Thank A Janitor Day!!!

How about not a "day" but rather just do that always.
Janitors, housecleaners, maids, custodians, orderlies, homemakers, ANYONE who cleans stuff.

THANK YOU.  Thank you always and especially now. If anyone is an "essential worker" in a health crisis it is your local cleaning professional.

























So, there you have it.
These folks are on the frontlines of health EVERY DAY all the time and especially now.
I have been a janitor and a hotel maid (there must be a better phrase for that...something not sexist because half of us working there were dudes).   It's not easy and people assume you are stupid or a loser or poor.  I was cleaning a "motel no-tell" type establishment when I was working on my Ph.D.  Sure, I may have been a loser, but not uneducated.  People staying there would not talk to me like a human.  Please do that.

Last time I was at a hotel, a decent one, even though it wasn't all that clean, I thanked the cleaners (a man and a woman) when I saw them in the hall.  I told them I'd had that job, it's not easy, and I appreciate it.  I assume that the lack of super-clean-ness is more a lack of pay and people who will work for that pay rate than lack of wish to do a good job,   Hotels on the off season tend to cut staff.  Sometimes I had 10 minutes per room for weeks on end.  I can change sheets and do a bathroom in that amount of time, and maybe vacuum the traffic areas.  Mopping, hitting the baseboards, etc...not happeneing.  Getting paid minimum wage and very very few people knowing to tip each day (different cleaner may hit your room each day and they will not know how long you've been there and what other staff cleaned your room, and CERTAINLY they do not have the time to get together in a group and figure out who all cleaned that room or brought your damn extra towels over the time you were there and then divvy up the cash...how could they for every occupied room?).  Remember too that the cleaners do the halls, lobby and breakfast rooms, shovel the snow, wash the sheets and towels, and are generally treated like crap by management.  A tip and a note are encouraging and appreciated.

Anyway...the folks I thanked were surprised and pleased to be acknowledged.

I also thank the janitors at the gym.  The gym  here is CLEAN.  More bleach than I would ever use at home, but this isn't home.  It's the gym used by elders, people with immune issues, and people with athlete's foot.  So I thank them and wait for them to finish cleaning a shower or toilet before I barge in.  They too seem surprised to be thanked.

I've also thanked the cleaners at the local casino.  Haven't found a way to tip them but I'm working on it.  The toilets near and "all you can eat" buffet can NOT be a treat to clean.  That casino funds half my wages and many important things in the community and is the biggest employer around.  If that place looks dirty, the whole community loses.

Cleaners are the plankton of the economy...the whole chain rests on them.  How many businesses do you avoid because they are dirty?  I pay more for laundry because I go to the clean laundromat.  I thank the people cleaning it (who are also the owners and are frankly, quite wealthy...not just from the laundromat...they are also in realestate. I respect a wealthy real estate agent who also cleans toilets and mops floors)

So, take a moment now and always to thank anyone you see cleaning.

Again: