The Janitors' Closet

A varied clientele

One of the most enjoyable aspects of providing commercial cleaning service to a large and diverse clientele is the opportunity to work with, and learn a bit about, lots of different businesses and professions.  One of my favorite clients is The Nash, Phoenix's premier jazz club, which happens to be a half mile from my office, adjoining downtown Phoenix.  This last weekend was their annual fundraiser, and I scored early tickets to their New Orleans themed Sunday brunch and music.

Can't go wrong with a Dixieland band, quiche, parfait, waffles and chicken, fruit and berries, various bacons and sausages, and all the fixings.  

AND, fronting a local band, was the incomparable Wycliff Gordon, on vocals, tenor and alto trombone.  Quite the coincidence that, at a poolside picnic put on that very afternoon by my own Salt River Brass Band, conversation moved to great contemporary trombonists, and Wycliff's name came up.  Nobody else even knew he was in town.

All in all, a great weekend!

Don't fall off

I had a site visit yesterday with one of my larger clients, a vocational ed campus. The facility looks quite good, just a couple of periodic floor jobs (burnishing, scrubbing textured VCT, ceramic) we need to catch over the next class break.  We generally include such occasional jobs as part of our ongoing service; no extra bills for the customer. We did get the textured VCT scrubbing done last night; I try to move fast when I can.

One bit of periodic work needed involves something of a safety challenge - we do an occasional scrub of stairwells, including the yellow safety line.  Here's a before-and-after of the last time on those.

I did notice one issue: a big greasy boot-print in the restroom closest to the diesel repair lab.  I'd not noticed it before, because it's in the middle of a rather high ceiling.  I'd really like to know how it got there.

Which caused me to notice an article today from our good friends at Cleanlink about Ladder safety.  Ladders are so commonplace that we tend to ignore the kind of commonsense safety concerns that we might pay more attention to when using, say, a chain saw. 

I might sum it up as: keep your eyes open, and your grey matter involved.  From the ceiling with the boot-print, it's a long way down.

Working out

A bit after the Covid pandemic, and associated lockdowns, started, I began - VERY gradually, with due concern about protecting my back) - lifting weights.  (With the bars and honky-tonks shuttered, I needed something to do...) Looking on-line, based on my age and weight, I'm still rated at novice level on deadlifts, but (for reasons I cannot imagine) close to elite level on the one-arm dumbbell row.

Kind of thinking, should I ever retire, that a bit of competition might be fun.  Not thinking seriously, but something to conjure with. 

One inducement to such is that one generally competes within age brackets, so I wouldn't have to go up against a buff 25-year old. 

If I had sense, I'd avoid stepping into the current culture wars, but if one cannot do so in one's own personal blog, where can one? 

Seems to me that, in various athletic competitions, we categorize by age for reasons similar to our categorizing by gender. As I have different obstacles facing me than does the above referenced 25-year old, so does a biological female face different obstacles than does a male, for instance in sports involving upper body bone and musculature.  

As I would not want to face said 25-year old simply because he really, really believes he's 70, so would (I imagine) a female weight lifter not want to face a male - even if he really, really wants to be a female.

Perhaps Mark Twain put it best: "If I call my dog's tail a leg, does that mean that I own a 5-legged dog?  Clearly not.  Calling the tail a leg does not make it so."

Don't get rolled up in the carpet

Got a call from a client; she wanted us to skip the weekend cleaning because they're doing some renovating due to a pipe leak, mostly replacing drywall and all the carpet.  As she put it, the renovation crew would have to work fast (given the size of the job and the Easter holiday) and she didn't want one of my smaller folks rolled up in some old carpet and trucked to the dump.

