The View from the Front Desk Vol. 3
This month I decided to speak with my friend Emilie who runs our janitorial and building maintenance department. Getting to work closely with her, I have been able to learn a great deal about the efforts of our janitorial staff, and I thought this would be a perfect time to bring some of those lessons to a broader base than me, myself, and I.
Emilie began working as an assistant to the janitorial manager in the summer of 2022 before taking the role on entirely in September of that year. I hinted in my last post at the origins of the department, but everything has not been smooth sailing. The janitorial business has had its share of downturns and rebounds. When Emilie took over, it was at the tail end of a downturn, but she managed to pull it back up. Part of this came from her skill in streamlining the various processes used in the administration of the business. When Emilie started here: timekeeping, supply logs, and the like were functional but cumbersome. She ironed out those systems, and along the way she had a few serious conversations with the staff and management about the expectations and methodology of the business.
We are incredibly grateful for the employees we have. A few of them have been here since before Emilie started, and they have been wonderful resources to lean on, and continue to be to this day. She has also brought in one of our other employees as the building maintenance man, the guy we call when something needs handled for our buildings. His assistance has been
immeasurable, taking care of emergencies at these buildings as well as taking on the more uncommon work that needs done, but on a once-every-coupla-months basis. With the combination of our janitors, our handy-man, and our night-managers, Emilie has done a wonderful job of clearing the way for our janitors to do their jobs efficiently and well.
Because of the nature of the job, we would rather sign on with business owners and building managers who care more about the quality of the work than looking for the bare minimum. As such, most of our clientele tend to be white-collar workers. And sometimes people who are employed at the buildings we service, don’t fully understand how much work goes into maintaining the quality of their workspace. People and things are far grosser than you think, but our janitors are very good at being flexible and persevering with a strong constitution.
One of the best things about the job is that you get to see your progress as soon as you make it,
unlike other jobs where it can feel like you are pushing Sisyphean tasks that never finish. You also have the ability to avoid socialization if you are an introvert like me. But, no job is perfect, and the trade off is that you need to have a strong stomach. Homeless men using trashcans as toilets, dirty and discarded underwear hidden behind toilets, used prophylactics in places they should not be: these are all real things that our janitors have encountered on different job sites. To quote Emilie directly, “it is either the easiest job in the world, or suddenly the worst job on the planet.”
Because the job of janitors is to clean, generally without being seen, most of our clients have us clean during the hours that the business is closed. This works wonderfully, but as soon as the sun goes down, we are on the watch. For this reason, our janitors never clean outside. If something needs cleaned outside, we send our faithful handy-man to take care of it in the light of day. At night, we keep our janitors safe by not asking them to go outside and clean in the dark.
Emilie hopes to double or even triple our client list over the next couple of years. We love to work with business owners and building managers who want a one-stop-shop for their buildings. We want to be the company that they turn to for everything from window washes and carpet cleans, to regular janitorial cleans, to a busted faucet or a burnt out bulb. If your building has a problem, we want to be the solution.
I have more that I want to say about Emilie and the incredible job she does for us, but I will stop here for now so that I can say this. As we go into the holidays, we at Covenant Buildings want to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year. Thank you to those of you who are now reading along as I explore this realm of construction. I hope you enjoy my ramblings, and I hope to find more of you as time goes on! As always, if you have any questions about the business I find myself in, please ask me at parker@covenantbuildings.com. I would be delighted to answer your questions, and if I cannot, then I want to find the person who can!