The Janitors' Closet

Belt and suspenders

Just caught a radio interview of another fellow in my industry, the commercial janitorial field.  What seemed to motivate him the most was the many lessons he'd learned from mentors, clients, and others over the years.

One lesson that's influenced me, both in business and life generally, was from a senior fellow at Walsh Brothers, in years past a major Phoenix institution.  He suggested, metaphorically, wearing both belt and suspenders.  Always be prepared, with a back up.  Always have a "what if" plan.  

Several weeks ago, one of my floor techs called late on a Friday evening.  Fridays, we don't provide much service; most of our weekend clients are cleaned later on Sunday,  So, Fridays, my operations manager is off.  Not much call for him.  So I cover any emergencies.

My tech, getting his work out of the way early, had to limp his van onto the side of the road, with a front wheel half disconnected and wedged into the wheel well, due to a snapped connecting rod.  I ran over, and called our tow company. The first driver, in a standard flatbed tow truck, could not winch our van up onto the deck, due to the non-functioning wheel.  By the time his more experienced collaborator arrived, got it loaded, and dropped it at my garage, I had a couple of hours in.  Ran my tech over to our office to pickup our spare van (back up #1).  Dead battery, due to age and doubtless sitting too long.  Jumper cables (backup #2) did not suffice, nor did the power station (back up #3) - just too old a battery.  The back up spare van (back up #4) which I keep at my home, just down the street from the office, started just fine.  Good thing, too.  Back up #5  is my personal pickup.  We have no back up #6.  It's hard to carry a floor buffer on a city bus.

In this world, one needs belt, suspenders, and then some.

Wake up call

I live two short blocks from my office; home and office are respectively 1/16 of a mile east and west of Phoenix's 7th Avenue, right on Roosevelt.  I put my office here some 25 years ago, to be close to the center of the Valley (we're 3/4 of a mile from the center of Phoenix) and right off our freeway net (1/16 of a mile from I-10, and 3 miles from I-17), mostly to cut commute time and cost, and thus save resources.  Rather have to do that, as we stress environmentally friendly cleaning.

The intersection of 7th Ave. is a constant source of entertainment.  We're just off the freeway, just off the downtown, on the boarder between residential and commercial, and with a Starbucks that backs up traffic (among folks both without enough caffeine and with too much of same).  So we've lots of opportunity for the odd fender bender. And while I'm far enough off the intersection that I'm rarely impacted, I can spectate from my upstairs balcony.

This morning's example seems to have involved cutting through the windshield to pull out the occupants.

Do not linger after using a public toilet

We've seen, and passed along, results of several studies regarding pathogen-carrying droplets spewed out by simply flushing the toilet.  Thus far, advice has always been to "close the lid" before flushing, to greatly reduce the droplet spread.

Turns out, not so.  A recent study by Florida Atlantic University, as reported in Physics World, concludes that it won't help much.  Particularly concerning, in an age of Covid.

And, if you think Covid in the toilet is not much of an issue, Arizona State University, just down the road (we do commercial janitorial and Covid remediation in the Phoenix area), early on learned to identify Covid outbreaks in specific dorms by monitoring viruses in....the sewer.

These days, there's pretty much no escape.

Vaccine test

A client of mine handled the Astra-Zeneca vaccine trial locally, so I volunteered.  And, as it happened, I got the real vaccine, not the placebo - months before anybody else around here.

Now, they are conducting another test, on 12 to 17 year-olds, and are looking for volunteers.  Said I'd pass the information along, and here it is:

Hello Bob,

Here is some information about the sponsor and adolescent vaccine trial you requested! Feel free to forward this email to anyone you think may be interested and have children between the ages of 12-17.

Sponsor COVID Vaccine Informational Page: https://www.novavax.com/our-pipeline#nvx-cov2373

Efficacy Information: https://ir.novavax.com/news-releases/news-release-details/novavax-covid-19-vaccine-demonstrates-893-efficacy-uk-phase-3

Study Specific Information: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04611802

Link to sign up for more information: https://www.cctresearch.com/active-trials/arizona-clinical-trials#!/study/149

If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to us at 480-582-2040. This trial will be enrolling from May 6^th-May 21^st.

Thank you,

Cassandra Leedom

Patient Enrollment Specialist

cassandraleedom@cctresearch.com

O: 480-582-2040

It's important to look up.

From a longtime friend, co-worker and member of our board:

Back in the mid 1970's CBN cleaned the old KRIZ Radio station offices and studio;  their slogan was 'The Miracle on Buckeye Road'.  The office was located on  Buckeye Road, just west of the Black Canyon Freeway, a bit North of the Durango Curve. 

At that, time we had Rob, an ASU student, cleaning our Southwest route of about five accounts, most of which were cleaned two or three times a week, and most importantly all of them had to be cleaned over the weekends so they would be ready for business on Monday mornings. KRIZ Radio was part of the route. 

