The Janitors' Closet

Warehouse floors ought be sealed

From time to time, we're called upon to deal with warehouse floor issues - staining, slipperiness, damage.   Nice if we'd been called a few years ago to prevent the problem, rather than have to explain (usually) that we can't do anything much, at least at a reasonable price.

Here's a quick article, via Cleaning & Maintenance Management, on the safety, repair, appearance and maintenance issues involved in such floors, and why one wants to seal and/or finish them initially.

We can certainly handle maintenance on concrete (and stone, ceramic, cork, terrazzo and other less than common floors), both initially and periodically.  But I'd much rather "maintain" than "restore".  And I'll bet you'd prefer that too.

We ought take in those refugees who most need us, and those we want

In providing commercial janitorial service, we're attuned to personnel screening and security, and (given our Arizona location) we deal with many immigrants.  So I can't resist the urge to comment on the current European refugee crisis.

First, America's proposal to take in just 10,000 refugees is embarrassing.  Tiny countries, in Europe and elsewhere, are hosting far larger numbers.

Second, communities facing genocide ought be at the top of our list.  Those facing economic hardship, or political repression, have serious problems, but not at the same level.  Examples of genocide would be various denominations of Christians in Syria and environs, and Iraqi Yazidis (a Kurdish religious community of Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian origins).

Third, within a population, we ought prioritize the most vulnerable, both those generally vulnerable and dealing with the proclivities of many near eastern polities - women and children.  We also ought keep family groups together, both for obvious reasons and for the good of the children.

Fourth, screen as possible.  Many will be without documents, and what documents are available will likely be suspect.  Intensive interviewing of family members, separately, ought help establish both family legitimacy and circumstances of persecution.

Fifth, avoid unaccompanied adult or late teenage males.  As the least vulnerable of the refugees, they ought be far down our list anyway, and they are most likely to be current or potential terrorists.

Family groups, kept together, are most likely to be hard working, productive residents (parents trying to provide a life for their kids), and least likely to be societal problems for us, both short and long term.  Finally, I suspect minority groups that have survived for millennia by adapting to dominant regional cultures might be most likely to adapt to American culture as well.

Regarding worries that ISIS (or another group) might insert a terrorist into the mix of those I suggest we admit, I'd note that there are easier ways to get into America (a tourist or student visa, for instance), so we would not exposing ourselves to much more danger than currently.  And, again, the profile of those I suggest we admit does not lend itself to eventual radicalization, while we do seem to produce quite adequate numbers of radicals in our prisons and mosques and on the internet.

Finally, protecting the persecuted is the right thing to do.

PS - Here's an article from the journal First Things on the Vietnamese refugee resettlement operation back in the 70's.  Note the numbers involved, the settling of entire family groups, and the speed at which it was accomplished.

 

Hospital going back to bleach to combat superbugs

"To this day, when Dr. Koll goes on rounds at Mount Sinai, he says he is delighted by the scent of bleach. “You can smell it, so you know that it is being used,” he says", in a Wall Street Journal article.

Frankly, what impressed me about the article is that the hospital is getting serious about infection prevention.  We dropped bleach years ago.  We like quaternary ammonia (easier on the user, and on the carpet when spilled), and see it as equally effective.  The rub, using either, is proper and consistent use.

So - like any procedure - develop a methodology, train your folks, supervise and inspect.

"Dr. Koll, 55 years old, believes some of the most effective cleaning techniques are those favored by his grandmother, who raised him in the 1960s in Edison, N.J. “My grandmother never left a crumb anywhere,” Dr. Koll says, recalling how she would get down on her knees to scrub floors. There was a vigor to her cleaning—elbow grease, he says—and she relied on one product above others: bleach."

And sometimes traditional methods are just fine.

Don't trash modern art

"An art installation of empty champagne bottles and spent party poppers reopened in Italy on Tuesday, three days after cleaning staff mistook it for rubbish and binned it," according to a recent Reuters article.

I had some fun passing the article along to a good friend at our local art museum; she was classically trained, and I suspect not big on modern art...or instillation art.

But, we're supposed to be thinking about janitorial service.  I haven't done exactly what the news article chronicles in my 40 years in the industry, but it did bring to mind an incident.

Years back, we were cleaning a small soil engineering firm.  My janitor had cleaned the place for years - since we'd started it, in fact - was moving on to other things, so I put a new crew in.  Operations manager did a thorough job showing them through and, as is our practice, closely inspected the job after the new crew's first cleaning.  Even so, I got an anguished call from the client next morning.

Seems we'd thrown out a bin full of original Mylar drawings.  Expensive, and hard to replace.  The client kept them for pick-up by the runner from the blueprint shop, right next to the front door, in a nice wicker trash bin.

The client had apparently informed our crew, initially, that the trash can was not a trash can, but neither my janitor nor the client thought to tell me, so we could add a note to the database.

We learned from this something I have not seen in any industry publication or training system: It is a really good idea to debrief the old crew, with the job description in front of us, and update said job description with any details so obtained, so we've something meaningful to pass along to the new crew.

Saves on Mylar.