Exactly. Maybe the real story here is why some employees aren’t responding to market rate incentives.

If most people are making the obvious move to better compensated jobs with better working conditions, what’s driving some people to stay in the underpaid, overworked jobs? It’s not hard to switch jobs in 2021.

I am assuming Marcus is a “housekeeping manager” getting paid $36k to $50k per year, and he cannot easily quit and find another job that pays a steady wage of that much for a 8am to 5pm type position. The other jobs might pay more, but they might be evening/night jobs, and/or he does not trust they will reliably get sufficient hours.

And cleaning 40 rooms in a day is disgusting, no way a hotel room gets properly cleaned in 15 min or less and laundry gets properly washed or protocols are followed.

Edit: nevermind, I read more of the article and Marcus is a $15 per hour employee, not a salaried “manager”.

> While Marcus used to complete “every single step” while cleaning rooms, they now sometimes skip dusting and mopping. But they worry that slacking off too much will only backfire on their colleagues, who would be the ones left to clean up the mess. “That’s the only thing that holds me back,” they say.

I've cleaned hotel rooms. I think we had 20 minutes a room (it was a long time ago).

You get good at it.

Different people did different parts of the job, with only one in a room at a time. For example, one person removed all the bedsheets, cleaned surfaces, polished mirrors, replaced toilet rolls etc and tidied things that were out of place including the resident's items. Another brought in and fitted clean bedsheets and placed clean towels. Another went around with a vacuum cleaner after them.

The total time per room when you count each person probably exceeded 20 minutes.

When not cleaning rooms I worked in the kitchen.

I was 17 at the time, and this job helped pay my living expenses subsequently at university, because the government grant was sufficient for rent, but no food.

I have cleaned rooms too, and am very familiar with the metrics at hotels. I know a lot of the fancier, big union operated hotels have near 20min standards for their housekeepers to meet, but they pay very well and have more young, healthy housekeepers. And have redundancies that can take care of the trashed rooms that pop up.

On the other hand, there are lots of motels and franchised hotel operators trying to squeeze 20min per room from housekeepers at low pay, and I would not believe they can keep that pace up and delivery a quality product for 13+ hours in a day.

I wouldn't expect the time taken do do laundry to be included in that 15 minutes.

I meant that as a separate item since they are probably understaffed in all departments. The 15 min is just made up by me assuming they are working 10 hours.

> If most people are making the obvious move to better compensated jobs with better working conditions, what’s driving some people to stay in the underpaid, overworked jobs?

I think there's a real perception of "better the devil you know" for some people that factors into it, even when there's evidence of friends and coworkers doing better. To some degree it's hard to tell if the market is just good or if you just have a sample size of people that got "lucky", and no matter what there's some risk and luck involved in switching jobs. It's even harder if you have little in the way of savings. Having a family relying on you and your income and living mostly month is not a situation amenable to trying to trying new jobs on the market. Stability is prioritized, and even if you secure a new job before quitting the old one, there's always the risk that they'll tell you it's not working our after a couple weeks and then you're in a bad spot.

There are a lot of factors that prevent that. #1 being fear. Fear of change, fear of the unknown(what will the new job bring), fear of failure (what if they fire me at the new place), fear of competition (what if I am not as good as others) etc.

I am in a state where I am encouraging someone else to move away from their toxic workplace and they still don't do it because they are too afraid and not very confident of their own capabilities (even though they are very talented and financially very secure). Imagine how difficult it would be if you have other barriers on top of the mental one.