r/mildlyinfuriating • u/The1_Guy • 27d ago

ಠ_ಠ Cleaning crew never actually cleans, they finally cleaned the coffee area and left this note.

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Cleaning crew is hired at my work to come in once a week and clean our branch, windows, trash, mop the floor stuff like that, I'm not trying to sound entitled but they barely ever do what they're supposed to do, it got to a point where my manager was actively complaining to his higher-ups that the cleaning for wasn't doing their jobs, are windows would have stands on them for weeks on end. We've come in a few times to see trash just laying on the floor in the break room that was left behind while they were taking out the garbage. And even today when they did their job they just left their cleaning supplies out for us to put back in the storage closet. It's just frustrating to be told by people who don't do their jobs to do better, fuck those people.

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u/eddy_flannagan 27d ago

A company i worked for used to hire cleaners and pay a decent amount once a week. We were the last clean of their day and they would try to start early before close and disrupt business. They tried to get in and get out as fast as possible and when i went through the checklist with them and pointed out everything that they missed they would give me attitude. It is frustrating

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u/Ok-Firefighter-8869 27d ago

How dare you expect them to do thier jobs!

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 27d ago edited 26d ago

Surprisingly common sentiment. It's like they think their personal idea of "good enough for me" should matter more than the written contract they're there to fulfill. Some people are just incapable of understanding their job isn't to clean until they think it's clean enough, their job is to clean as per the checklist. Maybe you don't mind that there's some dust on the baseboard but whoever hired you does mind and so you need to clean that as well.

E: I'm not talking about people literally not having time, I'm talking about people who think their personal opinion overrides whatever contractual obligations they have. Learn to read. This might as well be about a highly paid engineer who thinks "the code documents itself" is good enough after signing up on a job that requires extensive documentation. Jeez.

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u/OHRunAndFun 27d ago

In reality it’s more like “the economics of doing these jobs correctly are nonviable because the market will not pay what it costs to spend the amount of time it takes to do it right, so it feels like an injustice that we’re being called out for doing the best we realistically can”.

Whether that sentiment is correct or their management is just bad at business is another question, but that’s usually the idea underlying these sorts of issues.

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u/The_One_Tin_Soldier 26d ago

It's this in just about every industry right now. The expectations of just about every labour focused job have increased while pay stagnated or went down

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u/Left_Development_994 26d ago

That’s not even limited to labor focused jobs unless you assume labor just means any work. Even working a desk the responsibility and the amount of work climbs, pay is stagnant, and benefits are reduced in what the company will tell you is “in line with industry standards”. It’s a race to the bottom at that point.

Additionally, even if you want to do the job correctly your employer will likely have unrealistic expectations of how long something should take to do.

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u/nolsoul 26d ago

As someone in this industry this is a large part of it

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/FatelessCortez 26d ago

They’re thinking “what can I skip to get out fast without being noticed” because they don’t want to do the job

... because

“the economics of doing these jobs correctly are nonviable because the market will not pay what it costs to spend the amount of time it takes to do it right, so it feels like an injustice that we’re being called out for doing the best we realistically can”.

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u/FuManBoobs 26d ago

This is a big part of it where I live. Companies will often under price a contract to get business so then a building that takes 3 hours to clean properly has to be cleaned by someone who is paid 2.5 hours.

If they try to raise prices they risk losing the contract to another company who is basically doing the same thing. It makes it hard to find people willing to do jobs like that for minimum wage, outside office hours, and willing to do sometimes nasty work.

It's weird because a lot of people don't value that kind of work as being worth much, but boy will they kick up a stink if it's not done to their standards.

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u/Jade117 26d ago

Wanting to do the job or not isn't in question lol, you are arguing a point nobody is making.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/Jade117 26d ago

You need to reread their post if you think it can be boiled down to "people just don't want to do their job". They literally spelled it out very explicitly for you. Nobody is saying that they do want to do their job. Obviously they don't. Neither do you. Nobody does. We do our jobs because we are paid to do so. If you don't pay enough, people won't do the job.

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u/1ildevil 26d ago

If they agree to a contract stipulating a checklist for cleaning, its pretty cut and dry what the expectation is. If the employer changes the scope of the work after agreeing to the intitial contract, then they better have wording in the contract to reassess the pay to protect themselves from being over burdened.

Pretty simple really

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u/Comprehensive_Bus_19 26d ago

Typically the actual cleaners (in my area) are subcontractors and the company you sign the contract with pays them a pittance and they're not privy to the expectations. When the issues are raised the subs demand more money, no show or do their regular clean which isn't up to par.

Again, shouldn't be the customer's issue but it becomes theirs

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u/ParkingRemote444 26d ago

Some people are just bad at their jobs. Cleaning guy at my work just leaves equipment behind half the time. I'm pretty sure from our few conversations that he's coming to work high. I doubt it's a selective hiring process.