I was running inspections one Sunday night when I got a notice on my pager from Rob around 3 AM asking me to call him. He told me that he had had some
vehicle problems earlier in the evening, and was running late. He didn't think he could clean all the accounts by 7 AM, and he asked me what he should do. 

I said that I would meet him to help get the accounts cleaned in time.

I met him at the KRIZ Radio Station's parking lot, and we unloaded his cleaning equipment, and headed inside to clean the place. 

Rob started emptying the trash cans, feather dusting desk tops, and wiping counters, while I started in on the restrooms. Next he started mopping the tile floors, and I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and started on the carpets. 

Let me pause the action for a moment and describe a key piece of the equipment in this story.

In those days we were using very large Kirby vacuum cleaners that felt as though they weighed half a ton. This particular Kirby had a large heavy duty cloth bag, a long yellow industrial duty power cord, a powerful (read that as very loud) motor, a headlight, and what looked like a car bumper and grill.  If you squinted your eyes, the front of this thing could be mistaken for a Chrysler Buick. It could have been registered as a motor vehicle, and given a license plate. 

Anyway, back to the story... after I cleaned the restrooms, I grabbed hold of the big Kirby vacuum cleaner monster with both hands, and began to vacuum the carpet. The vacuuming routine was simple; unwind the cord, find an electric plug that is near the center of the office (we called it 'the strategic plug') and start vacuuming, being very careful to keep eyes on the machine and carpet.  Remember, we had to move fast; daylight was coming, and people would be arriving at work. 

I was concentrating on the carpet, careful to move chairs, to vacuum under tables and desks, and not accidentally snag any electric cords with the vacuum's rotor brushes and beater bars, because that would be very bad. 

Anyway, I never noticed that when I opened a door to another office, to continue vacuuming, I had made a blunder.  I hadn't looked up to see the small sign with a red light that read 'On Air', and because the vacuum cleaner was so loud, I mean really, really loud, I never heard the DJ frantically yelling... "turn that thing off, turn it off, we're live, WE'RE LIVE.  Everybody can hear you!" 

The good ol' days of live radio.  

----Bill.

In passing - we've upgraded a bit since the '70s.  We no longed use upright, unfiltered vacuums or feather dusters.  Or pagers.

COVID detection

This is Fred.  He's my choice to train to become a COVID sniffing dog (see my 2/23 post) should we choose to supplement our commercial janitorial and COVID electrostatic remediation services with COVID detection services.

Fred came from the county shelter with the name of Leo.  It happens that my current black Lab, also from the county shelter, also came with the name Leo. (Apparently, policy at the county shelter is to name all male black Labs "Leo"). I thought having two black Labs named Leo would prove confusing, so I called the new one Fred.

Bad decision.

When one is stumbling towards fridge or bathroom in the dark of the night, and falls over an amorphous black mass sleeping at the single most inconvenient spot, it would be efficacious to be able to holler, simply, "dammit, Leo!".

Names are important.  Brings to mind a story told years back by Karl, my long time graphics and advertising guy (most of the photos on our website, and attached to this blog, are by Karl.)

Karl's father, the sort of fellow who had several small businesses and occupations going at any one time, had for years a seasonal business called "B Y Citrus".  "B Y" stood for "backyard".  In early spring, he'd drive around those affluent neighborhoods in North Phoenix and environs that had been carved from grapefruit groves, and still retained a few trees in side and back yards.  He'd contract to pick and truck away the harvest.  Come summer, he'd come back with a semi and a crew of "pickers", and crates and ladders.  He'd sell the grapefruit to the old Sprite bottling plant in Glendale.

So about sun-up one summer morning, Karl found himself in the Arcadia neighborhood - very "old money" Scottsdale - setting up the crew.  A regular client, a quite proper matron of a certain age, possessed a great Dane named (I've not learned why) "Dammit".  As Karl pulled into her street, along comes a joyful great Dane, free at last - hotly pursued by the matron, in robe and curlers, hollering at the top of her lungs, to the delight of her neighbors, "Get back here, Dammit!"

Names are important.

Another problem with facemasks

As if we don't have enough worries,

"Recent studies estimated an astounding 129 billion face masks being used globally every month (3 million / minute) and most are disposable face masks made from plastic microfibers (Prata et al., 2020). With increasing reports on inappropriate disposal of masks, it is urgent to recognize this potential environmental threat...."

Most municipal recycling programs restrict unwashed food containers, used restroom paper, and such from being put in the recycle container; I'm guessing the same would apply to face masks.  While they likely don't take up a lot of landfill space, the trick is to get them in the landfill.  I see masks along sidewalks and in alleys in my close-to-downtown neighborhood - perhaps to wind up in the storm drain with the next rain, and then into river and ocean.

Here's the paper on the study.

