was living essentially rent-free in one of Canada’s most revered landscapes and was surrounded by hundreds of young, attractive people with whom I could potentially forge connections. And yet I went to bed every night dreading the moment when my alarm would go off and I’d have to begin another eight-hour shift.
All summer I contemplated quitting. It would have been easy enough to hand in my notice and book a flight home. But the idea of admitting defeat – of giving up hope on the girl I wanted to be – was disheartening. My parents, who I frequently called in hysterics, must have struggled to understand why I was forcing myself to endure something I hated so much. What I couldn’t articulate then was that the entirety of my young-adult life had been predicated on a fear of missing out. My life revolved around stories – telling my own and being a part of other peoples’. They were my social capital. I worried that I would be forgotten if I missed out on anything.
There was also beauty in that summer. Standing on top of a mountain offers momentary relief from whatever hardships life can bring, and I found solace in the freshness of the air and free-spiritedness of the people I met. I have fond memories of listening to nineties music in my friends’ van and dressing up for Halloween in the middle of July. I canoed on beautiful lakes and bought eclectic clothes at a dingy thrift store.
One night, midway through the summer, I sat outside with my co-workers in hopes of catching a glimpse of the Northern Lights. We’d been there for hours, and eventually decided to pack up our things and head back to staff accommodations. Just as I reached my cabin, a scream pierced the night. Instinctively my head flew back, and in the sky I saw dancing threads of green and white.
Everyone ran back, jostling for spots on the mound of gravel we’d just left, believing that if we could just get a few feet closer to the lights, the experience would be even more special. Somehow I ended up with the head of a boy I barely knew in my lap. For an hour we stayed like that, mesmerized by the sky exploding overhead. Some people cried, others laughed hysterically, and I can say with all honestly that I’ve never felt more alive than I did in those moments.
The next morning I started work at 8 a.m. My eyes were blurry with exhaustion and I struggled to clean my way through the 12 rooms on my list. All of the usual miseries danced through my mind like the lights I’d watched in the sky hours earlier. But on that day they bothered me less, because the aurora borealis had illuminated all of the brightness in a situation I’d written off as dark. Months of tears and turmoil evaporated under the glitter of charged particles. I’m glad I was so afraid of missing out, proud that I forced myself to endure a summer of scrubbing toilets, because when anyone asks if I saw the lights that night I’ll always be able to say: “Yes, I saw. I was there.”
Olivia Lavery lives in Toronto.