Considering some of the comments, I think it’s very appropriate that the poll looks like it’s flipping someone off.
Happened to me a few months ago. I came in one morning to find neat stacks of papers on my desk that were in no relation to the piles they were in. Took me a good half hour to undo their “helpful” efforts, and another ten minutes to track down the property management people to let them know about it.
My initial panic reaction was that I was being investigated for something, but quickly remembered that our forensics spooks take copious notes and photos before touching anything so they can restore everything exactly as it was.
This was either the work of a painfully bad spook or, it was… The Cleaning Woman. (Cue odd rantings from Steve Martin) But why? They normally don’t even dust the tops of the cube walls, much less mess with desktops.
I worked as a janitor for a while. Due to a past accusation of snoopery, our rule was no touching of the desk top unless the occupant was watching. I mistakenly waxed a big shot’s lovely wooden desk, and I got in trouble for it.
:smack:
Shoot, the cleaning staff here has been cut way down; and we’re lucky they empty the trash. There are leaves and bits of debris in my cubicle that have been here for forever.
I don’t believe it!
There she goes again!
She’s tidied up, and I can’t find anything!
All my tubes and wires
And careful notes
And antiquated notions
They never touch my desk, although when there’s an empty Coke can or styrofoam cup, it wouldn’t kill them to toss those, would it?
We have had some headphones and an Itouch go “missing”, so I lock up my Bose QC15s in my desk at night.
Or at least lose a hand.
They do clean the blackboards in the offices unless we write “Save” or “Do not erase” on them. Or they used to. It would appear that the blackboard in my office changes only when I put something new on it.
Do not tidy my desk, and do not touch my ukulele.
The cleaners once “tidied” up my desk, and moved the wastebasket/recycling bin to where it was easier for them to empty. No problem, once was a mistake, I moved everything back and left a note asking them not to move anything.
The next morning, they had moved it again, and left a nasty note telling me to leave it where they put it because it was easier to empty that way. I called the property management office and explained that the way I arranged my work space was not up for discussion by the hired help. I was given to understand that I was not the only complainant, and it never happened again.
Now I work from home, but my wife knows that no one touches nothing on my desk, ever. I need to be able to put my hand on what I need, instantly. So Keep Your Cotton-Picking Hands Off. No, I am not joking.
Regards,
Shodan
I have nothing on my desk but two framed photos, a calendar, and my phone and desktop/keyboard/mouse. Still I come in and find it all rearranged. I don’t fuss about it because it would serve no purpose. If I had important papers on my desk I would bitch. But I file what few papers I have; all my work is online.
It’s part of the contract here that the cleaning staff are not allowed to touch anything on our desks. What I’d prefer is if they’d just clean the damn things. I don’t want them “organizing” anything–just pick the piles up, dust underneath, and then set them back down. Or, hell, even dust *around *things. I’ve got baby dust bunnies under my laptop riser, FFS.
No, and Do Not Want.
I really hope you did the Vader pose right then.
Ours are also not allowed to touch anything on the desks. You have to put in a request to have your office vacuumed, your floor swept or mopped and anything else beyond the scope of emptying trash or wiping down the table in the conference room and getting the bathroom cleaned once a week.
We have two shifts of cleaning staff. Day shift is supposed to do the bulk of the cleaning and night shift just does trash. We had an awesome day shifter who was perfect and never had any problems, but due to seniority he got bumped. Now we have a man who pretends not to know english and is MIA. He was told by his supervisor to visit each lab and find out what we expected of him and introduce himself, but we have yet to see him. It’s been three months and the nasty emails are flying between the staff and the housekeeping supervisor.
At one point in time, to save money, the University tried to switch to night shift only cleaning crew with a skeleton crew on during the days for emergencies. The night shift literally did nothing and we had a rash of stolen items. They switched back to a day shift that does the cleaning and a night shift that spends 2 hours in each building and they are responsible for multiple buildings.
Our horror stories about the night shift have just started.
We have a lab and office that is unoccupied. The door is open and we use that room for storage and we use that sink to clean utensils used when we have a party. We had a celebration for one of the profs that just got promoted. It ran late and I went in to that lab to throw the stuff in the sink to soak until the next day. The office door was half ajar and inside the office was three of the night shift with their feet up sitting around talking. We did report them to the supervisor, but by the time he got up there, they were gone.
We also had a $500,000 piece of equipment delivered. It came in multiple boxes and was due to be assembled two weeks after we received it. It was placed in an alcove that contained a window (one of two windows not in a lab or office on that floor). All the boxes are marked “Keep Upright” and various other generic things like “Fragile”, plus they were heavy as all hell. We really had no other place to put the boxes that wouldn’t interfere with daily activities. We come in and notice that the boxes are all discombobulated and moved around. I, being the smallest, weasel in between the boxes and find an ashtray and an open window. We right all the boxes and put a note on the most prominent box that asks no one to move, touch or handle the boxes. Next day same thing. We report to the supervisor, but he says he can never catch anyone in the act. We then put up “Caution” tape around the alcove and another large sign. This seemed to do the trick.
One of our cleaning staff came around yesterday and wiped down everyone’s telephone receivers…with the same rag. After she left, we busted out the Lysol disinfectant wipes.