SheSue Experience

Today I begin a new category; What’s Your Job?  I’ve always been very curious about what people do at their various jobs and I’ve had some interest from readers.  Not one to be shy about asking, I’m going to get out there and find out.  Sort of like job shadowing, I will be there in the background and, hopefully, try my hand at some part of the job.

My first entry is one of many jobs I’ve had in the past.  My husband has never made that much money, so I’ve always had to work.  While homeschooling my children, I worked many part time jobs to make ends meet.  One of these jobs was as a janitor.

You can work as an independent contractor on your own, or you work for a large company.  I worked for a large company.  I was assigned offices to clean.  Rather than clocking in on a time card, each job was assigned a time that it was estimated you should be able to complete the work.  For example if I had to clean 10 offices, it was estimated I should be able to get the job done in 2 hours and was paid for 2 hours no matter how much time it took me.  I found that their estimates were pretty accurate overall.

Some offices I cleaned every day, some every other day, some twice a week.  I cleaned offices of attorney’s, graphic designers,  architects, and city maintenance.  It was kind of interesting getting to know how much personnel it takes to run each of these offices.  An attorney’s office has the receptionist, legal assistants, clerks, sales and the attorneys.

I was assigned my own set of cleaning tools including vacuum cleaner, duster, bucket, mop, and various cleaning products.  I was given keys to the various buildings.  Every once in a while somebody was still in the building, but for the most part, I was alone.  It was kinda eery at first.  I mean I felt like I was snooping into these people’s lives without them knowing about it.  You could tell right away who was the slob and who was the neat freak.  But you don’t have enough time to do any real snooping.  Time was money.

Each office had their own set of rules as to what to clean, where, if I could move anything, etc.   You had to be very careful dusting.  You wanted to get at the dust, but not move anything.  And if you did move anything, you’d better get it back in exactly the same place.   I vacuumed, dusted, cleaned the bathrooms, cleaned the break rooms and carried out garbage.  I think the worst were bathrooms when there was a shop in the building.  I’m sorry, but men are pretty messy.  The sinks were gross and let’s just say that aim was not on their top priority at the toilet.

The worst thing that ever happened to me was when I got locked out of a building.   This was back in the days of no cell phone for me.  I went in the back door like usual and carried in some of my cleaning products.  When I went back out to the car, I thought I had unlocked the door from the inside, but alas no, I hadn’t.  So here I was out in the middle of a business district.  No handy pay phones on the corner.  I was beginning to despair when I saw a light on in a building a block away and saw a lady in the window.  I was terrified at how she would react, but I didn’t know what else to do.  I knocked on the window and she about had a heart attack.  But she was very nice and let me in to make a phone call to my head company.  Then I just had to wait for them come to the rescue with a second key.  I definitely lost money that night.

The work was not that difficult, but it got old after a while.  And, it was all at night and on the weekends, eliminating precious family time.  The pay is better than fast food, but not that great, but it didn’t require any experience or much training.  It can be more lucrative if you go out on your own.

What’s Your Job?