By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producers
MIDTOWN — Every day, thousands of mostly immigrant women flock to Midtown's most glamorous hotels to spend their days cleaning up after the world's rich and powerful.
They fold their socks, scrub their tubs — and sometimes find them overdosed on the bathroom floor.
Like many of her peers, the 32-year-old maid at the Sofitel who was allegedly attacked by International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn while trying to clean his hotel room is an immigrant and single mother who moved to New York in search of something better for her family.
"We all came here to get a better life," said Mercy Mensah, 54, a housekeeper who has worked at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square for the past 23 years.
But spending time alone in people's private rooms can also pose risks.
A 54-year-old housekeeper at the nearby Millennium Broadway Hotel in Times Square, whose name is being withheld by DNAinfo at her request, moved to New York from Puerto Rico as a child and previously worked at a motel in the Bronx.
The woman said she once opened a door in the Bronx motel to find a man sprawled dead of an apparent overdose on the bathroom floor, surrounded by needles. On a separate day, she stumbled on another guest who'd apparently had a heart attack in his bed.
But it's traveling alone down an empty hotel corridor that still sometimes makes her nervous after 22 years on the job.
"Sometimes when I see the hallway, I feel scared because you see nobody there. I'm alone here," said the woman, who lives in the Bronx.
While she’s never had a serious scare, she said what makes her most uncomfortable is when a single man refuses to leave the room as she cleans.
"They sit and they watch you while you're making the bed," she said, mimicking bending over to fit the sheets. "You don’t know what’s going on in their heads."
Still, she said she prefers not to think about the potential risk and is just grateful she's never had trouble.
"Thank God, never," she said.
Mensah said that sometimes awkward encounters are just part of the job.
"You know how many times you see them naked?" she asked. "Sometimes they run to you naked — men and women. .... You say, 'Oh my God!' and slam the door."
But most of the woman's complaints have to do with physical exhaustion. The job involves pushing a cart and lifting heavy mattresses and other bedding all day long.
"I'm a small person and I have small bones," Mensah said, showing off an injured left wrist, now wrapped in a bandage. She also suffers from swollen hands and recently fell on her knee, she said.
According to a 2009 study by the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, the injury rate for hotel workers is significantly higher than the typical service sector job, with housekeeping at the top of the list.
A 2005 survey by the union Unite Here found 91 percent of housekeepers said they have suffered work-related pain. Of those, 66 percent told the union they took pain medication just to get through the day.
"Hotel housekeeping is a surprisingly dangerous and painful job," the group said in a statement, placing the blame partially on heavy new luxury bedding.
But the job also comes with benefits.
"Everybody knows, if you are not a nurse in a hospital, a hotel is the best," Mensah said.
She moved to New York from her native Ghana in the '80s. She said she worked in shipping there, where she struggled to support her family. Once she arrived here, she said she was able to earn enough to provide for her mother, her sister's five children and numerous others back home.
"It looks like I'm a star in my family because I provide everything for them," she said.
At unionized hotels, staff make $25 an hour on seven-hour shifts, with full family benefits including scholarship programs, a pension, and a paid legal aid fund, said John Turciano, a spokesman for the New York Hotel Workers' Union which represents about 27,000 hotel workers in the city, about half of whom work in housekeeping.
"Our union probably has the strongest health and safety record of any union in the country," he said, adding, "It's an excellent job."
All workers are also trained in safety, including knocking twice loudly before entering a room and only entering if unoccupied. They also take other precautions, like using safety locks to prop doors open and using carts to block others from coming in.
"Rose," 59, who has worked at the Marriott Marquis for more than 15 years but declined to give her last name for fear of compromising her job, agreed it's not uncommon to be startled by naked men — and women — coming out of the bedroom who haven't heard her knock.
But the Trinidad native said the precautions are more than enough to make her feel safe.
"I’m not scared of nothing," she said, as she smoothed a cushy comforter over a king-size bed.