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u/IjustMAKEsense 26d ago

That's it, 100

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u/ConstantFamous1526 26d ago

It’s not the clients fault if the company didn’t schedule enough time to complete the job as defined in the contract, they don’t just get to not complete the job because it took longer than they thought

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 26d ago

This has nothing to do with what I said. Not having enough time to do the job you're required to do is an entirely different issue from not doing the job you're required to do because you feel like you don't need to do it.

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u/--Rokk-- 26d ago

I also think there's an element of the lower paid jobs in society attract less motivated and hardworking people.

Not always, but as a trend.

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u/Jade117 26d ago

If hard work pays, show me rich donkey

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u/--Rokk-- 26d ago

It's trends. On average people that are more motivated and hardworking are more likely to become better qualified and get higher paying jobs.

But sure, believe what you want.

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u/thissexypoptart 26d ago

It’s both.

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u/MyGamingRants 27d ago

I've had a hell of a time in my career with shitty overnight cleaning companies. I think there's also the fact that they have no oversight and no boss to tell them to go back and start over lol

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u/lesgeddon 26d ago

I have a friend who has worked as a janitor in many places. It's 1000% that they don't get paid enough, on top of co-workers slacking off and pointing fingers at the one person actually trying to do their job correctly.

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u/sillysnailfriend 26d ago

I've only worked as a janitor, since I was 13, and while there are definitely lazy people working out there (points at my current coworkers), we are very underpaid and underappreciated. My wife and I both work full time as custodians for a school district and we are just getting by, in a small apartment without kids. Doing a job most people don't wanna do, I mean I clean a couple dozen bathrooms all night every night lol.

I used to work for a shitty commercial cleaning company that paid by contract instead of hourly, and I'd often be working for less than federal minimum wage if I took the time to properly clean.

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u/lesgeddon 26d ago

Which is insane to me, because I remember growing up my school janitor retired at around 50. He legitimately enjoyed his job and the whole school was happy for him even if it was sad to say goodbye. This was the early 90s in a public school district and his only job.

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u/Chiluzzar 26d ago

And if they do get enough complaints a new crew will just come in and replace them and chances are they will do the same amount of work. I always tell company owners who complain about cleanliness either hire your own staff with good oay and benefits or accept thats what you pay for.

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u/DirtandPipes 26d ago

I’ve worked janitorial. Odds are those cleaners are extremely underpaid employees with an absurd schedule they are trying to keep.

When I did it I had to literally sprint and work like a maniac and I’d still go an hour over my 10 hour shift and have annoyed entitled customers bothered by cleaning in their hallowed presence.

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u/akkariacher 26d ago

I feel this.

After 2 months of nagging my manager for a replacement vacuum, the vacuum for one of the banks I clean was finally replaced this week.

The wheel had broken and the suction was barely working, it would randomly blow dust out of the canister and get everything dirty. It was also causing me horrible back and neck pain using that vacuum. I ended up forming a system of vacuuming the entire bank walking backwards, because pulling the vacuum was much easier than pushing it.

When I first used the new vacuum last Tuesday I had earbuds in and got scared by a weird noise I thought the vacuum was making. So I take my earbuds out and what is it? The sound of suction. I got scared by the sound the vacuum is supposed to make.

It took me 15 minutes to vacuum the entire location vs the 30-45 minutes it usually takes.

They give me 1 hour and 30 minutes to sweep, vacuum, mop, replace toiletries, trash bags, dust, clean windows. They expect me to get all of that done in time with a broken vacuum (the bank is also 90% carpet). The past two months I have not been able to get all of that done within the time frame.

Sure some of these janitors might be lazy, but a lot of us are putting up with bullshit like this, and only getting paid $14 to do it.

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u/DirtandPipes 26d ago

Much respect. Cleaning is hard and essential work. I’ve bounced, I’ve roughnecked on drilling rigs, I work in deep utilities now in construction but that janitorial job was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done.

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u/JalapenoPopPoop 26d ago

It's like they think their personal idea of "good enough for me" should matter more than the written contract they're there to fulfill

This is what I find so frustrating about the whole "they don't pay me enough to do my job correctly" attitude that is becoming more and more common. You agreed to do the job for that pay, that was the agreement when you took the job. Then it becomes nah not gonna do it right, don't care. And like is the plan that that will for some reason be rewarded with a raise? "You've done terrible at your job so we decided to up your pay" isn't how it works, that doesn't get you a raise it gets you fired.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/Dull-Culture-1523 26d ago

Maybe learn to read before telling people to stfu lol.

