How to avoid germs in the airport - Happy Thanksgiving and Ho, ho .....

Washington Post

It's not just terrorists and perverted body scan viewers anymore - now you have to worry about catching the flu from fellow travelers.

Our VP of Operations - Peter Sheldon is quoted on how to avoid such trials in the above link.

Happy trails to you ............

Bob

Star Tribune Article - Wage dispute at another contractor

Kind of an interesting article in the Strib over the weekend about an employee of a janitorial contractor who asserted that he was, among other things, underpaid.

He was cleaning a retailer - not clear exactly which one but it sounded like a Cub or other Super Valu grocery store.

I don't know anything about the specific case - tho the attorney for the janitorial contractor made a statement that is likely to have the wage and hour people on the contractor like white on rice (she implied that they were treating cleaners as salaried employees rather than as hourly employees) but the article did make one very good point.

The retailers and restaurants (Wal - Mart, Target, supermarket chains, Menards, Fridays, Brinkers, Champps etc) all pay cleaning contractors at rates that make it unlikely that they are using legal labor. But since they have a janitorial contractor actually fronting for them in the charade, they can claim "plausible deniability".

Wal Mart got tagged for $40,000,000 or so a few years ago for using in house employees whose legal status (or lack thereof) was basically winked at - so I am sure they are now laundering the illegals thru a constellation of small cleaning contractors too diffuse to ever attract enforcement attention. The rest of the big box retailers were already doing it.

A second charade uses a variety of national brokers (U.S. Maintenance being the most prominent in this market) to put 2 levels of incorporation between the retailer and the illegals.

Appears to work - so far I haven't seen any action in any of the trade publications that has penetrated this veil.

This is why you will almost never see a reputable commercial cleaning contractor like ABM, Marsden, Onesource, Mid City etc working for these type of customers.

Nor will you see us.

I think of 800 customers we have one restaurant - a one off owned by a customer we do a lot of other work for. No big boxes. We don't sub to the brokers.

We were once offered a $20,000 per month restaurant account - already fully staffed with the fired janitorial contractor's employees that we could inherit. When we heard they were making $7.50 per hour in a market where starting wages for ABM are over $10 per hour we were suspicious. We sent in one of our bi - lingual operators with the predictable outcome - no legals on a 10 person crew. Easy decision. Didn't bother the $billion restaurant company that owns it tho. We told them what we would need to replace the staff with legal employees - costing them another 20% or so. Anyone care to speculate on what decision they made?

As I said in the ABM raid post a year ago - we do a pretty expensive background check on all janitorial franchisees that claims to check not just the authenticity but also the reasonableness of the SS numbers and ID given us. Raises our pricing - but we're good enough at marketing to survive reasonably well without being the low price guy, and I sleep better at night.

Bob

Microfiber - how to launder it:

One of the reasons microfiber is better than string mops is because it is :

A) Easy to launder - string mops are very difficult to get clean.

B) Necessary to launder - string mops at least partially release soil and are only moderately filthy after rinsing. With micro fiber you can't fool yourself this way.

We train the janitorial franchisees on this - but one of the commercial cleaning trade periodicals put a handy tip sheet out the other day:

1) Both wet mops and dust mops require washing.

2) Wash in gentle cycle - but hot water and a mild detergent are ok to use.

3) Fabric softener attacks the microfiber - don't use it.

4) No bleach ! - the acid attacks the microfiber too.

5) Dry on low heat.

6) Don't use dryer sheets - same thing as fabric softener.

7) A netted bag is not a bad idea when washing - necessary for some types of microfiber actually.

Article also mentioned (news to me) that there are specially reinforced variants of microfiber for ceramic tile - the grout lines abrade the conventional microfiber and shorten it's life expectancy.

Bob

Emulsification

I've used the word emulsification for years. There was a kind of cryptic explanation in one of the janitorial trade journals recently, so I thought I'd add a definition to this resource.

I actually got "B"'s in organic chemistry in college, I've been in the commercial cleaning business for almost 25 years, I own a soap company in another market - and I still had to google about 5 different definitions before I (kind of) got it.

Basically the soap molecules suspend and or dissolve in water - whereas soil molecules generally do not.

