Through my work, I visited many health-care centers and long-term residential facilities throughout the country where cleanliness was essential to the health of the residents and patients. Some were good, some were not so and some were excellent in their maintenance habits. It was at my direction the interior surfaces were maintained properly.
In order to add to my knowledge and to understand all the details, I enrolled in a “free” maintenance seminar in Kansas City given by a group of chemical manufacturers who had developed environmentally friendly cleaning agents; a seminar where we were taught how to hold a mop, a broom and how to clean a toilet. After a few hours, I was able to identify the lack of enthusiasm from the men and women at this seminar as they have been sanitizing commercial buildings for years and were a bit put off by the condescending words from these so-called professionals.
Looking into the US government directions on how to hold a mop prior to start scrubbing the intended floor, discovered you must first take a double sectioned bucket filled 2/3 of the way with water, mix the cleaning chemical as directed by the manufacturer’s label; then insert the mop into the solution until is completely submerged, take it out carefully as not to splash any of the liquid onto the floor prematurely. Who got paid to write this?
There are more than 5 pages about how to hold the mop, how to rotate it and how to rinse it. I got bored after the first paragraph.
The attendees were from different parts of the country, east, west and Midwest. Being the middle of summer, the storm outside our windows was brewing and the thunder was loud, when suddenly, the clouds broke and the heaviest of rains started to fall. The attendees from California had never seen a storm as loud as the Midwest storms and they were fascinated by the spectacle. We, on the other hand, from Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and other neighboring states were not amused. The California group missed some of the seminar because of their focus on the weather.
The downpour continued throughout the meeting as we lost the California people at the first hour and could find no way to get them back to the instructors. To the Midwest residents, the fascination with the weather was not impressive as we have been through some of the wildest weather conditions known to mankind. To the California people, although with great experience with earthquakes, it was a fascinating spectacle; we just could not imagine what would happen if a tornado was sighted.
We ended the instructions on how to mop floors and clean toilets after two days of rehearsing and using methods we were already acquainted with; however, the push to get contracts for the chemicals were in abundance.
Remind me next time somebody offers “free” training, there are strings attached!