How Filthy Is Your Office?

Where do you usually eat your lunch? At your office desk or sitting on the toilet?

I guess most of you would choose to eat at your office desk, wouldn’t you? Research has shown that it could be safer to eat off your average toilet seat than your office desk. Scientists from Arizona University took samples from 100 offices across the USA and found there were 400 times as much bacteria on your average desk as on the average toilet seat. Does your average Aberdeen office cleaner clean the important part of your office?

Right now you probably have a keyboard sitting in front of you. On average that keyboard will likely to have over 3,000 microbes in every square inch. Your mouse is a little cleaner with only around 1700 But the telephone - that thing that keeps ringing whenever you are trying to do your work - has 25,000 microbes per square inch.

Alba Office Cleaning company visits a number of new companies in Aberdeen area each day. Many of them already have office cleaning contracts with other companies so are no longer shocked to discover the lack of cleaning standards an half done jobs.

I remember hearing from a typist who was complaining that the office cleaners had left the waste paper bin on a chair and how inconvenient that had been for her having to put it on the floor beside the desk. The cleaner had probably lifted the office bin to empty it and ensure the area was vacuumed (believe me I have seen office cleaners who would have vacuumed around it rather than move it for cleaning).

I asked her which was the most important job for the cleaner in the office around the desks. To be told to make sure that the bins were emptied and the floor was cleaned every day but office staff would clear their own desk so papers were not disturbed. My response was to ask her to tip her keyboard upside down over some clean paper and give it a thump with her hand. She was amazed at the amount of crumbs and dirt which came out of it. After speaking about some other cleaning priorities and the stats I quoted above we signed a cleaning contract to provide that office with a regular cleaning contract which included the desk-tops and computer equipment using our own specialist cleaning staff.

I simply ask that when drawing up office cleaning schedules we give more attention to the welfare of office staff to get maximum performance from them.