The Janitors' Closet

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.

Preparation (and a bandit in a mask)

I attended an intimate dinner last night; one of the speakers - and a very convincing one at that - was a young lady, recently arrived in the US, from Ukraine.

It got me cogitating a bit on our response to the Russian land grab.  We've announced "stiff" sanctions, but are not yet considering sanctions on oil and natural gas, which make up by far the largest sector of Russian exports, and thus of Russian foreign income.  To truly hurt Putin, and thus to not only discourage him, but disable him financially and therefor militarily, from further conquest, we should work with others to cut his oil and gas exports.

The Achilles heal in that strategy is Europe's growing dependence on Russian energy.  We've noticed that for some time, but the current administration is not concerned enough to act.  By producing more oil and gas, building more pipelines, more refining capacity and, critically, LNG facilities on our east coast (and the pipelines to feed them), we could assist Europe, particularly Germany, in weaning  off Russian sources, and even benefit our balance of payments position in the process.

The virtue of prudence, as practiced in "old Whigs" like Edmund Burke and Lincoln (he was an American Whig politician until the late 1850's) involved a clear eyed assessment of the world as it exists (not as one might wish it to be) and pursuing a coherent strategy for achieving one's goals, never sacrificing short term gains for the long range goal.

At a rather lower level, we do something a little similar in delivering commercial janitorial service to a variety of clients - cross training our folks, training in response to unusual situations, having layers of back up in people, data, vehicles, equipment and security.  It benefits our firm, our people and our clients.  We still have lots of N-95 masks and tests and disinfectant for the next Covid variant, and even a bunch of bunny suits we stockpiled a bit after the Ebola scare.

The problem with studies.

A large study out of a couple of hospitals in Saudi Arabia reveals, at first glance, something a bit counter-intuitive:

"One of the findings that surprised investigators involved the higher risk of COVID-19 infection among support staff, such as administrators, researchers, cleaning and maintenance crews, food service, and security staff. The data showed support staff had a 15.1% chance of contracting COVID-19, compared to all other staff who had a 7.2% chance of contracting the disease. Previous studies suggested that nonclinical staff have lower risk of infection."

Further, "“The finding underscores the importance of strict implementation of preventive measures among all health care works, including those performing nonclinical services,” the study states."

One might think that the risk rates reflect something about working conditions, or preventive measures at work.  But we've no way of knowing if the cases were picked up at work, or during the rest of the worker's days.  Were support workers (or their families, or their friends) less likely to socially distance, or wear  masks, around the house? Or live in more crowded conditions? Or perhaps were not as aware of the deadliness of the virus, not being as able to observe it on a day to day basis as the clinical staff.

Without some way of ferreting out that information, there is little one can conclude from the study.  A well designed study would control for all factors not being studied.

In passing, that's why we talk to our janitorial folks about not just what they're doing on the job, but at home as well - as in, get thee vaccinated. 

 

So ditch the cloth mask already

I'm finally seeing recognition of the inadequacy of the cloth facemask - even if it makes a fashion statement. Here's a Wall Street Journal article on physicians advising same.

Folks started advocating cloth face masks early in the pandemic, partly because they were about all that was available to other than medical personnel, and partly because we'd assumed that Covid transmission would be similar to the annual flu - via larger droplets (not aerosols) and touchpoints.  I cannot complain much about the latter - we did a brisk business disinfecting touchpoints - indeed, the entire office - using sophisticated  electrostatic application of a top-of-the-line JohnsonDiversey disinfectant.

But evidence emerged relatively quickly that transmission is largely through inhalation of aerosols - very small drops - that a cloth mask does little to stop. Hence, our reliance from the get-go on surgical masks and, a bit later, when we could get them in quantity, KN95 and then N95 respirators. 

So, we've done a pretty good job protecting our people and our clients.  Just wish we could find more of the touchpoint disinfection work.

N-95 vs KN-95

After a few months of "out of stock" responses, we finally got in a case of real N-95 masks.  We've been using the KN-95 masks for months, and studies show little real world difference between the two.  N-95s meet US standards, and are generally manufactured here (largely by 3M); KN95s come from China (no, the K does not stand for "Knock-off"), and there is a bit of variation in effectiveness between manufactures.  Both stop 95% of particles in the 0.3 micron range but, interestingly, they work much better for both larger and smaller particles.  At 0.1 micron, the size of a Covid virus, they only let through 0.1% of the particles - pretty darn good.  (in passing, avoid the masks with an exhaust valve - they filter air coming in, but not air going out, so you don't protect anyone else should you be infected.)

We've used surgical masks for years, particularly for our crews cleaning health care facilities.  The much more effective KN-95s have made a lot of sense; now, the N-95s will likely give us slightly better protection and, perhaps as important, will instill a bit more confidence in our staff and our clients.  And, since we do a bit of emergency electrostatic Covid remediation, any extra safety we can provide is all to the good. 

Here's a bit more on the KN-95 vs N-95 difference.

In passing, might be a good idea to cancel that trip to South Africa.....

So what's with the facemask?

Conversing with a friend recently about his experience in a somewhat trendy northeast community. He generally goes without a facemask (admittedly something of a political statement) and received a number of less than friendly glances, and a few comments, from masked folks in shops and on the street.   

It occurred to me that, while I've seen and heard much in recent months regarding masks, from both "sides", I've seen and heard close to nothing regarding the quality of masks. Evidence is solid that an n-95 mask offers a good deal more protection than a surgical mask, which in turn is much superior to simple cloth.  Recall that cloth masks were suggested, early on, as a bit "better than nothing", but that scarce surgical masks, to say nothing of unavailable n-95 masks, were best reserved for healthcare providers.

Considering protection from Covid, vaccination seems the best one can do, followed by air circulation, followed by distancing, with masks a dead last (or maybe a bit better than the traditional clove of garlic suspended from one's neck).  And a cloth mask is worth a good deal less than a surgical or  n-95 mask.

We stockpiled surgical masks, and a few kn-95 masks, back during the Ebola crisis, and well as hazmat suits, gloves and lots of disinfectant - because we provide janitorial service to a lot of medical facilities - so we've been in good shape. One wonders why America still has availability issues with n-95 masks; in quantity, and in normal times, they are quite inexpensive.  (Check out a recent Atlantic article on the issue.)

One might almost suspect that masks have become valuable mostly as a partisan signaling device.