Your office cleaners hired, the walkthrough is done, the contract signed; last night they were scheduled to come in to wave their magic duster and poof your office should be perfectly clean! But there are still coffee rings on your desk. What’s going on?! You’re paying good money for this cleaner! You have a good point. Why would a cleaner not wipe your desk? The answers may be surprising.
Here are five reasons your office cleaner may not complete a certain area:
1. Liability Issues
To start with, your cleaners genuinely want to do a good job and keep you happy as their client. They also take great pride in their work! However, if there is paper on your desk, they will not move them. Why not? What if you had them laid out in a specific order for a project? What if there’s a private note you flipped over, or a few cheques? What if while moving things, something fell into the garbage unnoticed?
We understand you have your daily work to do, and that we as cleaners are not privy to what that is, so we will not risk disrupting your flow. It is far better to work around papers on your desk, or skip your desk completely, before wiping the finger marks.
2. Hazardous Waste Materials
All site specs cover kitchen and bathroom cleaning for the safety of your staff. But did you know there are a few things we are not able to ask our cleaners to do?
They require specific equipment and sanitization not kept on site for normal cleaning. If your cleaner may get sick, hurt or potentially damage your property from cleaning up, we do not ask them to clean up without proper gear. This includes the presence of bodily fluids, dead vermin, needles or broken glass in garbage bins, as well as drywall dust from renovations on furniture and carpets. They are to let you know using the log book, as well as contact the office.
Bathrooms and showers may also be in a condition where our cleaners are in danger of getting sick from handling feces or blood.
Drywall dust may seem weird to include, we know. But it can cause some damage. If not cleaned up properly it can cake into upholstery and carpets, compounding the problem.
We can certainly schedule clean-ups for any of these, with the correct equipment, cleaning products and PPE to ensure your office is once again safe and clean.
3. No-Access Areas
Again, your cleaner is proud of the work they do. They do their best to get to every area in the specs. If a space is blocked off, perhaps accidentally left locked, your cleaner will not go in. They will assume you have requested no access for them that evening.
This goes for garbage bins inside cupboards or under sinks as well. If the door is too hard to open, the cleaner will not risk damaging your property.
4. Difficult-to-Reach Areas
Unless you have booked a deep-clean, cleaners will not crawl under tables and over obstacles to get that one staple. They are not asked to risk a twisted back or an awkward fall while on the job.
They want to continue cleaning for you. If they get hurt on the job they’d need time off, a fill-in who is likely unfamiliar with your offices specs, and which means cleaning quality would suffer.
5. A Miscommunication
With any new job there is a learning curve. The walk-through should cover many of the things we might miss, and we follow the credentials agreed on, but something will be missed. But please say something! You can note it in the provided log book, or email our office and we can have our field supervisor do another walk-through to ensure all those little details are noted. The cleaner will appreciate it as well.
So there are 5 possible reasons your garbage bin was missed last night, or those coffee stains are still there on the boardroom table. We promise, the cleaner is not intentionally trying to upset anyone. Contact us and we’ll address the problem! Leave your cleaner a note! You can even text our office. We want a job well-done as much as you.
Leave a Reply