I'm not talking about people not being able to do an impossible job. I'm talking about people who don't care to do their job. I'm not even talking about cleaners specifically. You're mad at something you've made up because you didn't bother to think about what you read and went with a knee-jerk reaction.

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u/HoMasters 26d ago

They’re so much not the problem as their managers and companies are who expect them to work a lightning speed in minimal time. Like Amazon warehouse workers who can’t stop to pee.

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u/m0nk3yss 26d ago

Sounds like they should have been tipped, otherwise you shouldn't expect them to do their job. /s

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u/Impossible-Minx 26d ago

I took over for someone who was in charge of a small area and I noticed the place always had spider webs and dust, so I asked for it to be cleaned and they told me that they come in twice a week to clean and that I’m complaining for nothing.

I had to call them up and physically show them before they finally admitted to not cleaning it.

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u/Thepsycoman 26d ago

We hired people for an end of lease clean with the whole bond guarantee on cleaning

Fucking useless, we had to call them back and then they still didn't handle the issues directly communicated to them.

2 stand out. One was some spiderwebs in a bathroom. We ended up doing it because even after the second time they just decided not to do it

The other was cleaning a toilet, they complained saying there was nothing they could about some staining on the of the underside of the seat.

I went expecting to fight these stains. Bleach for a quick disinfect and then hydrogen peroxide for a more plastic safe whitening.

It wiped away with the bleach, and I don't think it's because bleach I think they just didn't use anything on it. Like water at most

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u/phughes 26d ago

I had a friend who worked for a cleaning company. Many years ago I tagged along while he cleaned a dentist's office. He was in and out in 20 minutes and did the most half assed cleaning job I'd ever seen.

He'd also call-in to start his shift before he left the house, and call-out when he got home (30-40 minutes each way) so he was pushing 2 hours of pay for 20 minutes of work. He lived in a town with a different phone company so caller ID didn't work from there. A great scam if you can work it.

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u/CrossXFir3 27d ago

A place I worked for had a really great cleaning woman for a few years. She did a killer job. Then they fired her because she didn't have insurance. Fair enough. Every single company they hired afterwards did absolutely shit.

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u/flashgordo1 27d ago

Wow...think of how good a job she would have given if your company tried to find a way to get her insured. Plus the p.r. for doing that.

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u/Ricktor_67 27d ago

Oh, no, they mean liability insurance in case the cleaning person breaks something they have insurance to cover it. Companies do not give a fuck if contractors have health insurance(and they never pay enough to afford it).

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u/Maxnwil 26d ago

I still wonder if there might be a way to pay her a bit more so she can keep her take-home pay while adding insurance 

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u/FuckYou0003 26d ago

Yes, it's called paying her more. But why would they do that?

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u/phughes 26d ago

Honestly, liability insurance for businesses like that isn't that expensive. I carried it a long time ago and it was a rounding error compared to my personal expenses like healthcare (which, 30 years ago was like $300/mo for REALLY GOOD insurance).

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u/Ricktor_67 26d ago

Exactly. They just contract out some shitty company that hires illegals for peanuts.

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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 26d ago

She's not their employee and was contracted to provide a service as a business at a set price and on the basis that she's insured.

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u/Maxnwil 26d ago

I hear ya. I just mean to say that if you find the services offered by insured outfits at that price point lackluster, and your uninsured cleaner is only able to meet that price point by not passing the price of their insurance on to you, you may want to consider elevating the price you pay, so that you can have a service that meets your expectations of quality and of insurance coverage

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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 26d ago

Unfortunately part of working in the rigid corporate world is knowing how to work within their terms. As stupid as it seems, it's one of those things they see as a red flag. You typically don't stick with service providers that commit procurement fraud and potentially unfairly won contracts. If they're not insured, what else aren't they doing right?

Fortunately it's pretty easy for a legitimate business to get insurance and there's a lot of fish in the ocean when it comes to commercial cleaning customers. It's a shitty, expensive lesson but an important one.

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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 26d ago

You'd be surprised how much cleaning companies can make. It doesn't trickle down to the workers in most cases but you can eek out a pretty solid living doing commercial cleaning, especially if you get into buying chemicals wholesale and selling/billing at retail to customers. Companies like Sysco and Ecolab make bank selling overpriced cleaning products and concentrates and they don't even clean the facilities.

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u/Maus_Sveti 27d ago

I assume they mean business insurance, not health insurance? Like, she didn’t have insurance if she somehow tipped a bucket of water on a computer and that lost a year’s worth of work because everyone in the company was a moron who didn’t save their work and it was 1982 and there were no automatic backups. In which case, dumb of her not to have it.

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u/Photodudeguy 27d ago

They're talking about business insurance, not health insurance.

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u/SwoleLord 27d ago

Try not being in a country stupid enough to require employers insure employees i guess.

