Day 91: Dusting someone else's upper middle class home

Wow, this was such an interesting experience. First something about the job. I got the job through Taskrunner, but was actually hired by another firm Djenee who does all kinds of services for people. I was told I would meet the guy, a civil engineer student, who I was going to work with in the suburban middle class neighbourhood Hammarby sjöstad, in Stockholm. At eleven we rang the door, met the home owner and was instructed about the job that was basically sorting, cleaning and throwing things.

Since I've almost never had a job where I'm not sitting at a desk, it was an unusual experience cleaning someone's apartment. I almost felt as if I was back in high school and the few weeks where you're out on some workplace to see what a job is about. I don't know the English word, in Swedish we call it Prao.

But I liked the job. In fact I really like doing these things at home: arranging books, cleaning and sorting things in drawers, throwing away things. The guy who lived there with his family and dog was very executive, deciding which books or things to throw away etc and working with us all the time.

Five hours went by pretty fast. He offered to get some take away food for us, but we said we had already eaten. It seemed stupid to eat lunch during the time he was paying us to work. I enjoyed small things like being offered a cup of coffee to start with, being told I should keep my sneakers on indoors and listening to good music on the Sonos loudspeakers that I'd like to buy myself.

In a way it was kind of weird, walking around in this apartment, in someone else's life, with someone else's wedding photos and kid's toys. Dusting the Iittala candle holders, the Knausgård books, the Apple gadgets, the souvenirs from trips to far away counties - if you're Swedish upper middle class you know what I'm talking about - that could have been my own. In ten or twenty years time this will be the life of the civil engineer student too. But me, shouldn't I already be there? Why am I standing there sorting someone else's baby food cans instead of my own, or instead of paying someone to do it?

Never mind. The middle class man seemed happy with our job and asked us to do the same thing in his country house a few weeks from now. At least that's something.