It reminded me of a situation I doubt I've thought about in 20 years.  We used to office in a 1929 building in the heart of downtown Phoenix.  Our suite was on the second floor, with several other smaller tenants and a couple of large rooms used for storage - old furniture, files, several rolls of old carpet.   For our suite, we had an alarm system that featured a set of microphones that would be monitored at the central station should the alarm trip.  A nefarious individual broke into the building and triggered the alarm apparently by rattling our office door.  The police arrived right away (we were a half dozen blocks from the central police station), and entered before the intruder had time to exit.

To search the entire building, including storage rooms, the police brought down a K-9 unit.  After searching the office space, they went for the storage rooms.  The hollering recorded on the tape at the alarm central station was quite evocative, when the dogs sniffed out the carpet that the fellow had rolled himself up in.

As former AG William Barr titled his memoirs, it's "One Damn Thing After Another".

Get a feel (as it were) for hand sanitation

We tend to focus on the sexy "what's new and better" in jobsite health: hydrogen peroxide and quat sanitizers and disinfectants, microfiber for floors and surfaces, HEPA filtration on vacuums, chemical selection and training in use of, and so on.  All of it good, and I figure we're somewhere around the cutting edge of the industry along those lines. But the lowly washing of hands (thoroughly) is overlooked.

Here's an article from our friends at Waxie (our go-to paper and equipment supplier - good folks!) focusing on just hands.

Per the article, other points in hand sanitation, often overlooked, include:

"...the use of automatic dispensers enhance the consumers perception of restroom cleanliness and placing paper towels by exits are preferred by building occupants. Strategic placement of automatic hand sanitizer dispensers near the restroom, at building entrances and exits, reception counters, and anywhere else they are needed to ensure good hand hygiene."

Good links in the article as well.

As the article notes, bacteria shouldn't be the only culture you're exposed to.

Enjoy, and wash up afterwards! 

 

Never, NEVER set the keys or cell phone down.

Caught an article via our friends at Cleaning & Maintenance Management regarding a janitor suing her employer because she trapped herself in a jail holding cell over the weekend; the holding cell door closed behind her, and both her keys and cell phone were outside on her cleaning cart.  There does seem to be a bit of mismanagement on the part of the employer; to quote the article:

"The complaint claims that Allied Universal should be held responsible for the incident due to improper training and a lack of supervision of their employees. “There had to have been at least seven shifts where new security folks came in,” her attorney, Bill McAfee, told WKMG. “[They] should have seen [her] driver’s license sitting there, should have seen that [her] keys had never been turned in, and that the log had never been signed out.” '

She also had health problems that made the incarceration serious.  Sounds like her employer missed some bets.

I believe in always having back-up; years back, an older client referred to it as a "belt and suspenders" approach to life.  We keep on hand a backup set of keys to all our clients, and always have a least one person easily available straight through the night (via phone, if you've not set yours down) and the weekend.

It would be interesting to see what sort of training her firm provided, regarding keeping keys and phone on one's person.  

I do our initial orientation myself.  I stress that one NEVER sets down keys or phone ANYWHERE.  We don't have many holding cells on our janitorial routs, and if one is locked in the office, there is generally a phone available But it's always possible, say, to be taking the trash to the dumpster, located in the fenced back lot, and have the self locking back door close behind you.  You'd be in the lot for the rest of the night, or weekend, if you'd left keys and phone on the front desk.

In our orientation, I illustrate using a personal example.  Just after going into business, 40-plus years ago, I was cleaning a small office building featuring several locked suites off a central hallway.  Entered the hallway, locked myself in (to avoid being surprised by the burglars), went into the first suite, set my keys on the reception desk, caught trash and dusting and then went back into the hall to get my vacuum (a Kirby in those days - remember them?)  The self locking door closed.  I was trapped in the locked hallway, without a phone booth (remember those?)  And these were the days long before any kind of mobile phone (remember those days?)

Managed to hop atop a soda machine and accessed the suite, and my keys, via the hung ceiling. Likely I was a bit more spry in those days (remember those days?)

I learned my lesson. Wonder if the gal's firm had a similar personal example, of what not to do.