Started a new janitorial client last night; they're a large sales and development office for a local manufacturer. It's a re-purposed 1920s warehouse in downtown
Phoenix, a half mile from my office.
Most of the floors are honed concrete, likely with a penetrating sealer. They looked a little dingy, so I did, by hand, a small test patch near the front door. The floor lightened remarkably, so I suggested a couple of test patches, no charge, with a scrubber and wet-vac, partly to see how much difference we could make in various areas, and partly to let me better estimate time, and hence cost, to do the full job.
I'd assumed that most of the area was reasonably clean, so we'd get nowhere near the difference I noted by the entry. The main entry sits on an arterial street, asphalt, with lots of petroleum distillates, and likely diesel residue, walking in - and no entry mats in use. Most of the gunk, in theory, should not have traveled much further back in the building.
So the test patch we did in the large break-room/rec-room in the back of the space was evocative. Looks like we'll be doing a full scrub - for a couple bucks extra. Might be a one-shot, if the client gets treated entry matting, or perhaps a periodic service.
In passing, I might draw a metaphor for a changing society, or business style. Back in the mid-eighties, we were officing a half mile away, in a really neat 1928 office building at First Avenue and Adams, 2 short blocks from the very center of Phoenix. We had a large open space with our desks around the perimeter; we seriously considered getting an old fashioned pool table, the kind with claw feet and tassels around the pockets, to adorn the center area.
The new, and I might say yuppie style, client has a basketball court.
It was, back then, a kinder and gentler world.