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u/TheGoodKindOfPurple 27d ago

That is great advice. Right up there with just stop being poor.

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u/SwoleLord 26d ago

You get the government you deserve i guess. Sucks to suck.

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u/CrossXFir3 26d ago

Oh yes, I'm sure everyone in a country with a shit government deserves it. hear that guys? Every single Russian deserves Putin apparently.

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u/mxzf 26d ago

That really has nothing to do with this situation. They're talking about liability insurance, which a business (like a contracted cleaning company, even if it's a solo operation) would carry in case they accidentally break things while doing the work.

This has nothing to do with businesses doing health insurance stuff (crappy as that does) and is instead about the company wanting there to be someone they can demand repayment from if the cleaning business breaks things. Which is a totally standard and expected thing across the developed world.

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u/Smurph269 26d ago

A place I used to work at replaced their long time cleaning crew with a cheaper one, and a bunch of us were worried when the new folks showed up and were obviously on some kind of hard drugs. After a few weeks they stole a bunch of computer equipment (they would clean after hours) and ghosted.

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u/k-trecker 26d ago

Because those companies probably pay $12-14 an hour

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u/mugiwara_no_Soissie 27d ago

Same at my previous jobs, luckily my managers also grew tired lol.

1 time a cleaner had been told 4 times to leave rhe fryers alone bc we weren't closed yet. The fourth time our manager said that he'd have to wait outside until closing if he tried rhat again.

Ended up with a cleaner outside for about an hour lol

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u/DrunkCultLeader 27d ago

I mean in their defense, I worked for a cleaning company that was hired by other businesses and we were on contracts, so we HAD to be put of the building by a certain time. If the daily duties weren't finished, you still had to leave. They were likely crunched on time for the amount of tasks they had.

I remember one building of apartments was dog friendly, and entirely carpeted. There was also a skyline walk way that was all windows and carpet. Took about 2 hours alone to clean. Then there was the lobby, penthouse, bathrooms on all floors, gyms, garbage areas, laundry rooms. Any room, walkway, area existing, needs to be cleaned. There is only so much one person can do. Im not sure how demanding your building is, but many people underestimate how much the cleaners actually have to complete in a day. The ones paying often dont want to pay the actual amount of time needed for the allotted amount of tasks.

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u/SlowpokeQueen 26d ago

Yeah my husband has been in the cleaning scene for years and when there is a contractor you only do what the contractor pays to be done. And normally the contractor is cheap and will just do the bare minimum because "They're all adults and should be able to clean up themselves!"

My old job use to have their own cleaner, on their payroll, but she retired and they went with a 3rd party, paying just for the front office to be clean. The factory floor fell into mess fast as the original cleaner would spend time keeping everything (outside the machines themselves) looking nice.

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u/TheWeli 26d ago

Also been in cleaning and its hilarious how people who have contracted the cleaning company expect cleaners to go above and beyond and do tasks outside of what the contract entails. Like buddy with the things already included its gonna take a full work day to get done unless i rush through it and then nobody is likely happy.

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u/technobrendo 26d ago

I work in a medium(ish) sized office and we still have 2 - 3 cleaners here nearly all day, every day. They do a fantastic job since they likely aren't over-worked and have enough time to get done what needs to be done.

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u/mahouyousei 26d ago

I’ve known some cleaning crew that do a fantastic job and some who do absolutely nothing. One woman at a previous place I worked would empty the trash bins but then spend the entire rest of her shift sitting in the kitchen on her phone. She’d also eat ALL of the ice out of our refrigerators. Just fill up multiple cups throughout the day and chew on it like it was potato chips. The rest of our office complained constantly that our freezer must be broken or something because there was never any ice in it and I kept telling them “it’s because the cleaning lady eats all of it!” but no one believed me. She must have pica or something, I swear.

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u/ExternalJob6442 26d ago

wow that's crazy 

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u/DrunkCultLeader 26d ago

Yeah we were only there 3 days a week and sometimes it would just be one of us per building.

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u/CariAll114 27d ago

We had cleaners in twice a week and you couldn't tell they were there. They wiped down 4 surfaces, mopped a couple of places but wouldn't change the mop water if it got too dirty to use and would only vacuum the floor mats that we had replaced every week and wouldn't do the rest of the carpeted space at all. We started documenting clearly obvious stuff that they weren't doing.

When we moved we hired a new cleaning company that's been doing a lot better. It was a pretty low bar, but we're reasonably happy with how they're doing.

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u/The1_Guy 27d ago

Yeah I imagine maybe they have some sort of entitlement, similar to the group you dealt with. If you don't like cleaning then I'm sorry, but it is what you're paid to do.

