Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Deep Clean

This year, we've had problems with the cleaning service in the office. We try not to be messy people and we do clean up after ourselves, but the equipment we use is out standing in its field, usually for months sometimes over a year, at a time. When you bring it back to the office, there can be mud, dust, dirt and grass on the equipment boxes. We clean as best we can and we don't clean mud off in the office. That's done outside in the grass around the building.

But, in the first part of the year, we had problems with what appeared to be no cleaning. We all noticed that the office carpet wasn't getting vacuumed as it should. A week, 10 days, two weeks would go by before we'd notice a change. In April, we decided we'd had enough and I called building management. The office was spotless the next day, except, they didn't vacuum across the hall in the offices over there. Another phone call to management.

Things were fine for 2 weeks and then nothing. Ten days went by without a carpet vacuum so I called management again. This time, the head of the cleaning service called me. She came to the office and saw the carpet which had not been vacuumed in, by this time, 12 days. Plus, they were not checking out all the garbage cans and one of them was, to put it mildly, rancid. We don't expect them to dust everywhere or wash the windows every night when they clean. We do expect that the carpet will be vacuumed and the garbage cans emptied. They keep the building bathrooms clean although, for some reason, the men's bathroom light is constantly going out. There is probably a short somewhere but maintenance hasn't found it. They just replace the bulb.

We've been moderately satisfied with what the service has done since the talk and the pointing out of the carpet. They still don't seem to empty all the wastebaskets in a timely fashion but it does get done at least once a week.

So, I was quite surprised to come into my office on a Thursday morning and find this.


I have a corner office. It has a window ledge and on that ledge I have photos and other small items. I generally don't give the ledge any thought. Obviously, the service did. Everything had been removed and the ledge dusted.

You might be thinking, "Why didn't they put it all back?" At first that was my reaction, too. It would have taken longer but you move something, dust, put it back. I guess they felt that rather than mess up my organization, they'd just leave it for me to put things back on the ledge. I just shrugged and started putting my photos where I wanted them.

That's when I noticed how unclean some of the photos were.


Ewwww. Dust. Cobwebs. Pill bug corpses. Spider balls. All my photos had something like this under or behind them. It took me a good 30 minutes to clean this off. Is it the cleaning service's responsibility to do this? I don't know. I guess it might depend upon how much you're paying them. I know, when I get coupons in the mail for cleaning services, there are tiers of clean. The most expensive tier would include moving photos to dust under and around them. We really just need them to vacuum and empty the garbage cans daily. Dusting can be done quarterly and they don't have to do the bookshelves or the equipment storage shelves. Around the copier and printer and the tops of computers and window ledges, sure, but nothing else.

I couldn't remember how I had the pictures arranged. I don't change the arrangement except when the ledge gets dusted.


I start with the big photo of Carole and I which is on the right and then put everything else around it. It works, for now. We'll check in about October, the next time the ledge gets dusted, and see if I change the arrangement.

Beverage:  Irish Breakfast tea

Deb

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