“The way I’ve been growing and growing,” she said, “I don’t want for that to stop.”
Las Vegas • The Hotel Cleaner
Most mornings, Wendy Almada — a guest-room attendant, or G. R.A., at the Aria Resort
and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip — puts on a pair of latex gloves and tackles the bathroom first.
“I have a very tame cat, and when they start to have sun-downing” — the late-afternoon confusion
that can be a symptom of dementia — “I have a wild tiger,” she said.
The average wage of a culinary-union worker is $23 an hour, compared with the $10 an hour made by a nonunionized Las Vegas hospitality worker or the $6 an hour Almada, who is 42
and who moved to the United States from the Mexico border town of Agua Prieta (she got her green card when she was 11, and became a citizen when she was 22), was paid at her last job in a coffee-cup-making factory in Tucson.
“It takes time and patience for you to be able to stand on your feet for hours
to braid somebody’s hair,” she said, “so you really have to love doing it.”
Ufot, 38, has known how to braid since she was 15; she picked up the skill in Warri, Nigeria, where she was born.
“It’s not what you look like, it’s what your clevis hangers look like,” Awan said, referring to the brackets used to support pipes.
As consumers increase their online shopping — total retail sales in the United States increased only 2.9 percent last year,
but online sales rose 15.1 percent — distribution networks have adapted by integrating more and more consumer destinations into their systems.
