Are you being told to clean toilets at work?

[noblegiraffe]

If cleaning toilets wasn’t previously anywhere near your job description?

It’s being claimed on another thread that this is just part of the new normal, everyone is pitching in. I’m not convinced.

YABU - I’m being asked to clean toilets

YANBU - I’m not being asked to clean toilets

If you are, are you ok with it?

We’ve had no cleaners since March. Pre lockdown we had 125 people over 2 floors, now there’s 4 or 5 of us.
We do it all ourselves, bins, vacuum through, wipe down the kitchen, toilets and whatever needs done, usually we just do it on a Friday afternoon. It’s quite easy for us being so few.

[quote FishyDuck]@inertia

The question I'd ask is should schools be spending money on extra cleaners instead of teaching and learning? I'd say they shouldn't, particularly when there is a resource already in the building in the form of teachers who are perfectly able to undertake additional cleaning.[/quote]
I had to stop reading the thread at this point to be angry and disbelieving. Teachers are not a resource available for cleaning. We are highly trained and expert professionals whose working hours are already overfilled with tasks relating to our actual job.
I’m a supply teacher (after 30 years full time on contracts in the classroom) and the minute I’m asked to clean toilets Will be the minute I walk out of a contract. Teachers on permanent contracts will have to wait longer, but I suspect many of them would also resign. There’s already an issue with recruitment and retention.

Of course teachers can't clean toilets while teaching. They can do it at the end of the school day and throughout breaks and lunchtimes.

I'm a teacher. I have a first class Honours degree and a Masters. I was a cleaner throughout my student days.
Will I fuck clean toilets where students have pissed and crapped on the floor.
Be aware, parents, that your children will be coming home to your nice, pristine home each day having used toilets that I would not enter in a HazMat suit. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you start lobbying your MP to get proper funding for extra cleaning in schools.

Teachers are not a resource available for cleaning. We are highly trained and expert professionals
as are many on here who ARE cleaning toilets etc.

Nope I work for a super.arket and they employ a cleaning company to.clean the toilets and everywhere including staff toilets and canteen

I don't think this thread is provocative or unreasonable and I have rolled my eyes at some of the threads where teachers have been very dramatic about going back. I think OP is completely right that this isn't a normal or a reasonable request and that it wouldn't be expected of otherwise, equivalent jobs.

So why are you posting provoking threads? You know exactly how’s its going to turn out. Are you purposely trying to cause ill feeling towards teachers

Teachers weren't even mentioned in the OP.

"Teachers weren't even mentioned in the OP"
no , but s/he managed to shoehorn it into about the fifth post

Teachers who are reluctant to roll their sleeves up and clean school toilets during breaktime after the kids have used them are being assured that accountants, chefs, office workers and so on are all doing similar without complaint

So?

cardibach it also spectacularly misses the point that a) it's not the same money and b)teaching and learning will be directly negatively affected by teachers' time being taken up doing tasks not related to learning!

And that's putting aside the dubious right wing economic politics.

so

I think you pressed post too soon!

No one has yet said which part of the teachers' proper job should be sacrificed while they do the cleaning. Marking? Preparation? Supervision? Exam preparation?

Come on, you teacher bashers, which part has to go?

going to the toilet oneself, I expect.

I think that in my office people are spraying disinfectant around after they have used them but there will still be cleaners in the morning and evening (I hope). I'm not sure that extra cleaning of toilets will make much difference. Surely the main thing is that pupils wash their hands thoroughly and use antibacterial gel after leaving the toilet.

@peasaregood

Teachers are not a resource available for cleaning. We are highly trained and expert professionals as are many on here who ARE cleaning toilets etc.

What "sort" of toilets are they cleaning though? A couple of "naice" staff loos, used by respected colleagues who they know and trust?

Or a bunch of unhygienic Year 9s, whose idea of a joke is to smear shit on the walls and flush buttons?

going to the toilet oneself
If only.
If asked by PGCE students for my best advice I used to tell them to always take the time to empty their bladder properly when they went for a wee, because they might have to wait ages to go again. (In fact I bet many busy women don’t do this. I only realised that a rushed wee is a bad thing after many years of rushing, made worse by knowing other people are desperate to go too and there’s a queue.)

I'm the manager of a small community centre , in a building that also has office tenants. The building is closed to the public, but the office tenants are still coming in. We had a cleaner who came in once a week, who we can't afford to pay now, so I am now the cleaner. I'm not thrilled but I've still got a job, and there's literally nobody else to do the cleaning.

i also wonder how many of the people posting on here about "we all have to do our bit/ i'm grateful to have a job" know what it's like to clean up toilets after OTHER people?

I've done that: cleaned pub toilets, cafe toilets, shop toilets open to the public when a student (for 6 years). I had a job as an HCA on a gastrointestinal ward that involved scraping a week's worth of each patient's shit out of bedpans into a giant bottle. It's not pleasant, but it's not the end of the world either.

Now I'm a senior doctor, and pretty much every day I do things that are unpleasant and that definitely aren't my job, including cleaning up body fluids, helping patients off the toilet, changing pooey nappies when doing baby checks. None of this is remotely part of my official job.

Many of the posters on this thread and others like it come across as unbelievably precious.

@peasaregood

Teachers are not a resource available for cleaning. We are highly trained and expert professionals as are many on here who ARE cleaning toilets etc.

It many. Overwhelmingly people are saying they aren’t cleaning at all or are just asked to wipe down after their own use of the toilet.

mrsnoah do you clean toilets now too?

@CuckooCuckooClock

mrsnoah do you clean toilets now too?

And if so, do you clean the toilets in the main areas that have been used by many members of the public? And then go back to your ward round in the same clothes?

@QueenZoopla
Time to print and laminate those cleaning fairy posters reminding others to clean up.

But then I never understand the mentality of those the posters are aimed at.

A previous work place had one of those really grim toilet pictures up and included wording along the lines of - you may enjoy the sty life, here we don't. Clear up your own shit. Similar in the kitchen and staff room lool.

I don't have time to clean toilets, I do two or three hours of unpaid overtime everyday as it is.

I think we absolutely need a campaign to recruit volunteers to clean school toilets. They will soon appreciate the ingenious new ways anti-bac wipes can be deployed around the place, as well as the traditional misuse of toilet paper, used tampons and sanitary towels and any other amenities provided in the name of hygiene.

s/he managed to shoehorn it into about the fifth post

She. And I didn’t shoehorn it in, I was responding to someone who asked! I think I was pretty open about my reasons for starting the thread, didn’t hide anything?

It’s odd, the idea that because I’m a known teacher starting a thread that it’s deliberately provoking anti-teacher sentiment. I just wanted to prove the claim on the other thread was bollocks. Mischief managed.