Made to hoover and clean office

Shefwedfan

Mr.S wrote: »

Who cleans the bathroom properly though?!

I already posted that :P

Nobelium

This might be just about ok temporarily in the first few week of a startup, when there is only 1 or 2 employees and they are trying to get things set up, but even then it betrays a lack of ability to identify all the requirements and plan for them. After the first weeks of a start up there is no excuse for it.

Professional staff don't make good cleaners, any more than cleaners make good professional staff.

Either this employer/manage is paying his professional staff the hourly wages of cleaning staff, or he's paying cleaning staff the hourly wages of his professional staff.

Either way this manager / employer is an incompetent unprofessional, disorganised short sighted idiot and chancer, and you are wasting your time and life working there. There's no point in wasting your time attempting a rational discussion with anyone as incompetent and half witted as that, and if there is an issue like this you can be sure there are and will be dozens more similar issues with this dysfunctional workplace.

Get out, move on, don't look back.

the_pen_turner

Nobelium wrote: »

This might be just about ok temporarily in the first few week of a startup, when there is only 1 or 2 employees and they are trying to get things set up, but even then it betrays a lack of ability to identify all the requirements and plan for them. After the first weeks of a start up there is no excuse for it.

Accounts staff don't make good cleaners, any more than cleaners make good accounts staff.

Either this employer/manager is paying accountants staff the hourly wages of cleaning staff, or he's paying cleaning staff the hourly wages of accounts staff.

Either way this manager / employer is an incompetent unprofessional, disorganised short sighted idiot and chancer, and you are wasting your time and life working there. There's no point in wasting your time attempting a rational discussion with anyone as incompetent and half witted as that, and if there is an issue like this you can be sure there are and will be dozens more similar issues with this dysfunctional workplace.

Get out, move on, don't look back.

or the employer is a believer in lean manufacturing and 6 sigma etc.
and is rightly trying to run an efficient business with very little waste

Nobelium

the_pen_turner wrote: »

or the employer is a believer in lean manufacturing and 6 sigma etc.
and is rightly trying to run an efficient business with very little waste

I sincerely hope you don't think it's clever and lean to pay for cleaning at the same rate as a skilled qualified profession, or that it's a clever move to pay your skilled qualified professionals cleaners wages.

the_pen_turner

Nobelium wrote: »

I sincerely hope you don't think it's clever and lean to pay for cleaning at the same rate as a skilled qualified profession, or that it's a clever long term move to move to pay your skilled qualified professionals cleaners wages.

of course i am.
leaving aside all the team building stuff and teaching your staff to be respectfull of ther work area etc.

purly finantial point of view it stands up , your not going to get a fully insured and legal cleaning company to come in for 20 euro for 1 hours work. and that 1 hour will turn into several when staff start to think that there is someone else to clean up after me, iv seen it loads of times.

Nobelium

the_pen_turner wrote: »

of course i am.
leaving aside all the team building stuff and teaching your staff to be respectfull of ther work area etc.

purly finantial point of view it stands up , your not going to get a fully insured and legal cleaning company to come in for 20 euro for 1 hours work. and that 1 hour will turn into several when staff start to think that there is someone else to clean up after me, iv seen it loads of times.

If you are not resourceful enough to source an hours cleaning for less than 20 euro per hour, then you shouldn't be in business in the first place.

looksee

What Strandroad said.

This thread makes it abundantly clear that most people have no idea what cleaning entails. Keep your desk tidy, empty your bin, wash your cups (though some people's idea of washing a cup would make a dishwasher essential.) fine. Empty out the fridge weekly, wipe down the counter top. All fine. But that is not cleaning. That is little more than moving the dirt around and preserving appearances.

I would certainly not get down to proper cleaning in my work clothes. The mankyness resulting from that kind of half hearted superficial cleaning would not take long to become disgusting. And that's before you get to the rights and wrongs of dispensing with a whole lot of jobs by having people double jobbing.

Dial Hard

Jim2007 wrote:

If you actually understood a little bit about running a business and in particular a small business in this case, you'd know that you pay people to do the job you need them to do not the job they'd like to do. You simply could not afford that kind of nonsense and expect to survive.

Nonsense. If I'm hired as a Marketing Manager then that's what I do. Cleaning the office is not part of the job.

the_pen_turner

Nobelium wrote: »

If you are not resourceful enough to source an hours cleaning for less than 20 euro per hour, then you shouldn't be in business in the first place.

