Prompted by an early-morning shock: a new cleaning lady had tidied up the paper and objects on my desk (They normally know better than that). My personal opinion is that (a) things are arranged on my desk where they are for a reason (with papers, their spatial relationship is by way of being an intermediate work product), and (b) it is an intrusion into my personal sphere.
Long ago, when mice had balls, another new cleaning lady even took the mouse’s ball out and polished it (but forgot to put it back).
So, is it your office’s cleaning staff’s SOP to tidy desks, or to leave well alone, and what would you prefer they did?
Cleaning folks empty the trash/recycling, rarely clean the floors, NEVER touch anything on the desks. I wouldn’t want them to touch anything on the desk.
Cleaning staff do not tidy my desk, as I keep it tidy, but they do move things around. My team is evenly divided between people who want their drawers-on-wheels on the right side and who loathe the lady who moves them all to the left, and those of us who want them on the left and hate the lady who moves them to the right. Those two don’t piss me off as much as the one who always leaves the garbage bins out of place and who never mops up the floor, though (we know when she has our floor because by the end of the week, there are long dark hairs all around my seat and long blondish hairs all around the boss’).
Oh, and I’d love to be able to bang the head of the sweetie-pie who broke the “feet” of my keyboard with said keyboard. Repeatedly.
If anybody tidied up my desk, I’d never find anything.
We have this thing where once a month, you can put a little “please clean” placard on your desk and the cleaning crew will give it a scouring. But that’s only for hosing down the surfaces and buffing the phone receiver or whatever – it’s on us to make sure the desk is tidy enough for cleaning.
I wouldn’t be pleased if they tried to tidy up my papers. Fortunately, here, they won’t even pick up a scrap of paper on the floor near a desk in case it’s important and you’d accidentally dropped it.
They don’t tidy the papers on my desk, but they do take a swipe at dusting it and all my shit gets moved around. I hate it. But what’s worse is the cleaning under my desk, and they always end up shoving my dictation machine pedal waaaaay back under my desk and shove my computer tower over.
Ditto. This is done in my office when we place out files in order and the staff are under instruction to leave the desk exactly as they found it. It means that all loose stuff is filed or in the drawers and you just have files lying on the desk, in order. Those they can pick up en mass and replace en mass.
Don’t clean my desk, either. Then again, they don’t even vacuum. (At least, not regularly, or often enough so I can tell.) Near as I can tell, their one and only goal is to empty out the trash cans. But we’re a nearly paperless office, at least on my team. The person who handles billing has stacks of contracts, etc. but otherwise, most of our shit is on a computermachine.
We handle our own bottle/can recycling privately. As in, one of my co-workers takes it home and throws it into her own recycling bin.
I am against anyone tidying up my desk - how the hell am I supposed to find anything if it’s not all spread out where I can see it? Honestly, even if they’re “just trying to help” I don’t appreciate the sentiment. I already have a mom, if I wanted her to come clean up my desk I would ask her to…
Most lop-sided poll ever! I have a New Yorker cartoon hanging on my wall where a guy with a messy desk says to another “A clean desk is the Devil’s workshop, that’s my motto.” No way would a cleaning person understand which little scrap of paper is important and which can be trashed.
At first, I thought this was one of those impenetrable phrases such as “since Hector was a pup”.
No, the cleaning staff doesn’t move our papers. Once in a blue moon, they offer to dust if we’ll put away the clutter when we go home, but no one ever remembers to do it.
Cleaning staff do not tidy my desk, but if it’s clear, they will wipe it. OK by me. If it’s a mess, they avoid it entirely. Also fine with me.
I once worked in an office where if I left a coffee cup on my desk, that coffee cup would be in the dishwasher the next day. Did not like. This was my personal coffee cup, and the cleaning staff had been known to break them (accidentally, I’m sure). Can’t break it if you don’t touch it. Also, I didn’t want to see someone who got there earlier drinking out of my cup.
Also, long ago, when mice had balls, I also once had an assistant who “tidied” my desk when I was out of the office for a couple of days on business. Could not find anything for weeks after.
GAH! Urk… I… nnnnngh… of all the… [deep breath] BAH!
I keep my desk pretty clean, especially at the end of the week, when the cleaners are going to be in (they only come on the weekends). I hate dust accumulating at the base of my monitor, and I’ve mentioned it before to the office manager.
But! Every. damn. week. they. MOVE MY KEYBOARD. It’s sometimes propped up against one of the speakers, or stuffed behind the monitor out of the way. And now the feet are broken off, so it lies flat on my desk.
This week, though, they did the unspeakable. I have a big whiteboard on one of the walls of my office. When I came in yesterday, not only had they very thoroughly wiped it down (erasing the half-finished architecture diagram that was marked “DNR” – perhaps they thought I didn’t want it resuscitated), but the couch and ottoman near the whiteboard were covered in the dust!! And they left it like that!! More suspiciously, they closed the door to my office. They have never done that before. Perhaps they instinctively closed the door to cover their guilt, like a cat that throws up on your expensive new rug.
I wish they would dust the exposed portions of the desk, etc. But not touch any of my stuff. And they need to stop stealing my diet cokes from the fridge.