"When you're young, why can't you think of becoming a cleaner?"
Almost every young person who changes careers to become a cleaner has experienced such doubts. After all, in the secular concept, cleaning is not a high-level job, doing some dirty work, if there is no other way out, it is difficult to imagine that there are young people willing to take the initiative to devote themselves to it.
But the truth is that young practitioners, even young highly educated practitioners, are constantly pouring into the housekeeping industry.
It's true that cleaning is dirty and tired.
After a year and nine months in the industry, Jiang Yue, a "post-90s" generation, lost count of how many cockroaches and rats he had killed. If you encounter a difficult list in the sweltering summer, the smell of garbage fermentation will almost "pickle into the taste", and you will have to take three baths when you go home.
For Zhang Xiao, a "post-95" graduate student who has just completed three months of part-time work in the industry, back pain has become the norm. Due to too much contact with detergents, his hands often peeled, and the fingerprints on his fingers were almost "burned". Chen Haofan still remembers that the first order charged was 2,000 yuan, and he and his three partners worked for three days and three nights in a row.
Zhang Xiao's hand/Courtesy of the interviewee
But they don't regret the choice they made. Jiang Yue feels that the biggest commonality of these young people who work as cleaners is that they are "able to endure hardships". After suffering all kinds of hardships, they became more pragmatic, and finally harvested the value they craved in the "bitterness" of cleaning.
A "pure" job
Walking into the kitchen, you'll be greeted by a dense patch of black mold and yellow grease stains on the tiled walls, then a rusty stove, and a dozen cockroaches flee from a cardboard box or move a shelf, followed by a sharp popping sound.
This is the first cleaning video uploaded by Chen Haofan's team on station B at the end of 2021. Three or four young men in their 20s wore uniform black short sleeves and dark bib pants, with sharp hands and feet, and a clear division of labor, and in just one and a half minutes in the video, the room was completely new, neat and warm.
Chen Haofan, 27 years old, a native of Anhui Province, was discharged from the army in 2018. Before entering the cleaning market, he worked in sales in the education and training industry for several years. According to his observations, veterans have limited options, and most of them work as fitness instructors or salesmen. Soon the epidemic struck, and the education and training industry was struggling to survive, so he decided to find a new way out. In chatting with parents, he happened to learn that many people have higher demands in terms of hygiene, which traditional housekeeping cannot meet, so he keenly grasped the business opportunities.
According to data from iiMedia Research, the scale of China's domestic service market has increased from 277.6 billion yuan in 2015 to 1,089 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of nearly three times, and will maintain a steady growth trend in the future, and the scale of China's domestic service market is expected to exceed 1.3 trillion yuan in 2027. According to the estimation of industry associations, there are more than 30 million domestic workers in mainland China, and the actual demand exceeds 50 million, which is a relatively rare industry in short supply.
Young cleaners and a house full of garbage/Source: Ma Li's housekeeper
Cleaning is not a high-level job, but Chen Haofan feels that the development potential of this industry is large, the threshold is relatively low, and the army has strict health requirements, and sanitation happens to be his area of expertise, which is worth a try. In 2021, he pulled three retired friends together, raised more than 100,000 yuan, registered a "super butler" company, and operated a self-media account, matching the cleaning process with cheerful and interesting BGM to attract traffic and then obtain customers.
Young people love to watch this kind of video, and can feel "decompressed" from the huge contrast before and after cleaning, and Jiang Yue, a "post-90s" generation, also likes to watch, especially the video of "Ma Li's housekeeper", he likes to watch the process of cleaning things, and he also likes the relaxed atmosphere of the young cleaners in it. In July 2022, he decided to join the cleaning team.
Jiang Yue is tired of the complicated office ecology. His last job was as a salesperson for a large smart device company, and he complained a lot about the intricacies of workplace relationships. For example, if leader A and leader B are at odds, but the two leaders arrange to work at the same time, he doesn't want to offend either party, but his energy is limited, and he can't not offend either party, and he will always fall into a dilemma. There are also intrigues and factions among colleagues, and subordinates collude with superiors, and he feels bored after seeing a lot of similar things.
