The Janitors' Closet

Thoughts on reading and attention span

Had lunch a week ago with an old friend. Well educated, active in the community - he serves as a volunteer on a major city policy-making commission. In the course of conversation, I recommended several recent books, including Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows", whose thesis is that the distractions of modern society, notably the internet with it's hyperlinks, email and social media, are training our minds to avoid deep, concentrated thinking (research shows, more and more, that the brain remains plastic and adaptable throughout life) of the sort required in perusing a serious book.

My friend replied that he doesn't have time to read books these days (and barely magazines and newspapers); he had a shelf with "500 or so" books he needed to read. I suggested an experiment: he could free up time by disconnecting his television, just for a week. He looked at me in horror (really): "I couldn't do that".

I live the experiment myself. Several years ago, something in the cable box or TV lost it's programming; I'd need to dig out the manuals to figure out how to get the (vital) TV working again. Being male, I never read directions, as a matter of principle. So I put off doing the manuals until tomorrow - and the next day - and next week. And realized I was reading books again. I kept paying for the cable package for well over a year, unused, unable to cut that final umbilical cord. I've now been without TV for some three years. And reading.

Large, ever expanding numbers of folks in the Western tradition became literate (in the sense of reading deeply and regularly, not simply being able to read) when printed books hit - about the same time as the West began its exponential growth in knowledge: science, exploration, production and so on. It's generally conceded that wide availability of books and periodicals allowed the dissemination of information - a factory owner learned from a chemist who leaned from a geologist. That dissemination accounted for growth. Might also the ability, developed by deep reading, to concentrate long term on a single thing help that growth in knowledge? It's hard to imagine a Thomas Edison, or a Henry Ford, without the ability to concentrate.

Deep concentration seems not to be an inborn human trait. Growing up, evolving, in a hunter-gather society, one ought never get lost in concentration, but rather be attuned to any distraction that might hit. Should you miss the bit of movement in the corner of your eye, you might become dinner. It was only reading, long and undistracted, that could allow the individual to develop the neural pathways needed for concentration.

I mentioned "The Shallows" to another friend, one who in his youth read deeply - philosophy and stuff. Goethe and Kant, for gosh sakes. He replied that he did not need to get the book; he'd found a video of author Nicholas Carr discussing it. And he could kind of listen to the video while texting, emailing and surfing the web.

A very Merry Christmas, to you and yours.

  “Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.  If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.”  

Calvin Coolidge, Presidential message  on December 25, 1927 

CBN's offices in the restored 1914 L.L. Steward House, in downtown Phoenix

Solves a wide variety of problems

In my youth (longer ago than I care to admit) I owned several Volkswagens, including an iconic 1960 bus, in faded red.  Having few resources, I acquired a bit of ability in vehicle repairs, in the days when one did not need a computer to diagnose.  Much repair work was seat-of-the-pants, using whatever materials - duct tape and bailing wire come to mind - and odd tools happened to be at hand.

These days, doing commercial janitorial, I have different concerns.  Like, supplying TP to clients, and making sure it stays locked up so it doesn't walk off.  Had a very high end machine shop a few years back; if memory serves, they contracted work from the aerospace industry.  In the back corner of a huge production area just filled with high end tools sat a small fenced off secure area, always locked.  In it they kept their toilet paper.

So the attached graphic struck home.

Why's you throw that out?

Our commercial janitorial agreement has us emptying trash cans, not "removing trash".  The reason for the distinction is that, if something looks like trash, but is not in a can, and is not labeled "trash", it's a good idea to not toss it.  We'll toss something if it's clearly labeled, as a favor, but not commit to it, to avoid ambiguity.

But, in this world, ambiguity is hard to avoid.