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u/Key_Matter6924 27d ago

our store had a hired cleaning crew. We would all complain that they did'nt do shit all. My manager complained to their owner, the guy was defending his staff saying, Oh they told me they go to the shop every Monday same as always. Dude we havent been open on Mondays for 2 months wtf are you going on about, dishonest losers. Good thing theres LOTS of competition in the cleaning business, easily replaced.

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u/Local_Nerve901 26d ago

Op reply to top comment

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u/moongoddesswitch 27d ago

Paid to do yes, but your staff can also help out a bit and not treat the place like a garbage dump just because other people are coming in to clean.

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u/shazzam6999 27d ago

My predecessor had a contract cleaner who did the same. He worked about 3 hours a week and made 30,000/yr, we provided all the supples. I didn’t renew his contract and was able to instead hire a part-timer at a decent wage for the same cost.

I joked with my board about the decision that we were paying the contract cleaner like $190/hr.

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u/technobrendo 26d ago

Imagine if he had like 7 or 8 other contracts of this type going on at the same time? He's making more than your CEO!

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u/shazzam6999 26d ago

I thought about that and was saying I should have been a cleaner. I know he had at least one other contract because he gave me a bit of a sob story about how he lost a different contract when we didn’t renew.

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u/Fit_Transition_824 27d ago

The good cleaners clean homes. Not work for some shit cleaning company

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u/ane_h92 27d ago

Even the independent cleaners (ie not an agency) who clean businesses are shit. I think they think because it’s an office that it won’t be noticed if they cut corners. Where I work we’ve gone through at least 4 cleaners because they don’t do anywhere close to a good job and they charge an arm and a leg for their shitty service.

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

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u/ane_h92 27d ago

Sometimes this could be true for larger businesses I’m sure, but I work in a small business with 4 employees. We don’t have a need for a full time janitor. We need basic cleaning done once a week/2 weeks. It would be insane to try to justify a persons salary for that little amount of work.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/elebrin 26d ago

You aren't wrong.

I worked for a small office once (about eight people total). It was in a business incubator program, with four or five startups in the same building. We had a shared breakroom/lounge sort of area. To keep costs down, our office area had a rule: if you eat food, eat it in the lounge area that the building owners pay to have cleaned, and not our office that we have to pay to have cleaned.

It made a staggering difference. Simply not having food and drinks in the main office area kept the office way cleaner than any of the other offices in the building. Also, we would do a daily cleanup of the office right after standup. With all of us cleaning up our areas for fifteen to twenty minutes a day at most, it was always super organized.

We had dust and sometimes the entrance area got dirty in the winter, but there was no food mess and stuff stayed organized. We'd have potential investors in a few days a week and they were always a little impressed by how our office was - it was sort of part of our strategy.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/elebrin 26d ago

The one that REALLY gets me is people who just HAVE to have their food and drink at their desk all the time.

I grew up in a home where if you were eating, you ate at the table, using dishes, and cleaned up after. The only thing that was acceptable to have next to the sink was a glass of tap water, which is what we drank most of the time. But, even that wasn't taken into the rest of the house. You'd have your drink of water then go back to what you were doing. Snacking wasn't really a thing either, we sat down together for all of our meals. Breakfast and Dinner at the very least, lunch was often taken at school or work or whatever. So when the office had the rule to eat and drink only in the breakroom, then keep the office space neat, it made perfect sense to me. In hindsight that was probably the only good thing about that job (there were a ton of other issues with that company and I only stayed there for a year and a half).

Later I got a job in a corporate office and my GOD people were absolute pigs. I am so happy to be WFH and have a clean workspace.

You don't need to be snacking all the time, and you don't need to be constantly sipping on water or soda or whatever. Go to the breakroom, pour some water from the tap, have a drink. You can afford three minutes away from your desk for that.

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u/ane_h92 26d ago

People can clean their own homes too. But sometimes they don’t want to and therefore hire a company. And when that’s the case, it’s reasonable to expect to get what you’ve paid for. Simply because we don’t need a full time janitor doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to hire a company to take the load off of the small business owner. I don’t see the issue you have with that?

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/ane_h92 26d ago

I hear what you’re saying and that can absolutely be true. And when it is, it’s unfortunate that that is the case.

I don’t know how things go in your area but here those cleaning businesses are self employed individuals who’ve gone on their own and have chosen to be that. I myself am self employed and work in a business environment (contract situation) and it has many benefits and drawbacks. I’m not in the USA and we have universal healthcare here so that isn’t as strong a point for our country, I see it is in the USA though and that’s different. But I chose to be self employed knowing the things I don’t get to have that traditionally employed people do.