He likes his current state very much, although his body is more tired, but "his heart is not tired". He originally wanted to be a storage manager, but he actually became a cleaner, enjoying the sense of accomplishment that comes from tidying up the messy house. He was transferred to the operation post in the past two years, but the list increased, and he often went to the front line to participate in cleaning. The salary of the two jobs is about the same, both in the range of 600-800, but it is "purer" to do cleaning. His colleagues are also "post-90s" and "post-00s", they can play with each other, and occasionally they will turn on the "PK mode" when they work, to see who tramples on the number of cockroaches and rats that are more dead, and they feel happy whether they win or lose. "There are not so many organizational frameworks, and everyone has one goal, which is to do a good job of this customer's list, and everyone can get their own corresponding returns. ”
Next to the garbage, there are dozens of cockroaches crawling on the wall/Source: Ma Li's housekeeper posted a screenshot of the video on the social platform
"[They] have basically watched the video and feel that the work is very decompressing, and a considerable part of them are here for this. Jiang Yue's colleagues come from all walks of life, in addition to a large proportion of veterans, there are also sales, business, food delivery riders, and factory workers. Somewhat unexpectedly, the proportion of undergraduates in the company's staff composition reached 50%, and most of them have experience in their majors.
Jiang Yue didn't have much insight into the reasons why other people changed careers, but if there is anything that this group of people have in common, it is "able to endure hardships". "The body is very tired, but there is no free lunch in the sky", and they are willing to suffer from cleaning.
Graduate student, shore cleaning
Among the young people who are "willing to endure the hardships of cleaning", Zhang Xiao's graduate student status is particularly outstanding.
Zhang Xiao is a "post-95" generation, currently studying for graduate school in management at a college in Guangzhou, and has been working part-time as a personal door-to-door cleaner for three months. Among the people he came into contact with to do this part-time job, most of them were the older generation, and almost none had a bachelor's degree or above.
When he first started working as a part-time cleaner, he followed the housekeeping team, "only 220 yuan a day, and he was squeezed very much". While doing it, he paid attention to other people's cleaning tools, techniques, and techniques, and decided to leave the team and go it alone. Coupled with his own military experience and love to tidy up, he has received a lot of praise along the way, and now he has accumulated a stable source of customers, and his hourly salary can reach 50-60 yuan, which is "relatively high".
He has a large black backpack, which is loaded with computers, chargers and books on weekdays, and when he works part-time, he is full of various cleaning tools such as glue remover, degreaser, baking soda, scouring pads, and floor brushes, which is about "two watermelons". The surrounding classmates knew that he was not doing much cleaning, and often ridiculed him for "going out fishing".
Xiaohongshu post by Zhang Xiao
Zhang Xiao's workday usually starts like this. Wake up at 6 a.m., have breakfast, arrive at the subway station 1 km from the school before 7 a.m., and take the subway for more than an hour to arrive before the client leaves for work in the morning. After confirming the needs with the customer, Zhang Xiao entered the room, from the ceiling, the wall, to the cabinet, all kinds of dead corners, and finally to store and clean up the garbage. "From top to bottom, inside and out" had to be cleaned, to the point where you could wipe it with white gloves and no dust. Sometimes he has to rush back to school in the afternoon to type papers or attend academic lectures after cleaning up in the morning.
When they learned that Zhang Xiao was in graduate school, most people's reaction was surprise. Once, an old customer said to him: "As long as you are willing to endure hardship, there will be endless hardship." You, a graduate student, can actually put down your body to be a cleaner?" In the Xiaohongshu account that updates the daily cleaning routine, the comment area is also full of puzzled voices, and even questions him about deliberately creating a persona. He understood that the other party had no ill intentions, and guessed that his choice might be a sign of incompetence in the eyes of others.
In fact, Zhang Xiao took the initiative to choose cleaning, which was carefully considered. Before that, he had made many attempts and suffered a lot in addition to cleaning.
He studied engineering as an undergraduate, and after graduation, he served as a soldier for two years, and after retiring from the army, he could not find a professional job due to lack of work experience, so he went to an international logistics company to do sales for half a year.
Stills from "More than Endless".
The pain of sales is low wages and a sense of powerlessness. The basic salary of the work is 3,500 yuan, 2,600 yuan after removing the provident fund, and subtracting the rent of 1,100 yuan. The success rate of telemarketing is very low, usually 50 calls are made, and only two or three customers can be added. He himself did not resist this profession, but he was often rejected, and every time he was about to make a call, he even secretly prayed that the other side would not answer. He spent a lot of effort to maintain contact with a customer, and the two had a good conversation, thinking that they were about to talk, but in the end they found that the other party's business did not match the company's products, so he could only rejoice.