An example comes to mind.  We were cleaning a 9-story mid-rise, a few years back.  My crew came across a large computer rack (the kind you see in the server closet, with lots of devices on it), with many boxes of trash stacked around and on it, and a post-it note, "trash".  My crew took multiple trips to the dumpster, and a bit of extra effort manhandling the rack into the elevator.  Received an irate call from the client early the next morning, asking why we'd removed the rack.  OBVIOUSLY, the note only referred to the boxes, not the rack that the note was affixed to.

Another occasion was at a radio station.  We tossed a box that was sitting atop a trash can.  Again, the irate client wondered why.  It seems that the expensive microphone that arrived in the box had arrived damaged; they needed the box to prove that it was damaged while in route.  Why would we think that a box sitting on top of a trash can was indeed trash?

Finally, a landscape architect.  Picture a wicker trash can, sitting by the front door.  We had our regular crew out sick, and a replacement cleaning the building.  Turns out that the trash can by the front door was not for trash at all; it held the Mylar drawings set out for pick-up by the blueprint company.  Sometime earlier, the client had left a note for our regular crew to not empty that can, but had not mentioned it to my office or during our regular quality assurance visits; our crew assumed that the client would do so, so that the information would find it's way onto our job paperwork.  Turns out, Mylar drawings are expensive.

Sorry.  Just have to vent occasionally.

Too few workers

Friends accuse me of reading too much.  likely correct. The following has nothing to do with my commercial janitorial work, other than we're looking for staff.

Just finished "Woke Racism", by linguist John McWhorter, whose work I follow.  Couldn't help to post a short review on a small part of his conclusion, his policy prescriptions:

Refreshing to see policy recommendations limited to three, and simple ones at that (though much
entrenched opposition to them would arise).
1) "End the war on drugs" - I'm torn on this; many downsides, as I see it
2) "Make sure kids not from book-lined homes are taught to read with phonics" - reading is foundational to most all else in education
3) "Advocate vocational training for poor people and battle the idea that "real" people go to college"

   Regards the latter. I'd go considerably farther. As a society, we belittle jobs that involve most anything physical, particularly if one emerges with dirt or grease under the fingernails. Mathew Crawford makes perhaps the most elegant case that, on balance, physical jobs a) benefit society more than do degreed, or "white collar" jobs; b) often involve more grey matter and engagement with the world around one; c) pay better; d) provide more sense of satisfaction, due to the creation of something physical that one can see at the end of the day.

    That university degrees are superfluous for many corporate jobs is indicated by job postings that require a degree, but not a specific degree. The degree is used only as an indication that the candidate gritted his teeth and completed something. Firms used to confirm this ability to persevere by seeing if the applicant had made Eagle Scout.

    Many positions that seem to require a specific degree could train folks better via apprenticeships (see Switzerland as a model). The apprentice earns while learning, without piling up student debt, and produces value for society. Ask any attorney if he learned more in law school, or in his first several years on the job. Apprenticeship could be supplemented by the modern version of night school, the online class.

    Crawford recounts a story of a fellow and his son walking through a mall. They see a shop under renovation, and an electrician stringing wire. Pop says to son, "study real hard in school, so you don't end up....like him." We should reverse our values - Those capable of learning on the job should do so; only the less capable (or less ambitious) should be relegated to the university.
Finally, if, as Goodhart argues in "The Great Demographic Reversal", the underlying cause of systemic inflation and a deteriorating society is an aging workforce, replaced by too few babies, leading to too few workers, creating too few goods, with too many demanding consumers, a system that would get kids producing (albeit at a training level), instead of spending years in college, would be a game changer.

    From a sociological perspective, David Hackett Fischer's "The Great Wave", explores something similar, with a bit of a twist.  Fisher argues for a several hundred year cycle, in which, when "Life is good", and people have lots to eat and plenty of fuel, population grows.  As population grows, folks run out of productive farmlands, and are forced to farm the rocky hillsides.  Productivity thus declines; eventually, too little food and fuel can be produced.  Inflation indicates too many consumers chasing too little stuff. Eventually, competition breaks down law and order, on both domestic and national levels.  People rob and nations march, both to steal stuff or land.  Same result that Goodhart envisions, with a different base cause.  Fischer claims to be able to track commodity prices (food and fuel) to ancient Samaria (writing was first used to inventory grain and such that the ruler had collected in taxes); inflationary periods signal arrival of the Four Horsemen. 