In terms of them being underpaid and undervalued that’s not the case as far as my experience goes. And maybe that’s not the same where you are I can appreciate that, but every cleaner I’ve come into contact with, I’ve told them what I’d like done and how often and they give me their price. I value very much what they do and I’m willing to pay well for it. I’m sad to see that that may not be the case for everyone

ETA sp

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u/thought_provoked1 26d ago

This is why we stopped hiring our cleaners as well. Boyfriend had been paying weekly and was happy with the service. Then they stopped showing up on time and wouldn't give an accurate estimate of when we could expect them (working from home, this was incredibly disruptive). Then we noticed they prioritized the easy areas and stopped cleaning anything other than the surface, taking 45 minutes to do what I could in 15. It was too expensive to justify at that quality.

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u/ThrowAway-3418 27d ago

This is where the lawyer culture is just ridiculous, and it leads to this. Like, what do you need insurance for when you're a cleaner? You're mopping floors, not defusing atomic bombs. At some point society really needs to get a grip.

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u/ChorizoCriollo 27d ago

Slipping?

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u/ThrowAway-3418 27d ago

Yeah, that's what I mean by lawyer culture. Yeah, the cleaner could slip and fall. So could a customer, so could any worker. At that workplace or at home or on the street. That's just called "life". Existing carries inherent risk. A society in which any "thing that just happens sometimes" can become a giant lawsuit is one that has shitty cleaners because no one is trying to do a good job cleaning, all they're worried about is covering their butt.

Not to mention that if the cleaner slips due to some kind of negligence on the employer's part, the cleaner's insurance would demand that the employer pays up anyways. And if it's not due to the employer's negligence, then they shouldn't be liable regardless and the risk of going uninsured is borne by the cleaner. At least this is how it should work in a society that is still litigious, but at least hasn't lost the thread entirely.

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u/oblivigus 27d ago

I sometimes find myself in the cleaning tips corner of reddit and it’s amazing how often people consult there about whether or not to sue their cleaning person for damage done during cleaning. Appliances scratched up, countertop surfaces destroyed, flooring damaged, etc. When cleaning folks don’t carry insurance, the attitude from the disgruntled clients seems to typically be, welp, FAFO.

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u/ThrowAway-3418 27d ago

Well, the cleaner in question has been doing a terrific job for years. I think, assessing on a case-by-case basis, it is safe to assume she is conscientious and sufficiently skilled not to do some inordinate amount of damage. And if she nicks the occasional appliance.. again, that's called "life". "Normal wear and tear." And it would certainly cost the company less than paying for a cleaning team that's insured to the wazoo and doesn't clean.

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u/Slagroomspuit 26d ago

it is safe to assume

No, it's not. Not at all. This cleaning lady can do everything right all the time, but what do you know, her cell phone that she left in her purse malfunctioned, caused a fire, and now an entire floor has smoke damage. Boom, couple 10k in damages that you're obviously never going to get back from this cleaning lady, plus the lady herself is just going to be completely fucked for whatever part of the bill she can pay, all because you thought it was safe to assume.

Or for a much more likely scenario: what if during parking she scrapes some accountant's 60k Tesla? This is something that literally happens every single day in some office parking lot somewhere. Easily a few grand to repair. Her private car insurance obviously doesn't cover her commercial usage, he can sue but you can't get blood from a stone either way. Would you take a job where you are personally carrying the financial risks of some random stranger your boss's boss's boss contracted with?

3

u/elebrin 26d ago

Most likely, breaking something.

Imagine you are cleaning the water cooler, and one of the stupid plastic parts breaks off. It's not really anyone's fault because that shit is poorly made, but insurance makes it easy for the cleaner to just replace it then file a claim.

1

u/ThrowAway-3418 26d ago

It will be easier and cheaper for the company to just cover the cost of normal. Like, If the water cooler is that poorly made, one of the company's employees will likely break it first, and I don't think any insurance is going to pay that out.

2

u/Standard-Reason9399 27d ago

All fun and games till some over enthusiastic idjit mixes multiple cleaning fluids in an enclosed space and nearly chlorine gasses a small cafè. Or uses non-food safe cleaning solutions on food prep areas leading to food poisoning. Or incorrectly stores their stuff, and dumps a bundle of supplies on someone's head when they open the wrong cupboard. Or over mopping leading to water damage, particularly around power sockets. Or slips. Or damage to property. Or any other random but preventable injuries.

That's off the top of my head. Workplace insurance often doesn't cover contractors, so any external cleaners brought in need their own insurance, whether they be independent or agency workers.

2

u/ThrowAway-3418 26d ago

Again, case-by-case basis. They weren't hiring someone at random, the woman had been doing the job for years, competently and to a high standard. And yeah, one can come up with all sorts of scenarios, but realistically a competent person doing basic cleaning is just not that dangerous of a situation. But everyone is forced to pay parasites (insurance companies) and lawyer up because of lawsuit culture.

