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Post by sarahcritchfield on Aug 6, 2011 0:05:07 GMT -5
One of the central aspects of a healthy business these days is cleanliness. Not that I know everything about businesses and such, but I do have a job and I can say that cleanliness is the number one thing our boss yells at my coworkers and me about. After all, who would want to walk into a place where food is served and see nasty fingerprints all over the windows and the display cases or a mountain of dirty dishes piled up by the sink? Well, I’ll tell you who- no one, especially corporate. But no matter how well cleanliness is enforced, it’s not always on the top of the dreadfully underpaid employee’s mind. We are focused on one thing and one thing only, which is closing so we can get the heck out of the black hole we call work. So it goes unsaid that cleaning isn’t always done well. But, in a lot of cases, even if we did the best we could every night and scoured over every miniscule detail, the place still wouldn’t be clean, microscopically speaking. Yes, all of the counters are shiny and the floor has been freshly mopped with a bucket of hot water, soap, and bleach, but, uh, guess what? We use those rags we clean the counters with for everything and we definitely don’t scrub the counters. We just wipe off any crumbs or stickiness. And that mop water? Well, although it’s fresh every night, the constant wringing out of the mop and the dipping it back in from the dirty, sticky floors makes the water dingy in about three minutes. That’s gross, right? In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich delves into the world of the cleaning business. She encountered many of the same troubles as we do at the small town work place. Enrenreich mentioned, “We scrub only to remove impurities that might be detectable to a customer by hand or by eye; otherwise our only job is to wipe.” That sounds familiar to me and probably familiar to any other teenager with a job in retail or food service. On account of the floor cleaning issue, Enrenreich stated, “We are instructed to use less than half of a small bucket of lukewarm water for a kitchen and all adjacent scrubbable floors, meaning that within a few minutes we are doing nothing more than redistributing the dirt evenly around the floor.” I am sad to say that I have committed such an indiscretion while mopping the floors at work. After having a behind the scenes close to the action look at cleaning in the business world and after reading Nickel and Dimed, I have decided that I no longer want to eat at restaurants, which is super unrealistic. So instead I vow to do my part, even though I big difference may not be noticed by everyone. I am going to rinse out all the rags at work and soak them in sanitizing solution (that we do have but don’t actually use for anything other than the sink) and I’m going to minimize the amount of water I redistribute onto the floors while mopping. Hopefully my cleanliness improvements will get other coworkers doing it, then people from other restaurants, and so on.
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Post by shelbysinkhorn on Aug 17, 2011 20:32:50 GMT -5
Although I don’t have a job… and I do believe cleanliness is key to having a safe, healthy environment, I don’t quite believe going full out every single night is necessary in the work force. Say if you close at ten, like you do, and at nine forty you are just scrubbing and scrubbing, getting new water every five minutes, and at nine forty five a woman and her three kids come in to your work. Now, these kids have mud on their shoes and are rubbing their grimy hands all over that freshly cleaned counter window. You just lost all your progress! Now take what you usually do, scrubbing the floors with one bucket and just wiping down the counters. Although not one hundred percent clean, it’s good to go for the next day when all things possible will just happen again. However, I do agree with the statements Barbara makes about the work force and I am sure we wouldn’t have these problems if people cared a little more about cleanliness then they do money. This cleanliness problem is a big one to tackle and I do not think you will be able to convince the whole world on your own or by changing your water every couple of tiles on the floor.
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duff
New Member
Posts: 13
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Post by duff on Aug 18, 2011 20:16:21 GMT -5
ALthough organization, safety, and cleanliness are very important aspects of a successful business, I do not believe that this was the theme of Ehrenreich's essay. With our countries economic situation, which is not up to par, the author is trying to pull a perspective of what lower middle class or poverty lined citizens face every day. People do not understand these things because they have dealt with them personally nor have they witnessed the reality of the situation. I personally know great people who have to work two jobs and try to pull over time, this hard work is to prevent the alternative money making business, selling drugs. If people really understood what goes on and would try to plan a real solution these situations would not happen. It is truly aching to know that this is truly happening in our society. These people are working so hard and living such stressful lives to put food on the table. It may not seem like a big issue, the fact is it true. I know and have lived through having ramen noodles and hot dogs every meal, it is cheap and can be bought any where with a shelf life of 25,000 years. These hardships are real and people face this everyday, even the people you sit next to in classes. Some do not bicker while others do, maybe you will never know. This is Ehrenreich main point.
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Post by quincyessex on Aug 19, 2011 12:58:45 GMT -5
As a coworker with Sarah, I can totally agree with her response. A lot of the stuff we have to do before we can get out of the “black hole” could be done maybe three times a week at the most due to the simple fact that they are a set of unnecessary tasks. Of all the stuff we have to do at night for closing, some of the ways we clean tables and counters is not really clean at all, as Sarah said. But corporate and apparently the health department consider them A+ work. In all reality, things such as scrubbing the waffle cone maker until it's so shiny it blinds you become useless because in just a few short hours when our boss comes to open, all she is going to do is make them dirty again. I find it pointless but do it anyway because I get paid to do so. I think this might be an underlying theme in Ehrenreich's book as she explains the daunting tasks that she and her fellow employees have to complete; they work for minimum wage and sort of don't really even clean a lot of stuff in people's houses.
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