The Janitors' Closet

Boar hunting

Trapped in his truck by the local wildlife, my operations manager called me for suggestions.  I had none to offer.

We'd just signed a janitorial contract with a large church in Fountain Hills, a tony suburb of Phoenix.  We arrived on site to get service initiated, when a family of javelinas interrupted the process.  They're wild boars, with sharp tusks, native to our Sonoran Desert.  They can easily take out a hunting dog, or possible an operations manager.

Finding nothing of interest in our truck or on our client's campus, the javelinas eventually went on their way, so we got the job done.  I called the pastor next morning, mostly to confirm the quality of our initial work, but also to inquire about the local fauna.  The javelina family, it seems, lives in the gully behind the church, and generally doesn't bother the congregants.

Just don't get yourself between the sow and her piglets.

Adoration of the Shepherds

The Christian Gospel describes, a few days after Christ's birth, shepherds from the hills coming to worship the Redeemer.

A portrayal of the Adoration of the Shepherds, by Tintoretto, was created and hangs in Venice.  It presents a unique view of the subject.  From Garry Wills' "Venice, Lion City":

     "Here the shepherds are not a few lads from the hills offering a lamb as if for sacrifice at the Temple.  A neighbor group has mobilized, with a sense of crisis, to care for the couple in a rickety hovel--who clearly need their assistance.  A man on the ground floor of the barn is lifting a cloth-covered plate of warm food for Mary and Joseph.  A woman in the loft with the holy couple is getting ready to spoon some gruel moistened with her own breast milk into the child's mouth.  Three women and four men are coordinating all their activities to give much-needed succor.  This is less an adoration of the shepherds than a rescue by them.  The sacred family does not take pity on the poor.  It needs the assistance of the poor."

Venice, in its robust, merchant heyday, depending on trade rather than on use of land, was unique in high Medieval and Renaissance Europe.  The city was, for its day, egalitarian; though there was an hereditary class of nobility, there was no hierarchy within that class, or beneath it.  The populace saw itself as all working together, likely partially due to its merchant economy, and also to its origin in needing to control the sea, the tides and the river.  Like classical Athens, its galleys were rowed by citizens, not slaves, not chained to their oars.  Much was done voluntarily, through social and economic connections, rather than through commands from a governmental or feudal overlord.

Rather like much of early America, accomplishing things big and small, for self or for others, with little government but many voluntary associations and informal, volunteer activity.

Protect with entry mats

You can save a lot of money by trapping dirt at your building's entry than by using my janitor to remove it from all the nooks and crannies of the place.

Here's a good summary of types, and uses, of entry mats, from our friends at Cleaning and Maintenance Management.  About the only point I'd add is the benefit of rented, not purchased, walk-off mats - the kind that your mat company picks up every week, and replaces with a freshly laundered one.  As I stress to my commercial janitorial clients, the mat service will get the old mat much cleaner than my client can by taking it to the high pressure hose at the car-wash (they have a really big washing machine), and they treat it with a goop (the technical term) that grabs the grease, motor oil, and petroleum distillates from the asphalt parking lot.  That's stuff you don't want tracked through your building.

So go rent yourself some mats.

Guerilla advertising clean-up

Sidewalk graffiti promoting a Justin Bieber album is creating a clean-up problem for San Francisco's finest (the cleaning crew, not the cops). Seems the recent heavy rains have not sufficed; pressure washing might.  No word from the city as to the cost to taxpayers.

You'd think someone would look at going after the artist, or the recording company, or the ad firm, or someone.

On the other hand, what do I know.  We do commercial janitorial (office cleaning); a bit of parking lot sweeping, and some pressure washing on occasion, is as close as I get to San Francisco's problem.

We committed, however, to a bit of street sweeping some years back.  Some locals put together a "do-da" parade, to compete with our annual Fiesta Bowl parade.  It include such esoterica as a "folding lawn chair precision drill team" (a Sunbelt version of the brief case precision drill team that some uptight east coast city presented in another :do-do" parade).  Being a janitorial firm, we volunteered to do the obligatory horse **** clean-up but, with the provision, that we'd have a place in the parade order-of-march somewhere before the horses.  Worked fine.

(An old and faded photo of our parade crew.  Believe I still own the scoop shovel.)

PS - an update: On 12/29, word went out that the San Francisco City Attorney is going after the record company for the clean-up expense.  But I still like our approach - do the parade clean-up before the horses.

Flu shots - our government ought talk to itself

"Seasonal flu caused as many as 55,000 deaths in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)", opens an article in the Dec. 14th Wall Street Journal ("Flu Shots for Hospital Workers save Lives" by Green and Saint).

Some of these deaths are likely the result of health care workers passing the virus along to patients.  The CDC has long recommended annual flu shots for health care workers, as does the US Department of Health and Human Services. A CDC survey shows that when hospitals and other health care facilities require staff to either get a shot or wear a face mask when dealing with patients, vaccination rates rise from 44% to 96%.  

Requiring vaccinations seems a "no-brainer".  However, push-back comes from both unions and civil liberty advocates.  A 2013 survey shows only 43% of responding non-federal hospitals require vaccination.  But get this - among VA hospitals, roughly 1% require vaccination.

Already had my annual shot - partly in case I have to visit a hospital.

Fire department investigates "unidentified smell"

You'll enjoy this from the (Plymouth) Herald.

Mixing household cleaning chemicals in the sink (doubtless without a recipe) has always struck me as a really bad idea.  Chlorine gas, for instance, killed a whole lot of French, Brits and Germans on World War I's western front.  You can get chlorine gas by mixing a couple of the most common household cleaning chemicals.

Perhaps ironic that it's a British firm that experienced the creative mixing (though the article does not mention the chemicals involved, I have my suspicions).  Fortunately, only one fellow was sent to the hospital after inhaling the concoction.

That is why we buy specific commercial chemical for specific functions, do not get creative, and never mix chemicals.  Not even in the sink.

But we do read the safety info.