AIBU to think quarterly 'PC Cleaning' is over-indulgent?

[seeingthrufog]

I've recently switched from a commercial employer to the public sector, and I'm getting used to a few cultural differences. This one is relatively trivial I suppose ...

Every 3 months, we get an email to say a contractor is coming in for the day to do 'PC Cleaning'. They work their way through the building - about 4-5 surly guys. When they get to our room we all dutifully stand aside as they tip our keyboards up and bash them around a bit with a brush to get the crumbs and dust out, and dust behind the monitor. It takes about 3 minutes per desk. Then they move onto the next room.

I previously worked for a management consultancy, and they would never have spent money on this sort of thing. Costs were strictly controlled. If you had a crumby keyboard you were responsible for cleaning it yourself. (Yes, they got a bit yucky, and sometimes people complained, especially at hotdesks, but it was never a big enough problem to bring in specialist cleaning contractors).

So, I'm wondering how common this is in other people's work places? Is it the norm?

We never had that, but we did have an office cleaner that took care of trash and tidied up the kitchen. They might have dusted the PC's while they were at it because I never remember them getting dusty. But it certainly wasn't a ritual in and of itself.

Public sector here and our cleaners don't touch anything on the desks; they empty bins, hoover and clean the toilets. Another company comes to do the windows every 3 months or so.

No-one has ever mentioned desk cleaning. I do my own every 4 or 5 months with giant loo roll, a can of polish and a bottle of screen spray. I haven't done my phone in ages though, I must put that on my to-do list.

We provide our own christmas decorations as well.

We hot desk, and there are sanitation stations, with anti bacteria wipes, every twenty feet. Plus the cleaning staff does a top to bottom every two days.
It makes it lovely clean, and cuts the spread of colds.

we also have a strict no food at the desk policy, which cuts out a lot of the crumb bits and greasy finger smudges!

So that's what our children are going to be borrowing thousands of pounds to fund?

I'm public sector and this used to happen in our office. It was always a case of having to stop whatever we were doing at the most inconvenient Times because the cleaning people were more important than us. They stopped it years ago.
We used to have people to clean the phones too.

Most public sector buildings are cleaned as part of gigantic contracts with companies who have to tender for the business. If one of them specifies an extra clean of keyboards, phones etc and is cheaper, it might well represent good value rather than extra expenditure?

I don't think of a University as public sector, I know some funds come from government but they must also get a lot from fees and private research.

When I reorganised a section of our office last year one of the things I paid for out of the budget was an IT deep clean. I had a team of 4 people literally scrubbing 150 keyboards and mice on a Sunday and it was worth every penny.

I have never seen anything like it - they were picking out green and black gunge from under the keys with dental tools and cotton buds. Vast amounts of crumbs and fluff. Everything was scrubbed and wiped down with anti-bac.

We did suffer a few losses on the keyboard front but it was so worth it.

It is possible that the Uni bought what is referred to as a fully managed service - the cleaning could have just been chucked in. Or it could be a condition of warranty or lease agreement. You would be amazed the amount of people that I have come across that thought soapy water would do their PC the world of good