Waterfall, and the importance of communication

A story from a few years back, that happened to come to mind:

From my operations manager's over night report:

"While Ernie was doing the floor at ..... a pipe burst in the ceiling and started pouring water down on top of him. He was able to get his wet-vac and keep the water from flooding the building until I arrived. I spoke to Bob, the emergency contact, who walked me through where to find the shut off valve for the water pipes. Had to climb up above the ceiling but I got everything shut off. Lucky for them we were there when this happened so there was no real damage except for the wet ceiling and water in the light fixtures."

And, from our client, this morning:

"Good morning Gentlemen, There was a call on my voice mail this morning from Tony. He called at 10:30pm last night. Please apologize to him for my not answering.  The problem was water was coming out by one of the light fixtures in the showroom. It turned out to be an old hot water heater we have upstairs. It hasn’t worked for years, but somehow the valve got turned on. Probably pressure or something. Tony called Bob and I think he walked him through it. We really appreciate him calling and taking care of it. You really train your teams well.  Please let him know we appreciate everything he did."

It's all in the details, and in contingency planning.  We stress communication; we're careful to get several after-hours emergency phone numbers from the client (three in this case; two of them did not answer); we encourage our folks to take the initiative to better serve our clients, and protect their facilities.  The latter is particularly significant; we provide janitorial service to clients all over the metro Phoenix area, so have keys to lots of client facilities, and feel a bit of responsibility for them.  And our floor techs generally carry wet-vacs. 

From my operations manager's over night report:

"While Ernie was doing the floor at ..... a pipe burst in the ceiling and started pouring water down on top of him. He was able to get his wet-vac and keep the water from flooding the building until I arrived. I spoke to Bob, the emergency contact, who walked me through where to find the shut off valve for the water pipes. Had to climb up above the ceiling but I got everything shut off. Lucky for them we were there when this happened so there was no real damage except for the wet ceiling and water in the light fixtures."

And, from our client, this morning:

"Good morning Gentlemen, There was a call on my voice mail this morning from Tony. He called at 10:30pm last night. Please apologize to him for my not answering.  The problem was water was coming out by one of the light fixtures in the showroom. It turned out to be an old hot water heater we have upstairs. It hasn’t worked for years, but somehow the valve got turned on. Probably pressure or something. Tony called Bob and I think he walked him through it. We really appreciate him calling and taking care of it. You really train your teams well.  Please let him know we appreciate everything he did."

It's all in the details, and in contingency planning.  We stress communication; we're careful to get several after-hours emergency phone numbers from the client (three in this case; two of them did not answer); we encourage our folks to take the initiative to better serve our clients, and protect their facilities.  The latter is particularly significant; we provide janitorial service to clients all over the metro Phoenix area, so have keys to lots of client facilities, and feel a bit of responsibility for them.  And our floor techs generally carry wet-vacs. 

In bloom!

Another great season for color, at my office!

Work has changed.

Musings, from a longtime friend and CBN Board member

I retired and moved to Oregon about three years ago... the new routine has given me time to reflect and reconsider what I thought I knew... and sometimes to just confirm some things. 

Take work for instance.  You could look at job titles, or you can look at work activity... that is what actions are being done, how, and where, and perhaps most importantly, why it's being done in a specific way. 

Let's look at the job called 'janitor'.