Cant see any company supplying one hours work for 20. You could only get a black market worker for that

strandroad

looksee wrote: »

This thread makes it abundantly clear that most people have no idea what cleaning entails. Keep your desk tidy, empty your bin, wash your cups (though some people's idea of washing a cup would make a dishwasher essential.) fine. Empty out the fridge weekly, wipe down the counter top. All fine. But that is not cleaning. That is little more than moving the dirt around and preserving appearances.

It's such an illuminating thread though, the amount of people who are absolutely fine with a workplace not getting a deep clean ever, and not even a dedicated cleaner. Or the opinions that if people are not messy in the toilet that's that with regard to bathroom cleaning work. Jesus wept. It sure does explain the state of some grubby places around the country.

AulWan

There are agencies who can provide cleaners on a hourly / weekly/ bi-weekly or monthly basis, or a small business owner could look / advertise for someone on a site like Adverts.

Either way, unless cleaning is part of their contract of employment, it is not the employee's problem to figure out. I would absolutely walk away from a job where I was told I was expected to hoover meeting rooms or clean fridges or toilets and its not because I have notions that cleaning is below me, its because that is a cleaner's job and I'm not a cleaner, and would never apply for a role that involved cleaning.

But like I said earlier, in my over thirty years of working in various admin roles,some in small offices and some in large, I've yet to meet an employer who expected their employees to carry out those tasks.

OMM 0000

I think this is very short sighted by management.

One of the goals is to keep your staff motivated.

Forcing non-cleaning staff to be cleaners is a great way to kill motivation and make people leave.

If I were you I'd try to organise the entire group to refuse to do the cleaning.

Nobelium

the_pen_turner wrote: »

Cant see any company supplying one hours work for 20. You could only get a black market worker for that

rubbish, and even if you genuinely couldn't, diverting your professional staff to do cleaning when they could be doing their professional work would demonstrate you hadn't a clue about actual value, efficiencies, motivation, staff management and development etc.

the_pen_turner

no its not.


you couldnt run a business charging those rates. the wage per hour would be 10-15 euro and hour paid to the staff so well over 20 euro and hour cost to the company. then vehicles and tools , overheads, and profit etc.

daheff

SATSUMA wrote: »

it wasnt too much of an issue until we got extra staff plus interns coming and going.

Could you make it part of an international job?

Shefwedfan

OMM 0000 wrote: »

I think this is very short sighted by management.

One of the goals is to keep your staff motivated.

Forcing non-cleaning staff to be cleaners is a great way to kill motivation and make people leave.

If I were you I'd try to organise the entire group to refuse to do the cleaning.

Who knows, maybe the boss wants rid of the staff and doesn't want to pay redundancy


Get them cleaning the toilets for a few weeks, hopefully they all pack it in and he can hire some new flashy staff....everyone wins

skallywag

In general I think that the OP has a valid point here, and I see no reason why a cleaner cannot be brought in for tasks such as vacuuming the office, emptying bins, etc.

There are also tasks though where I would see no issue with having all team members chip in though. E.g. in my own work place we ourselves are responsible for keeping our kitchen area clean and organized, which would include fridge, dishwasher, microwave, etc, and it does not matter if you are an intern just in the door or the Business Unit head, everyone chips in and gets on with it. If someone wanted to dig their heels in and complain then I guess that they would be fully within their rights to do so, as there is certainly nothing in our contracts that say we must do so, but in our case it just works and I have never heard anyone whinge about it.

Diverging a bit further the following comes to mind, it does not relate to your own exact situation OP but I guess it is still somehow relevant in a broader sense. In a previous workplace I did have an instance when a couple of the team members piped up against some cleaning tasks. We had a lab area where I did not want the cleaner entering, as they had no clue what was rubbish and what was not, so we cleaned up ourselves periodically. It happened on a couple of occasions that a team member told me that they did not want to do this as they had studied for x, y, z, etc and frankly saw themselves above this. I had no problem with that and told them that they did not need to do it, it was not mandatory. It just looked a bit bizarre though when others on maybe 3-4x their salary and experience level had no issue with it.

I8A4RE

SATSUMA wrote: »

How do you know this? Your posts are not factually based.

Read a book called Legacy. It's there in black and white.

Heat_Wave

OP I once worked in an office where the owners brought in their dog and fecked off for the day, whilst myself and the three other employees were expected to take turns walking it, feeding it and clean up after it (it pi*sed and pooped all over the carpet daily).