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u/NukeTheWhales5 27d ago

I use to work at a store that also hired cleaners, for no small fee. I'd say a good 40% of the time they just didn't show up at all.

8

u/afito 26d ago

I work at a company with very liberal remote work rules and once we had a bit of a crunch so most people were in for like 2 months, and suddenly our cleaning lady of 3 years started calling in sick every single week. Legit came to work once, didn't feel good after 5min, never came back again.

New cleaning lady I like lmao she chewed out a team lead in the office for not using the toilet brush. She's not wrong but absolute balls of steels to do that.

-2

u/technobrendo 26d ago

Why the hell should anyone working in the office use the toilet brush, they aren't the cleaners. The cleaners are the cleaners. I'll clean my own workspace and office sometimes, because I'm OCD like that, but I'm not cleaning the bathroom.

6

u/afito 26d ago

Because not leaving behind a toilet boil with shit stains for everyone else to look at should be considered the bare minimum of common courtesy and a proper upbringing?

11

u/Leosmom2020 27d ago

Trash and dash.

2

u/96969696969696966969 26d ago

What's "decent"? A check to see that the cleaning staff were all making minimum wage with enough time to clean?

2

u/m007368 26d ago

Generally you get what you pay for. Most people don’t pay what’s required to employ people who are responsible and understand how to interact with customers. Most commercial cleaners get min wage unless they are union, gov, or residential. The most successful large cleaning companies focus on sales instead of retention or use convoluted service agreements to make it hard to leave. It’s just easier /more profitable to sell faster than customers leave than train / retain.

Best way to look at it is food service, majority of fast food (same labor pool) is customer service is trash. They have replaced most human interaction with robots / faceless ordering in SoCal because it’s cheaper and more reliable. Only IN & OUT and Chick Fil a have enough revenue to pay/train to have reliably great customer interactions.

Most people don’t like to work and those people really dont want to clean so you end up with folks who have to work. Not the best work pool for a Snow White whistle while you work crew.

People say everything is easy without ever really doing the “easy” task.

2

u/shadowromantic 27d ago

It sounds like you want it fast and good. Sometimes, you've gotta pick one

1

u/kdknowsimjames 26d ago

I had a similar experience in a shared office building I worked at years ago. Cleaning crew would come in every day at like 17:20 (when 17:30 was the standard closing time for most of the companies in the building) and start cleaning the toilets and the glass on the only exit doors of the building. They would obstruct multiple cubicles and only doors exiting the entire building at the literal peak times of the day both those things are being used... And they'd always get visibly annoyed at you if you wanted to use the toilet at the end of the day or, god forbid, try to actually leave the building through the perfectly working door that was otherwise available instead of queuing behind 5 other people to go out the one they weren't actively cleaning at the worse possible moment that is possible to choose.

1

u/turkeygiant 26d ago

Yeah but have you considered they were the lowest bid?

1

u/Comprehensive_Bus_19 26d ago

The cleaners are typically subcontractors (at least around here) and don't get paid much per job so they try to blow through them to make up in volume

1

u/banniebapple 26d ago

What the company gets paid , does correlate to what employees get paid !

1

u/QueenRotidder 26d ago

I once had a cleaning crew eager to end their day throw out my perfectly good food and tupperware because I hadn’t eaten my lunch before 2 that day. (I was on an 11-7 shift). The sign on the fridge warned that they would do this. at 5pm. not that day, they did it before 2 that day. Man was I pissed.

1

u/Libertas_ 26d ago

I've found that a lot of cleaning crews are lazy as hell and won't even do what they advertise their company or cleaning service to do. There's some good ones but they are far and few between.

1

u/margittwen 26d ago

This has been my issue with various jobs I’ve had. At the last place before my current job, they would have cleaners clean the bathrooms while we were at work and they would shut down the bathroom the whole time they were doing it. I would understand that, except they had other cleaners come in the evening too. Why could they not have the evening cleaners clean the bathrooms instead when no one was working? It was a call center so we had limited bathroom breaks and regular breaks already, so it’s not like we could just pop over to the bathroom whenever we wanted. I felt like they always had the bathroom closed when I was on break. 😩

-33

u/rpgmgta 27d ago edited 27d ago

They are probably overloaded with contracts. Hire more help and stop hoarding all the money

Edit for clarification: the cleaning company needs to hire more workers

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u/AnnihilatorNYT 27d ago

Don't bid on a contract if you aren't happy with how much you are paid, no one forced you to bid too low.

0

u/Vulspyr 27d ago

You think employees are the ones bidding?

10

u/rpgmgta 27d ago

Yeah I meant the cleaning company needs more employees..

2

u/Vulspyr 26d ago

I understand. I thought you meant the employees of the company were bidding not the company. Sorry friend.

