Office Pantry Cleaning Services

All the companies I worked for in Australia do not have a dedicated person doing cleaning for the office pantry. Most times it is assigned to employees who do not like doing the job. There are others that voluntarily cleanup the pantry after a meal but they are the minority. This is not good for company morale. No one likes being forced to do something they do not want to do.

Employees Do Not Like Cleaning the Pantry

I remember in one company I worked for our department was assigned to wash the dishes. We were each to alternate turns washing the dishes, when our supervisor informed us this order from management we all protested in unison and the supervisor was forced to clean the dishes by herself.

She soon also protested to management when she cannot take it anymore. The management then reneged on its order for certain employees to clean dishes and everyone was now to clean their own dishes. Nevertheless everyone hated what happened and affected the morale of our department. The department started to not like the management.

Besides lowering the morale of employees it also disrupts their concentration from work. An employee assigned to clean the dishes may start thinking of the distasteful task of washing the dishes and start to dilly dally on doing their regular office job until they have delayed their office job so much that the dishes stays uncleaned and their office work completion greatly delayed.

Add to the fact that employees may not do a good job in handling the job which is important because the pantry utensils and equipment handle something delicate to humans which is food waste. How many times have one experienced in their pantry dishes and cutlery not fully cleaned and the microwave full of food spills left uncleaned and no one cares about it?

Companies Need a Dedicated Person for the Job

The obvious solution is to find a dedicated person who would do this job daily like a dishwasher in a restaurant who only washes and stores dishes and helps the kitchen stay clean. Pantries are always in need of cleaning as employees need them everyday to eat food. The garbage bin in the pantry is always the dirtiest of all the garbage bins in the office for example.

But the task is simple and does not even take an hour to complete for a small company of around 20 employees. All the person has to do is to wash the dishes, store the dishes then clean the microwave and the refrigerator . If there is a coffee maker they also clean it as well as any food spills on the tables and floor.

This task can be completed in less than an hour so how does one justify a full time cleaner? The answer is by getting more companies to avail of the services of the single cleaner like an entire building of companies. The cleaner can sequentially visit each office in the building or can even have cleaning jobs in adjacent buildings to make it a full-time job.

This way companies can share the cost. Ideally the cleaning schedule will be after lunch time which will give the cleaner 4 hours to clean all the dishes from all the companies. So how does the cleaner appropriate their time seeing they would have only this much time to clean the dishes after lunch?

If they lack the time to wash the dishes and clean the pantry during the after lunch schedule they can immerse the dirty dishes in water in the sink and let it sit overnight. Then they can wash them in the morning. This should ease their cleaning schedule. It is quite normal for office dishes to stay unwashed overnight in the offices I worked for.

In order for the cleaner not to get abused by employees who might become lazy and just dump all their dirty dishes to the cleaner without regard there should be a plate count . If the plate count exceeds the plate quota the cleaner will not clean the excess dishes unless there is extra compensation. The cleaner should take pictures of the dishes for proof of job completion.

The same goes for extra dirty jobs that would happen. For example the microwave is especially notorious for having spilled food all over it when unsecured food overheats and cause the food to explode and spill all over the walls of the microwave . Cleaning very dirty microwave spills deserve more pay. Normal employees would do a lousy job cleaning this or would leave the mess alone hoping it would be cleaned eventually.

We also see lazy employees using a lot of kitchen towels unnecessarily to clean dirty tables which are not cleaned well at all leaving food marks and the surface of the table sticky. A cleaner would do a proper job of using a cloth rag and cleaning liquid to truly clean the mess. This is not something most employees would do even if the mess is their own doing.

There are also food spills that can fall on the floor that can be messy especially if it is lunch food. Lazy employees will again do a lazy job of sweeping the mess leaving a sticky floor with bits of food scraps. A cleaner would do a proper job and not only sweep the food spill but also use a wet mop to remove the stickiness in the floor. Employees do not even know usually where the broom and mop is.

Conclusion

As can be seen there is a need for a dedicated pantry cleaner whose full-time cost can be offset when companies share the cost burden. By having a dedicated person the companies remove the potential from having low morale and lost productivity. The companies also ensure that their food handling items and equipments are well cleaned and sanitary to use.