I dreaded going into the office because of the foul smell. I couldn’t ever eat at my desk. Four weeks after starting I was let go for not being a team player re the dog duties.

I complained to the Workplace Relations committee and everything and bizarrely, I hadn’t a case. Disgusting business owners and terrible experience.

Never lower yourself to that kind of treatment.

AulWan

Heat Wave, had you only been in the job for four weeks when they let you go?

If you were still in a probationary period, its much easier for an employer to let you go.

Cyrus

SATSUMA wrote: »

Why are people being so hostile? The company actually turns over well over a couple of million annually. The reason we clean is the boss is tight.

I didnt sign up to be a cleaner. My work load is huge and i dont have the hour to spend cleaning.

I was only asking for advice.

what the company turns over is wholly irrelevant, if they are making large profits then maybe you have an argument.

as the other posters said as long as its allocated fairly, if you dont like it just go, instead of moaning online about it,

or here's a thought, if all of you dont want to clean, why dont you get together and hire a cleaner yourself, it shouldnt be expensive if split 10 ways?

Cyrus

looksee wrote: »

And that's before you get to the rights and wrongs of dispensing with a whole lot of jobs by having people double jobbing.

surely its only double jobbing if the person is doing extra hours? if its within their contracted hours its hardly double jobbing,

personally i wouldnt do it, but id just leave.

BrokenArrows

A few million a year is very little.

If you have an office of average salary workers thats about 400k going directly to employees + another 300kish going to the tax man, benefits etc.
Office rental, electricity, phone, internet, office equipment. Easily 200k+
You're very close to a million right there on the bare minimum to run a company of 10 people.

But in saying that if my employer asked me to start cleaning the office as part of my duties, id say no.

mrslancaster

Cyrus wrote: »

what the company turns over is wholly irrelevant, if they are making large profits then maybe you have an argument.

as the other posters said as long as its allocated fairly, if you dont like it just go, instead of moaning online about it,

or here's a thought, if all of you dont want to clean, why dont you get together and hire a cleaner yourself, it shouldnt be expensive if split 10 ways?

it's a pity if this is the attitude in workplaces now, I thought we had moved on from treating people like they were lucky to have a job and the old way of the boss is always right. Employees have rights and
maybe more should reconsider joining trade unions, they seemed to work in the past. Imo an employment contract gives details of job /duties & anything else required on a regular basis is not on.

Cyrus

mrslancaster wrote: »

it's a pity if this is the attitude in workplaces now, I thought we had moved on from treating people like they were lucky to have a job and the old way of the boss is always right. Employees have rights and
maybe more should reconsider joining trade unions, they seemed to work in the past. Imo an employment contract gives details of job /duties & anything else required on a regular basis is not on.

er what?

there is full employment out there, employers are now lucky to have employees, i said go if you dont like it.

and i thought we have moved on from this old fashioned notion of duties

GBX

"Forcing people to clean" ... who creates the dirt and mess? Surely there is a responsibility on people who make a mess to clean up and not expect to have somebody following around cleaning up after them.

I work in a small office and clean as I go. And there is a cleaner.

Dial Hard

GBX wrote:

"Forcing people to clean" ... who creates the dirt and mess? Surely there is a responsibility on people who make a mess to clean up and not expect to have somebody following around cleaning up after them.

There's a giant, huge difference between tidying up after yourself and being expected to clean the jacks and hoover the office.

AulWan

GBX wrote: »

"Forcing people to clean" ... who creates the dirt and mess? Surely there is a responsibility on people who make a mess to clean up and not expect to have somebody following around cleaning up after them.

SATSUMA wrote: »

This involves hoovering 2 large rooms, cleaning tables, fridge, empty bins, bring down bags of rubbish and boxes to another part of a large building. It takes at least one hour ...

I don't think a single person on this thread has objected to keeping their own personal work space clean and tidy.

But what the OP says they are being asked to do goes way beyond that.

Batgurl

Cyrus wrote: »

or here's a thought, if all of you dont want to clean, why dont you get together and hire a cleaner yourself, it shouldnt be expensive if split 10 ways?

Why on earth would an employee PAY to have another persons business cleaned??? By all means hire a cleaner but send the bill straight to the employer!

What next? Paying someone to do payroll so you get your wages paid each month???

Anteayer

There's also a health and safety issue. Are you provided with proper training and equipment to do this?
Gloves, overalls, information on what chemicals are being used etc etc

There's an assumption that cleaning is zero skill. It's absolutely not.