6 - “Back to the Dark Side”

Summary

This chapter develops how surveillance shapes cleaners’ everyday work life. Cleaners experience being watched by clients, security guards, CleanUp management, and even co-workers. Surveillance constitutes an attack on their sense of worth. It stands for distrust in their work ability and efforts, and the resulting need to control them. Cleaners respond to surveillance by engaging in tactics ranging from what I term turning off and away from surveillance to turning against those who watch them. Cleaners’ urge to counter surveillance in order to retain a sense of dignity – no matter how fragile and short-lived – can surpass the fear of getting into trouble. Surveillance can come with a degree of thrill, excitement and even a sense of superiority in the hunt for ways to outwit and resist it. However, it can also summon feelings of degradation and indignity, especially when cleaners get caught. But no matter how strenuously cleaners resist surveillance, it does not follow that they resist work too. Indeed, for cleaners, maintaining dignity requires a balancing act of outwitting surveillance, finding autonomy, and working hard enough to uphold a work ethic and related sense of self-worth.