At that time, affected by the epidemic, he felt that the logistics industry was going downhill, and decided to find another way out and quit his job to prepare for the exam. Zhang Xiao felt that he was no longer young and "had no capital to gamble", so he chose "multi-front combat", and at the same time prepared for the provincial examination, the national examination, the military civilian examination, and the postgraduate examination, "almost all the tests that could be examined". During that time, he got up at four o'clock every day, went to bed at eleven or twelve o'clock at night, and went to a stall to sell "rice wine" halfway, and finally accidentally landed a graduate student who spent the least amount of effort.
The most direct reason why Zhang Xiao chose cleaning is the free time allocation and relatively generous income.
Most of his classmates interned in large factories to prepare for future job hunting. For Zhang Xiao, the internship requires a full day of work, with unfree time and little subsidies, making it difficult to support herself. Moreover, he was afraid that the employer would pay him social security and make him lose his status as a fresh graduate.
Stills from "More than Endless".
He also worked as a tutor, teaching four students a week, earning between 80 and 150 per hour, but the school curriculum and teaching time collided at night and gave up again.
"In the eyes of many people, (cleaning) is relatively low", but Zhang Xiao has "better consideration of reality", and the job of cleaning can really help him better deal with the current state. He was able to coordinate his working hours freely without delaying his studies, his hourly wage was higher, and he was diligent and earning six or seven thousand a month. This money is enough to live on, and it can also give some extra help to the family.
"Others can do it, so why can't I?" Zhang Xiao's idea was very simple. After all, "all work is exhausting at the end", and cleaning is just one of them. However, he didn't want his parents to feel that he was working hard, and he didn't plan to tell them about what he was doing.
On the last day of February, Zhang Xiao wrote on his self-media account: "No matter what, take off Kong Yiji's robe, it doesn't matter how much money you have, no matter how high or low you are, you can do everything, saving money is the most important." ”
Soreness, smell, and a sense of accomplishment
Young people who have entered the cleaning industry will quickly find that this job is more difficult than they imagined.
Physical exhaustion is palpable. Zhang Xiaoai plays football and badminton, and his body is tough, but he has a lot of schoolbags that are "two watermelons heavy", and he needs to bend over continuously when doing hygiene, so he often feels back pain. Sometimes it hurts so much that when he folds his clothes, he will kneel directly on the ground and straighten his waist, which makes him more comfortable. Due to his constant exposure to detergents, his hands often peeled, his fingers were "slippery, his fingerprints were burned", and barbs often grew next to his fingernails.
The regular order is three or four hours, but when it comes to the cleaning or particularly large area, he needs to work for eight or nine hours in a row, and when it is even more exaggerated, he works 16 hours a day. "When I am tired after a day, I will go to bed early when I am tired, and going to bed early is one way for me to eliminate my tiredness. ”
Another change is that the diet is no longer regular. Due to the decline in physical strength or the complicated situation on the spot, the time spent on a single order often took longer than expected, and he could only eat after the meal. Sometimes the two orders are close to each other and he needs to rush to the next order, and sometimes the list ends late, and he has to run all the way to the subway station to catch the last train, Zhang Xiao is always in a hurry on the road. It's not uncommon for him to be in time to eat, and he usually goes to the convenience store to buy a pineapple bun or two, or simply skips it, "I have been doing it all day without eating."
In order to catch up with the next order, Zhang Xiao bought two pineapple buns to eat on the road / Photo provided by the interviewee
Chen Haofan has a deep understanding of this kind of high-load work intensity. He still remembers the first bill, and he and three other business partners worked for three days and three nights, often until one or two in the morning, sleeping for four hours, and then getting up at five or six o'clock to rush to the customer's home to continue working. The charge for this order is 2,000 yuan, and on the night of the completion of the acceptance, the four people were hungry and tired, and when they walked to the street, they happened to see a roadside stall selling roasted whole sheep, so they spent more than 1,000 to order a sheep and ate it all.
Jiang Yue, who was attracted by the large-scale decompression and cleaning video, found that the actual working environment he faced was "dozens or hundreds of times worse" than in the video. Colleagues have ever made the most exaggerated order, the garbage is piled up half a person high at the door, and you have to climb into it for hygiene, and there are even snakes in the house because there are too many mice.
The scariest thing is the smell. In the hot summer, the smell of fermented garbage in a small space can not be stopped by wearing a gas mask. After staying in it all day, people are almost pickled, and they have to take a shower three times when they get home.