The soap molecules then clump together in little balls called micelles (micelles link to wikipedia ). These clumps can in turn attract oil and other soils because of their chemistry, which they then surround (encapsulate) and the soil now becomes suspended inside the soap balls and can be mopped or vacuumed up.

Bob

Electrolyzed Water

It's kind of interesting to ask a salesperson in the commercial cleaning equipment industry how a product they are hawking works.

Sort of like asking an aboriginal medicine man or shaman how things work - the explanation usually is pretty circular and devolves to something like "demons do it" or "it just works".

Being of something of a scientific turn of mind I don't find that terribly satisfying, tho in point of fact, if it does indeed work, do I really need to know more ?

Hence when I went to the ISSA janitorial supplier show last fall and asked every sales person in the Activeion booth how the product worked with no particularly satisfying answers, I was not surprised.

I didn't bother going over to the Tenant Company booth (they invented the technology some years ago), as I wasn't that interested.

Cleaning Management wrote it up a couple of months ago, so I will try to give it justice.

First, it has all the advantages of hydrogen peroxide cleaners - no chemicals to purchase, "greenness" because of the lack of chemicals, safety and no detergent residues to attract dirt back to the newly cleaned surface (resoiling).

Basically the magic word is "cavitation"

Cavitation definition

The electrical current temporarily separates the water into little tiny oppositely charged bubbles ( I suspect similar to an ozone generator which temporarily breaks down oxygen into it's component ions) which 'explode' the dirt off the surface cleaned.

Activeion website.

Activeion also makes the claim that by amping up the electrical charge they can disintegrate bacteria (see electroporation) as well as physically remove them, sanitizing / disinfecting the surface as well. I won't reprise my posts on disinfecting (killing) vs removing pathogens here, but for purpose of brevity both are important.

These claims are not accepted (at this writing) by the FDA or other regulators, but they do make sense.

We have the technology - but in general hydrogen peroxide and our Kaifly flat surface protocols are more labor efficient. The Activeion dispenser is pretty heavy and if used continuously tends to tire the janitor. However, for use on a janitor cart for, say, restroom cleaning where you spend a few seconds cleaning each of a variety of surfaces, with a variety of tools this is a pretty good technology. It's only the repetitive stuff (think wiping desks in a school classroom or tables in a day care) where the fatigue factor would be relevant.

Bob

Peroxide cleaners

After getting ignored by all the "name vendors" of specialty hydrogen peroxide cleaners' janitorial supply distributors in town, we found a distributor of Betco's "Green Earth - Peroxide Cleaner" and have standardized our starter kits on it.

Peroxide cleaners have a number of advantages over conventional cleaners.

While not certified as a disinfectant, as a potent anti oxidant it is almost inconceivable that it doesn't kill bacteria directly.

One cleaner can be used for glass cleaning, neutral cleaning of floors, and all purpose cleaning - and, unlike a number of "3 in 1 " products we have tested over the years it :

- Cleans good (yay !! ) in all three applications

- Is cost competitive.

Historically 3 in 1 products have done neither, probably because they were so sensitive to getting the dilution rate absolutely correct, especially when cleaning glass.

Almost totally non - toxic - although I wouldn't recommend drinking it.

Breaks down into water and oxygen - no cleaning chemicals of any type are involved.

This also is helpful when we use the carpet cleaning version of Betco's Green Earth hydrogen peroxide line as there will be no issues of re soiling due to residual detergents and should be no issue of browning from residual alkalinity of detergent residue in the carpet effecting a color change on the carpet's dyes.

Bob

Microfiber - additional benefits

In addition to the green credentials and superior productivity, microfiber has at least one additional advantage ...................

.......... ergonomics - those of you that have mopped large expanses of tile floor with string mops know that that operation is a "young man's game' - tough on the back and very tiring. The microfiber mops are lower weight (less water used) and configured like a dustmop so you just push it - you don't have to do all the lifting and swinging that string mops require. A half hour of micro fiber mopping will save you an hour and a half of hard work - huge.

And - anytime you have an ergonomic advantage in the janitorial business there will eventually be hard dollar savings on injuries, workers comp, absenteeism, turnover, training, etc.

Bob