Cleaners are not appreciated, but this is not how it’s supposed to be!
On a regular workday, an average cleaner burns 2000 calories. This as much as if we did 5.5 hours of cardio training or run over 3 hours every day, which, at an average speed, equals a marathon a day. Moreover, they collect and lift as much as 150 kilograms of waste on a daily basis. But a cleaner cannot rest, stretch or have a day off but meet the same requirements the next day too!
And they don’t do all this in the gym but a hospital, a train carriage or an office building, where the rooms to be cleaned can number up to 110! And since the outbreak of the pandemic, they disinfect items that previously only required cleaning: handrails, door handles, anything we might touch. We should be really grateful for them, and yet, they feel they are not getting the public appreciation they deserve. Not even now, when they are working to keep down the number of new infections. As they admitted, oftentimes they are not even said hello to. The people who they clean after don’t even know their names. This is not how it’s supposed to be.
‘Since last year we have been planning to launch a social sensitivity campaign to make the public aware of the socially indispensable, yet almost invisible work of cleaners’, said Ferenc Kis-Szölgyémi, CEO of B+N Referencia Zrt, Hungary’s biggest cleaning and facility management company. The groundwork had been laid for long months but by the time we were ready, COVID-19 had reached the country. The 45 thousand cleaners in the country have always deserved our heartfelt appreciation, but in these times they deserve it a 100 times more. We employ 4100 cleaners who are doing a great job cleaning transportation vehicles, hospitals and office buildings. The majority of our society take cleanliness for granted but do not appreciate the people who make it happen. With our campaign “Look round and see” we want to show an alternative approach..
How to acknowledge them?
Even by being kind and polite to them, saying hello and receiving their greetings, praising the work they have done or making a note of how much better it is to work in a clean and hygienic environment we can make a difference.
‘We have got so used to the order and cleanliness around us that we simply take it for granted and fail to even notice the people who created it’, said Erika Kókai, Marketing Director of B+N. ‘We believe people are indifferent because nobody has shown a good example by appreciating the work cleaners do for us. It is our responsibility to do something about the prestige of this work and to stand up for our cleaners and every cleaner in the country because if everything stays the same, soon nobody is going to be left to clean the country’.
Source: velvet.hu