Forty-five years ago I was stripping floors, mopping floors, dusting desks and flat surfaces... cleaning ashtrays.  Yep, people used to smoke in the office, and as a result, every janitor had four rags, a clean and more dry than not 'window rag', a regular 'wet rag', hopefully it was clean, a 'polishing rag' treated more often than not with lemon scented furniture polish, and a dirtier than sin 'ashtray rag'. I had to wash my hands for several minutes after a cleaning shift to get the cigarette tar out of my hands, as it would really kill the appetite when I picked up a slice of pizza, to only get a whiff of a dirty ashtray from my own hand. 

Here's another, I remember stripping old yellow wax off of 9 inch square vinyl asbestos, 'VA', tile floors with a mixture of ammonia and hot water, then neutralizing the floor with vinegar and cold water, before applying a fresh coat of wax. So much has changed.  

Dust?  We used feather dusters in the old days, ostrich feathers were considered the best, and later we started spraying our feather dusters with a chemical that we thought would hold the dust... it didn't really work.  We were only moving the dust around, or worse putting it into the air, then breathing it in. Today, we wipe a surface with a treated microfiber cloth that is designed to pick up and remove dust from the room.  

The same can be said for daily floor care.  We used to vacuum a carpet with machines that exhausted fine dust particles in the air; and we would 'wet mop' a hard surface floor with soap and water, leaving a fine film haze as often as not. Now we damp clean a hard floor with a special microfiber floor tool... in most cases it works faster and does a much better job than a wet mop, as it cleans the floor surface leaving no strings or streaks. 

I could go on, however the point is that while some job titles may be the same as fifty years ago, the activity, tools and techniques can be very different.  It could be argued that some jobs are entirely new ones, as the work has very little in common with the same job titles of fifty, or a hundred years ago. 

Here's an article about what jobs were most common in Oregon in 1870, as compared to 2020.  Although, without the details of how and why a job was done, I'm not so sure that it tells us as much as we might think it does.  Think livery stable... parking garage... and ride share apps. 

https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2022/04/the-10-most-common-jobs-in-oregon-in-1870-and-2020.html

We use maps at CBN to better understand and improve performance

The old days of pins 'n strings on a cork board have been over for some time now, but the practice of planning our work continues.  Years ago I was the sales manager at CBN, and when I brought a new account's paperwork into Bob's office, he would get excited, jump up from his desk and go over to a large map we had on the wall. Bob would then select a colored pin with a number, the color representing the frequency that we would clean the account, the number representing the account's ID number. These pins would be grouped with a string, that represented 'the route'.  There was a visceral feeling of pride that we all felt in our wall map ritual.  Google's mapping technology definitely changed that. 

Today we use digital mapping to efficiently route customer service visits, inspections, floor crew assignments, and to spot trends.  Digital mapping technology has improved our operational efficiency and helps us to better serve our clients. But for the nostalgia we wouldn't go back to pins 'n strings. 

I bring this up because I read this article in Fast Company about maps and how they help us understand the world and events, in this case Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

The idea of crowd sourcing maps with information content can also be paired with cloud based webcams and drones to help us see and understand what's happening in the world in real time. 

There are some very interesting links in the article that suggest that they might be better than the good old Penguin Atlas, although the sites linked in the article do have a lot of ads, while a used but good Penguin Atlas could be picked up at the annual Visiting Nurse Service Auxiliary book sale for cheap. 

https://www.fastcompany.com/90733391/theres-a-lot-you-dont-see-in-maps-of-the-war-in-ukraine-heres-how-to-look-at-them-differently

Here are two links from the article, it may take a bit of effort to get to the good stuff. 
https://liveuamap.com  

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/02/27/follow-the-russia-ukraine-monitor-map

by Bill Black 

An enticing promotion

Our quality control rep noticed and photographed a promotional banner while out visiting clients. (We do at least a monthly daytime inspection of all our clients, in addition to nighttime inspections, during or after the cleaning.  So he'd on the road a lot.)

It advertised free coffee for veterans, and being a Navy vet, he was temped.

But then he reconsidered; he plans to not give the establishment any business for a very long time.  It's a funeral home.