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?

NoIDontWatchLoveIsland So, how about you volunteering to come in to school and clean the loos your child may be jointly responsible for soiling?

Use rubber gloves and wear a mask
Ah yes, that mythical PPE that some workplaces are provided with, but not schools.

I haven't said I am too good to clean the loos. I am saying I can't clean the loos and teach at the same time as there is no-one else to be with the kids.

Staff in schools would do a quick clean of a toilet area if they had children they had to change with toileting needs I assume? As part of personal care/ I know this is needed in mainstream as well as special schools? Possibly more in early years but not completely exceptional to the role ?

The scenario noblegiraffe is talking about is not 1:1. It's one teacher, maybe 1 teaching assistant, who already have 1 job, being asked to clean toilets up after 30 kids. This is normally a separate job, with a separate person to do it.

Schools have one hell of a job next year making up for the lost time this year, covering gaps, with each and every child having done something different in this time. Do you really want them wasting time doing a separate job as well, or do you want them available to teach, plan lessons and plan/ organise all the expected interventions?

I think the government should be providing extra money to schools to increase janitorial cover.

It’s an additional workload and teachers don’t really have capacity to take on other work like this when they are trying to teach in a more difficult situation and with students who have just had an unusual term of distance learning that will have exacerbated skills and knowledge gaps and caused mental health/emotional difficulties.

You can’t just add to teacher work loads and expect that not to impact the work they were already doing.

However, concentrating on the “cleaning toilets” aspect rather than increased non-teaching focused workload makes you sound snobby.

I agree there’s probably a fair bit of sexism going on here too - I’d be happy to wake a wager that if we look at which sectors increase cleaning staff coverage versus who tries to get non-cleaning staff to do it we’d find the burden fell more on non-cleaning women than on non- cleaning men (of course the cleaning staff are likely predominantly women too, the burden will fall more on women whichever route is taken). And some of that will be down to leaders realising that men just aren’t going to bloody do it, so not even trying to coerce them into it.

I'm a primary teacher so yes I am cleaning toilets we take it in turns so everybody does it, even the head takes her turn.

Female headteacher I see. Anyone know of any male headteachers cleaning toilets?

I'm in an office although working from home until next week. I'm happy to clean down when I've used the toilet but no way am I cleaning them after everyone else! Visitors will be at a minimum but even if we have them they can clean after themselves.

And also, I have 2 jobs, I'm a cleaner in a care setting for people with additional needs which can be pretty grim at times too and have cleaned other settings too (offices/schools/shops etc) but it really doesn't phase me.

Time wise I get the issue - not cleaning because you don't want to I don't.

'Mythical ppe' - schools have gloves and aprons for things like personal care, dispensing medicines, we don't have much more than this in community nhs!

a shared cleaner moving room to room during the teaching day seems like a very good way for all the 'bubbles' to end up cross-exposed

You know that this is what secondary school teachers and some primary teachers will be doing anyway? Teaching all the bubbles?

Not for cleaning toilets thirty!

Not in my office building, no. There are rules about fewer numbers being in the toilets at any one time, and washing hands thoroughly. No expectation that anyone who is not the normal cleaner will do any additional cleaning.

We're still working from home but I can't imagine us being asked to clean the toilets after we use them. The use of any cleaning chemical - be it bleach, etc - would require risk assessments, and training. Also, we're an engineering firm...you don't pay engineering rates for toilet cleaning!

[quote CallmeAngelina]**@Evelefteden How many people work in your office and use those loos?
Would you be prepared to clean toilets that had been used by hundreds of members of the public?[/quote]
We have 27 staff.

It depends where the toilets are. I’ve cleaned toilets in a pub when I worked behind a bar and I’ve cleaned toilets in sports centre when I worked as a swimming teacher. The ‘it’s not in my job description’ would not have washed on either because we were all expected to help out if there was an issue.

I’d clean toilets in a school as you know your demographic of the people using them, kids.

I wouldn’t clean town centre public toilets because they may have been used for other reasons than actually going to the toilet such as taking drugs, having sex and other rotten stuff and I’d imagine you’d need specific health and safety training for that.

I have OCD (actual, real OCD) and the thought of having to touch, let alone clean a public toilet is disgusting! There's no way I would do this or think it was acceptable. Luckily I'm WFH.

My HT is paying cleaners to be on site throughout the day. We have whole year groups of teachers shielding so how September will work is very much up in the air.

Personally I think it's a ridiculous thing to be expected to do. You don't catch covid through your buttocks. Lid down when flushing and wash your hands for 20 seconds. Protects you and protects other users.

High hand-traffic surfaces need regular cleaning: taps, handles, push-plates. Not loos.

@noblegiraffe I know which thread you’re talking about. I’m a teacher and have many friends who are also teachers (both primary and secondary). I don’t know anyone who has been specifically directed to cleans the pupil toilets. I certainly haven’t and I would refuse! I don’t mind wiping round/bleach in the staff toilet that I’ve used but there’s no way I’m cleaning the pupil toilets half way through the day in wearing my school clothes and then go off and teach again in the afternoon. Thankfully I won’t need to because we have a site team who will be doing it.

As for Bubbles - mine is burst virtually every day. New kid back today to Y1 needed a 1:1 so new extra bodies in my bubble. Don’t mention the weekend sleepovers they are all having all over town

and most importantly teachers are already in bubbles with their pupils so it minimises spread to others
I don't really get this, but I work somewhere without bubbles, and without separate loos for each year group or bubble anyway. By cleaning toilets I would be in contact with the potential germs of everyone (well assuming I was only doing the girls, 50% of everyone) in the school. So good luck containing any outbreak with those figures!

While wearing school clothes is another good point.

This is a practical logistical point that deserves due consideration. I'm usually hot on class issues, but this needs all the British resentments and social crap taken out of it in order for decent, reasonable and fair arrangements to be organised.

No cleaning of any description is in my job description but under the current circumstances I am expected to do regular cleaning of “touch points” - this includes toilet flush handles and seats as well as door handles, taps etc. I am a school administrator.

In schools who clears up if a child is sick on the classroom floor or drips blood from a cut knee or something ? I'm sure there's loads of occasions when teachers have to do unpleasant tasks not in their job description ....I don't think anyone's expecting teachers to be cleaning loos constantly but being extra vigilant - someone checking state of the loos regularly for hand soap etc makes sense

About two-thirds of respondents on here misreading this as “is it fine to be asked to wipe the loo seat after you’ve used it,” NOT “Should professional teachers with no time, training, protection or inclination be cleaning up whole blocks after groups of feral teenagers, instead of doing their actual job”.

Nope. Not happening.

My DH works in a tech-y, male centred office. (If they were expected back in the building before 2021, because geeks don’t have mythical teacher immunity) they’d think it was a joke and then refuse.

Too much trading on the good will of a predominately female workforce going on here, never mind the whole no-PPE debate going on around it.