Annoyed with the office cleaner

[VerySweatyBetty1]

Here’s a thing:

I've suspected for some time that our office cleanerr sits and dozes / charges his phone / eats his breakfast in my chair. I’ve never quite caught him but I’ve often ‘surprised’ him ‘suddenly cleaning’ when I've walked in earlier than normal (I'm a late person). My office is an easy choice – comfy, fan, phone charger ready plugged in on my desk. He will have noticed I’m rarely in before 9.30 and he can listen out for people coming in and out. In fact, as I’m above the front door, you can hear people arriving as the door slams shut.

He's been caught out in the past by leaving his breakfast on my desk, and coming back for it. Apologetically.

My colleague once nearly caught him in another office, so it's a known thing amongst us that this happens.

Yesterday there were some ear buds in a case on my desk. Barely anyone else here this week and nobody would want to sit here anyway, as they all have their own comfy offices. So I was pretty sure they were the cleaners. Wondering what to do / and wondering what he would do, I put them in my desk drawer while I thought about it. That was yesterday. This morning they’ve gone. This means he’s come in looking for his earbuds and has opened my personal drawers in my desk. These contain my personal effects – medication, spare underwear, receipts, personal letters and cards. I can't lock the door of my office or of my drawers. We're a pretty low-security establishment and trust one another.

In addition: we have a very narrow entrance to our building (which is part of a group of buildings, which are all serviced by an external company). He has taken up residence at the foot of the stairs. Eats his lunch there. sits on the stairs having loud conversations on his phone. We have to literally climb over him to get in and out, including when we have visitors.

I've always found this highly annoying and inappropriate but my colleagues don't seem to mind and tolerate it and I don't want to be the office bitch. The bloke is bussed in with a load of others from goodness knows where, at the crack of dawn, probably on the minimum wage and probably not well treated. There must be a common room where his colleagues hang out, but he seems to prefer our stairwell. Maybe they bully him, and he just wants some peace and quiet. So, I don't want to ruin things for him but he's crossed a line.

He speaks barely a single word of English, so I can't even have a gentle chat with him (or I'd have done it by now). The only way to communicate is via his boss. I suppose I could use Google Translate and leave him a note:

"Please do not take rest breaks at my desk, and do not open my drawers"

I don't want to scare him, though, or I'll end up being the one in trouble.

WWYD?

The op said he was watching football on his phone.

What's he stealing? It's the op who says she's taken ear pods and hid them.

? Wtf are you on people conned into coming here and forced to work to pay it back. People taken off the streets and forced to work. 222,000 of all races including British

Where does she slag off his cleaning? Or is he supposed to not eat as she assumes these bused in people have a whole break room but doesn't know where or if he's even allowed to stop work long enough to seek out anywhere.

Or maybe because OP could have completely legitimately argued that she found a set of earbuds on her desk that weren't hers, so she put them in her drawer - a drawer no one else should be opening - until she had time to take them to reception/HR/the office manager to see if anyone had lost them. Or that she’d simply picked them up with a pile of paperwork and put them in her desk drawer. Both are far more reasonable explanations than “She must have been trying to steal them, because I’d left them on her desk after using it as my break space and, when I went back for them and they weren’t there, instead of looking around to see if I’d actually left them somewhere else, or waiting to see if someone had handed them in, I went through her private drawers and found them and took them”. How could he even be sure they were his? Doesn’t one set of earbuds look very much like another?

It’s got nothing to do with “knowing he’s bottom of the pile” and everything to do with knowing he has zero evidence of an intent of theft, and that arguing someone had “stolen” something he had left in a place he shouldn’t have been and then retrieved from a desk he shouldn’t have opened is laughable.

And the cleaner went into this private space. Surely that shows intent to steal on his part?

The cleaner was retrieving his personal property that OP had hidden.

By their logic, using well known indicators of trafficking is "racist" and we should just leave them be rather than make judgments which might save them...

How often does this happen? I have a vague memory of someone leaving their phone on my desk once at some point in the 25 years I’ve been working. I think he realised and came back before I had time to go over to him. If I’d spotted it and he’d already left the office, I would 100% have put it in my desk until I could find him. No way would I leave it out for anyone to take.

As I say though, that was one time. You must work with some very forgetful people for this to be a common problem.

But he didn’t know it was there. He went rooting.

Posters on this thread are desperate to claim that he wouldn’t have “had” to go looking through the OP’s drawers if she hadn’t put the earbuds there. But by the same token, OP wouldn’t have had to put, or leave, the earbuds anywhere if the cleaner hadn’t been using her desk.

From what I can decipher of this inarticulate nonsense, you seem to be suggesting I’m claiming there’s no such thing of human trafficking. How you’ve come to this conclusion is beyond me.

He’s got to be able to speak some English to be able to get a job. Otherwise how is he or anyone safe if there’s a fire or someone gets hurt?

It's not your home though, sounds like a very weird office. Is GDPR not a thing? Surely you'd need somewhere to lock a laptop or work items and that's where your personal things can go, or get your own lockable box. I work in an office which is cleaned once a month, which is pretty disgusting but I'd prefer someone eating cereal in my seat and a generally clean environment to the opposite. Cleaners shouldn't really open drawers but they're not really your drawers they belong to your employer

The OPs workplace obviously does not meet GDPR if nothing locks.

I think he sounds unprofessional & not doing his job properly. He shouldn't be napping in your chair or anywhere whilst at work. And he definitely shouldn't be spending lunch times on the stairs, speaking loudly & watching football - if he has to be thete all day, he should be provided with a place to go at lunchtimes. This would annoy me considerably. Lots of workers are 'bussed in', eg factory workers, so I don't see the issue with that.

@CheeseandOnionCrispFan being an office cleaner is not a professional job.

But he doesn't seem to have a professional attitude towards his job - if you have a job, do it well, not eat & nap at someone's desk or sit in the stairwell.

He may have been on an unpaid break. OP does not know. Presumably you eat during unpaid breaks?

Yes, because there are four other suitable places to make tea or coffee. My office has private company information and is not for the public to enter.

But not at someone else's desk...

@AvrielFinch - just in case you need it written down in black and white, this is the definition of stealing:
"the action or offence of taking another person's property without permission or legal right and without intending to return it; theft."

I put the bit that you seem to be overlooking with aplomb in bold and underlined it. The OP neither TOOK the headphones nor did she have any intention of NOT returning them once the rightful owner was identified.

The OP has since come back and posted indicating that she definitely did intend to find the owner of said headphones/earbuds and return them so we'll say it together, whenever you're ready....altogether, on the count of three...
1......
2...........
3.....................

The OP did NOT steal the headphones by putting them in the pedestal drawer she uses by her desk.

There we go. That wasn't so hard was it??

He probably won't be sacked. He probably will be given more instruction on what is and isn't acceptable when he is supposed to be working and having conversations (that are probably not work related) while on the stairs might be one thing, having his break while sitting at an employee's desk and not cleaning up after himself would be another.
If he isn't a hard worker and is taking the mickey then yes, perhaps he will be sacked but that won't be down to the OP's situation. It will be down to the way that the cleaner behaved and went about their work.

I would be very careful with stuff like putting his earbuds into a drawer. What would happen if he claimed you had stolen them?

OP would say 'Oh, are they yours? They were on my desk. While I waited for whoever had left them there to come and ask me for them, I put them in my desk drawer so they didn't go missing. Are they yours? Don't leave them here again, please.'

Like any reasonable adult would do.

Have you ever done this kind of job?