The Free State of Jones

The movie of recent years that I most admire is "The Free State of Jones", a reasonably accurate Hollywood rendering of a couple of counties that succeeded (or tried to) from Mississippi during the Civil War.  It highlights the dark underside of the Confederacy as seen from the perspective of "poor whites": the draft, confiscation of crops in lieu of cash tax payments; also the violent dismantling of Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.  A friend finally viewed it and sent me the following: 

"So, Robert, I finally saw The Free State of Jones... it's now free on Netflix. 

Great dialogue (relating to the Confederate law exempting from the draft anyone who owned 20 or more slaves, and his son if they owned 40): 

"It's a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

"Do yah think if we all chipped in and bought one negro, that we might get a couple of weeks off?" 

"They came and took all my corn, I had just ground that corn." 

"Don't worry, we'll get you some corn". 

"But that's not the point, I grew that corn."   

And it had several economic lessons that anyone can understand. "If you take our corn, we got nothing to feed our hogs, if we don't feed our hogs, we got nothing to put in our smoke house, if we got nothing to put in our smoke house, then we'll starve to death come winter. Isn't that murder?"

The movie is a very moving perspective from a common soldier's experience.  It reminded me of The Red Badge of Courage, and a much later novella, A Marine at War. 

"I ain't fighting for cotton, I'm fighting for honor."  Shame is a powerful motivator, though one that seldom gets the results intendeds.  

I can imagine the SPCA didn't like one or two scenes that much... "You know what this tastes like?... Dog"  

It's a damn good story, with examples and lessons of peer group organizing, local bottom up governance, asymmetric conflict, folk leadership; the movie belongs alongside The Seven Samurai, In Dubious Battle, Robin Hood, and Lawrence of Arabia.  

"You can not own a child of G-d", replied the former slave, Moses. 

The shootout at the graveyard and scene in the church was powerful. That's the proper way you kill a tyrant, with a belt around the neck.   

I liked the use of a broken timeline, flashing from the civil war, and reconstruction, to a trial in what looks like it took place sometime in the 1950's. It shows how history is not really distant, rather it's always with us. 

The heart felt plea of Rachel, the Creole mother, who pleaded with Newton to raise their child as white, so he would be free man, is a lesson of distinction between what is legal standing, and how attitudes are shackles. 

Again, damn good movie. 

(The graphic is of a proposal for the design of the new $20.00 bill, featuring Harriet Tubman, a one-time slave and a conductor on the Underground Railroad, just prior to the War.  Indeed, a lady you wouldn't want to mess with.)

Advantages of a well thought out floor maintenance system

Here's a good article from the folks at Contracting Profits. Caught a couple of things I didn't know, such as:

“With the overuse of quat-based disinfectants on floors, a biofilm can be produced, which allows microorganisms to thrive under the self-sacrificing top layer...”  Makes sense - a lot of folks will figure that if they are damp mopping the floor with a disinfectant, the floor is being cleaned.  So you don't clean it first.  Problem is, quats are not generally cleaners.  You succeed in disinfecting the floor (until the biofilm builds up) but do nothing to remove dirt or oil.

We generally use quats for final disinfection on restroom fixtures, not floors - our go-to chemical is hydrogen peroxide based, providing both cleaning and sanitation.  A microfiber mop helps - it scrubs better than a standard cotton mop, and hangs onto the gunk ("gunk" is the technical term in the industry).

Touchpoint disinfecting

I just ran across a good article on combating "enveloped viruses", such as the flu, a good many common colds, and Covid-19 - provided by our friends at CleanLink.

To summarize, an enveloped virus is one that comes with a coating (the "envelope") of fat or protein. If you puncture the envelope, you puncture the virus inside, which prevents it from transmitting (infecting).  Disinfectants are quite good at doing so (viruses are generally easier to kill than bacteria or fungi).  Quaternary ammonia products have been around for 85 years or so, and do quite well, though they irritate eyes and lungs, so protective gear ought be utilized.  Hydrogen peroxide products, like many used in electrostatic applications, work at least as well, without the potential irritation.

An advantage of electrostatic applicators is that they coat all surfaces of the thing aimed at; wiping or pump spraying will often miss prime pathogen areas, such as sides of desks. phone handsets and the undersides of chair arms; pump sprayers also tend to apply disinfectant unevenly - some areas don't get enough dwell time, and other areas are over-wet.  And, as always, dwell time is important. 

A bit ago, I happened to watch a music teacher (quite a conscientious fellow, with a doctorate) sanitizing in a music classroom.  He was spraying the music stands with a trigger bottle, and wiping immediately with a dry cloth.  I asked him what the dell time was on the chemical (from the unlabeled bottle he'd been given) was; he didn't know from "dwell time", but knew that the chemical was referred to by administration as the "purple stuff".  I mentioned that few disinfectants are effective at less than a minute's dwell time (that is, with a wet surface); he thanked me for the insight, and went back to spraying and wiping.

Good thing it's relatively hard to pick up a case of coronavirus from touching an infected surface.