Caught an article in The Chronicle about Duke University rearranging their campus janitorial schedule to cover Saturday and Sunday cleaning in dorm restrooms, the library and other facilities used seven days per week.
Covering seven day usage facilities with seven day cleaning makes sense; that's what we do. What Duke did to accommodate weekends was to move their cleaning staff to an every two week rotation, with a Saturday and Sunday v.s. Thursday and Friday day off routine. Makes sense on the face of it, but some of the janitorial staff express concerns about meeting family obligations, and keeping weekend-only second jobs, under the new routine. Makes sense. Likely they should have simply hired some weekend only part-timers.
In commercial janitorial, I don't like to work folks more than 5 nights straight. We have very few seven night per week clients, but a good scattering of six. I have several crew members who are aggressive for work, and would likely take a part time job with someone else if I did not accommodate, so we'll sometimes use them six nights per week - but generally no more. While I don't like to split up a small job between different crews, I'd rather do that than over-work my folks.
One point I did notice in the article. None of the students petitioning seemed to be volunteering to clean their own dorm restrooms, weekends or any other time. Somehow, I'm not surprised. They also seem to not mind living with a dirty restroom for a couple of days; this does put me in mind of my own college days.
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