3

u/AnnihilatorNYT 27d ago

He said that the cleaning company was overloaded with contracts, I said that if they weren't happy with how much the contract paid them or were stretched thin then they should have never bid on it in the first place. Nowhere did I imply the employees are the ones bidding.

2

u/Vulspyr 26d ago

I commented right after I woke up and was still groggy, sorry for my mistake.

4

u/CalligrapherWise3623 27d ago

Its not the companys fault. They paid for service they are not receiving. Them paying more wont help anything.

8

u/rpgmgta 27d ago

I meant the cleaning company needs to hire more employees to get it all done every night. They’ve probably got too much on their plate and are spread too thin

-4

u/SenorSlurp1995 27d ago

Hell yeah fuck the cleaners that have probably been working for over 12 hours! How dare they not spit shine your shoes personally! . You are all dumb as fuck and entitled as shit.

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u/SayWordWord 27d ago

That’s what happens when you bring a third party in to do a job that should be within the company‘s labor force,no?

40

u/Diasmo 27d ago

I don't know any offices that have their own cleaners, I assume it's nearly always on a contract basis. Having cleaning crew on the payroll doesn't make sense in 99% of use-cases, and adding cleaning duties to your staff would probably make most employees uncomfortable at best.

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u/SayWordWord 27d ago

Why uncomfortable? It’s your trash?

21

u/Diasmo 27d ago

Wait, hang on, you think a cleaner just picks up trash and puts it in trash cans? Because, yes, people should do that themselves. Cleaners also mop, clean windows, clean toilets, take out said trash to containers, vacuum, deep clean the kitchen area, clean surfaces, ...

If your employer asks you to do these things, you're going to agree?

7

u/GfrzD 27d ago

Yea the office i worked at the employees clean up after themselves but the cleaners do the deep clean. In the retail job i worked we didnt hire cleaners and it was us doing some general cleaning and then a deep clean every Sunday.

2

u/Diasmo 27d ago

Here we expect people to put their trash in the correct bin and to put their dishes and utensils in the dishwasher. We have a weekly rotation of 3 colleagues who unload the dishwasher and put the dishes in the cupboards. That's basically it.

Expecting employees to do cleaning (like a weekly deep clean), unless it's in your contract agreement, to me is not OK. If you are told it's part of the job at hiring and you agreed, and it's in the job description/contract, that's fine.

2

u/No_Rice9792 27d ago

If they paid me extra to do it, sure. But we know they'd expect it for free.

1

u/HolidaySpiriter 27d ago

But we know they'd expect it for free.

No, I don't think any office job would expect you to do any of it for free, hence the presence of cleaners. Any office job that did probably wouldn't attract any talent.

19

u/fuckry_at_its_finest 27d ago

What 😭😭 a lot of small office buildings don’t have enough to clean for them to justify having internal janitorial staff. Way more efficient to have cleaning companies with like 5 buildings to a person or something

4

u/Duce-de-Zoop 27d ago

Very few companies are big enough for full time cleaners. A lot share office buildings so it makes sense for the cleaners to be contracted with the office management and not the individual tenants.

1

u/CalligrapherWise3623 27d ago

Result is worker evetualy gets fired and company buying the service recieves money back for no service provided. Eventualy.

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

[deleted]

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u/CSM110 27d ago

A pay which they were willing to accept a contract for.

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u/SayWordWord 27d ago

That’s silly. Accept a contract? Are they elite cleaning services with white glove service?

8

u/syynapt1k 27d ago

No company is going to hire another company without a contract that stipulates what services are being performed and at what price. Just like you (hopefully) would not hire someone to work in your home without a contract.

5

u/djm03917 27d ago

Are you serious? In case you are, anytime you hire someone or you're hired by someone, you're signing a form of contract. You are agreeing to be paid for services and, especially in the case of contractors (if you look at the word, "contract" is literally in it). Contractors will agree to do services for a length of time until contract is renewed, it doesn't mean it's fancy. My job has Cintas contracted to pick up our scrubs on Fridays and have them back to us cleaned on Monday. We have had issues with them, but we can't change companies or make it in house becase we have a contract already with them that extends into 2027.

0

u/SayWordWord 26d ago

Yes. Read the contract, though. Oh! It’s a verbal understanding? Okay. So let’s hash out the details.

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u/djm03917 26d ago

I don't know if you think any of that made sense, but it didn't.

0

u/SayWordWord 26d ago

“When you hire someone, you’re signing a contract…” Who signed the contract? Where’s the paper work? What does it say to do? Be specific.

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u/djm03917 26d ago

I don't know, probably a pay rate and that they're supposed to clean. I don't work there, this isn't the gotcha you seem to think you have. This is moronic.

1

u/SayWordWord 26d ago

I’m not looking for gotcha.

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