A bit unbelievable really...

So, on Friday I received a notice that someone would be coming to my apartment on Monday at noon to inspect it for cleanliness. While at first I thought this was pretty ridiculous, it did not anger me terribly. However, not knowing how thorough of an inspection I would receive, I knew my weekend would be busy cleaning my apartment from top to bottom.

Upon discussing this and many other things with my friends M & H on Friday night over a couple beers, I was shocked to learn of their dislike of such an inspection policy because they felt the motivations to be somewhat racist. Apparently most of these cleanliness inspections are said to occur because landlords generally believe people from other cultures are likely to live in filth.

Since the friends I have from Germany think absolutely nothing like this, it really seemed to me perhaps they were a bit overly sensitive to me being inspected. Then, I had dinner on Saturday night with some acquaintances I had met a few times before, including someone from Germany who I did not know would be in attendance.

As I think the cleanliness inspection is pretty good material, I worked it into my standard routine at dinner. The person from Germany did not say that he felt the cleanliness inspections were due to some sort of errant cultural superiority complex, but ACTUALLY suggested that there were specific cultures who lived in very dirty ways so he understood why they did the inspections. I had a hard time believing my ears really, especially since the individual is a lawyer. It just goes to show that ignorance and prejudice are as ubiquitous as one fears they are. I had simply refused to believe it somehow.

Perhaps I should have stood against the ideas with the same indignation my friends from Friday night had shown, but I actually could only sit in shocked silence as he rattled on against Turks and Arabs. In truth, this individual did not seem worth the effort, and the only solace I had was that I had taken active steps to avoid spending time with this particular person in the past and definitely will continue to do so in the future.

On the upside, he had lived in places with inspections before and told me to be sure to defrost my refrigerator, which I never would have done otherwise. I suppose that also goes to show that even the ignorant can be useful sometimes.