The Squirm Factor

Have you felt uneasy about someone doing something for you? Add ethnicity to the mix and it appears this uneasiness can be amplified:

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“We've been talking about a nanny,” says Lolo Florentino Arévalo. He and his wife, Marita, live in Kent with their 6-year-old daughter, Julia.

The couple are building their financial services business and, if things go as planned, could soon have an annual income topping $200,000.

On one level, the thought of hiring a nanny, specifically a Latina, is exciting. They want their daughter to grow up with the language and customs of their own heritage. Both parents have grandparents from Mexico. And employing a Latina would feel like they're helping one of their own, they say.

But, “I'd worry about the class issue and about looking elitist,” says Lolo Arévalo, who grew up in Grandview, in the Yakima Valley, and was the first person in his family to go to college. He studied public administration at the University of Washington.

He tells a story about a time he hired a Latino man to do some landscaping. He initially felt good about the prospect, figuring the man employed his own crew. “I thought I was helping them out.”

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But then as he sat in his living room, his friend looked outside the window and asked, Do you know who's doing the work?

“The man, along with his wife and kids, were mowing the lawn,” Arévalo recalls. “And I was so uneasy. It felt a little weird.”

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Written while groovin' to The Story of Us from the album “The Loneliest Punk” by Fatlip