I used to be a food stamp/adc worker and many of my clients worked as chambermaids at the local motels. I saw them as gutsy, hard working single mothers. Didn't think much of the chambermaid poem either. I think because the pov was aloof, amused, almost superior. Any woman can let a man screw up her life. She doesn't have to work a pink collar job to be a victim.
My chambermaid friends did live with soap opera drama in their personal lives. The drama was almost always due to lovers, children, exes or bosses. There were scrappy stories, wise stories, funny stories, cautionary stories, tragic stories, always brave stories. One had a boyfriend tie her to a chair and set the house on fire. Luckily the landlord came by to bitch about the unpaid rent and rescued her instead. It was a hilarious story when she told it.
I started a novel about the stories once--kind of a Spoon River/Peyton Place/ Zora Neale Hurston hybrid. It was based on a series of ADC interviews that began on the Tuesday before Christmas--Tuesday was intake day-- then ended on Sunday, Christmas Eve.
It was flawed from the first, mainly no action because i didn't see the action, only heard about it in the interview room. And my co-workers were as screwy as the clients, so I couldn't figure how to include them in the story. Too much backstory. I was trying to work the backstory in like Joseph Heller but, as you may have noticed, I am no Heller. It finally became hopelessly tangled so I filed it away--sixteen legal tablets scribbled front to back in Bic fine point accountant pen. They are in a Rubbermaid storage box at the back of my closet, crowding dress shoes, step ladder and Mazzy's Hot Wheels Track.
My work partner in those days was a dope smoking, ex-homecoming queen who was well on her way to realizing that she was a lesbian. She had it bad for this big, red haired lady cop who was always on the verge of busting her for possession but giving her lectures on sobriety instead. They were achingly cute together, really belonged together in my opinion, and in my husband's too, but in those days--early 80s --there was no hope for a same sex relationship in a small town with both parties dependent on a public servant's paycheck. It didn't end well. The cop got married. My friend drifted out of town. --s6