Bitterness is really bitter, but the sense of accomplishment is also real.
When Zhang Xiao is doing cleaning work, he often encounters pests / Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Zhang Xiao himself has the habit of eliminating bad mood by cleaning, and he also "treats other people's homes as his own" when he works. When the customer is particularly satisfied, he will transfer dozens or even more than 100 yuan to him.
The results are visible, the feedback is immediate, the more you work, the more you earn, and the young people who do cleaning like this simple logic.
For Jiang Yue, cleaning is also about increasing knowledge and helping others.
Although it is only a rare case, he has encountered some cases that need help, such as a lonely elderly person who suffers from hoarding, a middle-aged man with many animal carcasses buried in his home, and a young man who has been closed for a long time and his home is full of takeaway garbage. At first, he wondered how anyone could have made their home like this? Later, he found that each had its own difficulties, some were withdrawn, some were suffering from illness, some were frustrated in life, and some lacked family and social care.
He met an old woman who lived in an old community, and the space of sixty or seventy square meters was full of all kinds of health products, laundry detergent, and seasonings, and there were dozens of bottles of soy sauce and light soy sauce alone, many of which had long expired and deteriorated. He stood there and saw that the old man's mobile phone screen was filled with all kinds of shopping groups, "obviously he was deceived", and later learned that the old man had a withdrawn personality and had communication problems with his family. After three days of doing that, the old man was reluctant to throw things away, so they wiped off the dust on it, placed it neatly, and carefully told the other party how to maintain hygiene.
Zhang Xiao's garbage cleaned up from a customer's home/Courtesy of the interviewee
Later, they visited the homeowners they had previously served several times and found that some of them had indeed made positive changes in their lives. An old man whose house is so dirty that he "slurry" has consciously changed his hygiene habits and is no longer complained about by his neighbors. Habits are hard to reverse. A significant number of homeowners hoard new garbage after a clean-up, but at least in the short term, their mental state is much better.
Those who stay, those who leave, those who wander
In recent years, with the gradual improvement of factors such as the status and salary of service providers, the domestic service industry is gradually being redefined, and practitioners are beginning to usher in young forces.
According to the "2023 China Blue-Collar Group Employment Research Report", in the past decade, the average monthly salary of China's blue-collar groups such as confinement maids, food delivery workers, and cleaners has shown a steady growth trend, and the income gap between blue-collar and white-collar groups is gradually narrowing. In the not optimistic employment environment, young people have hit a wall everywhere, become more pragmatic, and strive to seek more possibilities and a way out for themselves, and some of them have set their sights on the "undignified" cleaning from the traditional perspective.
But not many young people are really staying. Chen Haofan's partner was replaced halfway, and the previous one found that he couldn't accept it after a few orders and left early. The total number of fans of "Ma Li Butler" on station B exceeds one million, and there are many young people who come to apply for jobs with the same aspirations as Jiang Yue, but most of them leave after a few days of probation. About only one out of ten people will stay.
Zhang Xiao didn't think about giving up cleaning for the time being, but he quietly collapsed in his heart.
Stills from "It's Worth the Trip".
One morning, Zhang Xiao felt unwell, but in order to fulfill the order he had made a few days in advance, he still set off early in the morning with an "unusually heavy" backpack and took the subway for more than an hour to cross the three districts. When he arrived downstairs with the client, he found that the key he had left for him had been taken by another tenant, which was equivalent to running for nothing.
The other party offered to transfer 20 yuan to him and invite him to lunch, he couldn't tell what it felt like, it was very uncomfortable, but "no matter how tired you are, you have to continue to complete the things that have been planned." He got back to school in the afternoon, put his backpack back in his dorm, bought bread, and attended an academic lecture "when nothing happened."
He has the idea of starting a business in the direction of cleaning, but the better choice is still to take the public examination. In his expectation, "if you are admitted to the public examination, you will not be rich and expensive, but at least you can ensure that you are well-off", and the stability of civil servants is better than that of other industries.
Zhang Xiao cleans up balcony dust at a client's home / Photo courtesy of the interviewee
In March this year, he also went to take the legendary "Mom's Happy Certificate" - Teacher Qualification Certificate, one is to meet his mother's long-term wish, and the other is to leave himself one more way out.
(Chen Haofan, Jiang Yue, and Zhang Xiao are pseudonyms)
Author | Lynch Hin
Editor-in-Chief on Duty | Zhao Jinghan
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Typography | promise