Qualities of a good cleaner

Last Friday, August 20, 2010 was Sarah Mann's last day at Zenith Cleaners. Sarah was our oldest staff and while we will miss her, we are happy to see her go, and flourish somewhere else, taking with her some of the qualities of a Zenith Cleaner. Ronke and I had a short debriefing session with her last week. We spoke about her experience over the last 5 years and how that connected with the next phase of her life. Sarah came on board shortly before she left McGill University and while she was with Zenith Cleaners, she did a Masters in Social Work from University of Victoria.

It may be hard to see how several years in a cleaning company prepares you for anything else in life but cleaning. But it is clear that the skills and attitudes needed to thrive in Zenith Cleaners or as a good cleaner at all, are universal, and prepare one for greater responsibilities. This is in no way exhaustive and is in no particular order.

Discipline
It takes an amazing amount of self discipline to consistently deliver top quality performance to clients even in something as basic as cleaning, where performance naturally declines over time. It takes discipline to be always punctual, show up at clients' premises rain, snowstorm or shine and follow assigned tasks when the natural tendency is to do otherwise. It takes discipline to pursue and complete a Masters full time while working 30+ hours a week in something as physically (and mentally) demanding as cleaning. Discipline transcends occupations.

Humility
This is obvious. Cleaning up after people humbles you, for many reasons, especially if you attended one of the most prestigious Universities in Canada. For most people, cleaners are at the bottom of the chain and it is very hard not to see how "small" you are when you do cleaning. This is an attitude that I think all humans need, because only with humility can we consistently improve. Only humble people can grow and become more than they presently are. Only humble people can learn. Only humble people can keep an open mind to possibilities beyond their field of experience. Only humble people can create new things. Which occupation does not need humility?

Servant heart
As a cleaner, you are practically a servant. If you did not know how to serve others before coming on board, you would need to learn it in a matter of months. At Zenith Cleaners, our clients have the freedom to disengage without notice and so the servant heart is even more needed because we retain clients only because of our service quality. The world can only be made better by those who have the willingness and the heart to extend beyond themselves and serve, whether or not they stand to benefit significantly. As a cleaner, you learn to serve with all your heart, mind and body for comparatively little financial benefit. At Zenith Cleaners, we are blessed to have people like Sarah, who do it joyfully day in day out. Such people should lead because they have learnt to serve joyfully with little compensation.

Confidence
This may seem to contradict the idea of humility, but really, who is truly humble unless they have something to be proud about? As a cleaner, you need to be confident of who you are and be able to separate who you are from society's conception of you, which is dependent on what you do. If you allow yourself to be defined by what society thinks of you, you are internally defeated and once you are internally defeated, the quality of your work suffers. As a cleaner, you need to take pride in the work you do and know that even if others do not appreciate you much for it, it is worthwhile. This is why we have the Martin Luther quote on our website. If a cleaner can learn to do their work as well as Shakespeare wrote poetry, they will most likely be able to do anything else as well.

Discretion
This is big. Sarah herself mentioned this during our conversation. As a cleaner, you need discretion. We do work with task lists but as a cleaner you need that unique human endowment of personal judgement to know when to stick to the task list and when to set it aside. If you are someone who only follows task lists and loves routine, contrary to what most people may think, you cannot be a good cleaner. You need discretion to be a good custodian of people's physical and information assets. More than most of our staff, Sarah had access to people's homes and information and she was a faithful custodian while she was with us. She could easily have destroyed the company and any one of our clients by simply misusing what was entrusted to her. That takes discretion and it is needed everywhere. In cleaning, you learn it if you did not have it.

Presence
A good cleaner needs to be present. At Zenith Cleaners, we always say that people should bring their whole selves to work. It is not just a physical activity. It is mental as well as spiritual. Discretion for example requires using your intuition, which is beyond mental. If you are not present, you must of necessity do a poor job. Cleaning allows one to practice being present. At Zenith Cleaners, after consistent complaints about your work, you either learn presence or leave. Don't we all love people who are just present? There is a serenity about them that is contagious and you can be sure that when they are doing anything, they are not doing something else. When they are here, they are here, now.

Trust
This is perhaps the biggest quality in cleaning. Who wants to give anyone access to their space, their lives, their information, their assets if they cannot be trusted? No matter how good a cleaning company is in terms of quality of work, trust is what determines who consistently wins with clients and gets rave reviews. Intuitively, most clients know that it all comes down to trustworthiness and not the size of the company or the age of the company. Our clients must trust us to do a good job, to care for their space, their assets, their information, to be honest and open about what we can or cannot do and to keep our word. Our staff must be trustworthy for us to retain our clients' trust. Sarah was trustworthy throughout her time with Zenith Cleaners, because she is trustworthy. Trustworthiness is a quality cleaners need and it is a quality in very short supply in our world.