Nurses and caretakers of elderly/disabled people have to deal with human feces on a daily basis, probably more than a guy scrubbing public toilets. Anyone who owns a pet has to clean their shit up regularly. It’s like a running joke on the Deprogram how much gross stuff Hakim has to deal with as a doctor. The point is that the activity of cleaning toilets itself is not that bad, the problem is that the occupation is heavily looked down upon. It’s a job that we have designated as “the lowest of the low”, nobody respects it and it’s only worked by people who have no other options, which in turn makes it even less desirable for everyone else. If you offered me a weekly wage for either a) Having to clean public bathrooms for 8 hours a day or b) Having to look after an incontinent elderly person for 8 hours a day, I would pick the former in a heartbeat. But if I had to choose between the social standing of a caretaker and that of a bathroom janitor? That would change things.

Our very hierarchical capitalist society artificially exaggerates the undesirability of these occupations. In a communist utopia, would people fistfight each other to clean toilets? No, but you would absolutely find someone who’d do it because people have a natural desire to contribute to society, to feel useful and needed. You wouldn’t even have to pay them more than everyone else. Hell, there’d probably be a certain pride in doing the jobs nobody else wants to do, just as long as they’re respected and equally compensated.

tl;dr: Cleaning toilets isn’t all that bad. Having to tell your date that you clean toilets for a living is bad. Because of capitalism.