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?

Jesus. The racism and arrogance on this thread is wild. Pitying a human because you think only people with shit lives work as cleaners. And he's probably trafficked because he's foreign. 😱

OP, put your knickers and drugs in a bag and lock it in the filing cabinet before you leave. Mr Lazy-Shite has had his breakfast baguette fingers in your drawers.

OP, I would hate it if someone I didn't know ate and slept at my desk at work. Different workplaces have different styles, so maybe many of the posters on here come from more 'hotdesking' environments and don't understand the ethos at your workplace. And the suggestions to bring wipes and clean your own desk are missing the point entirely! Whether fairly or not, this is not the issue at hand, that's what he's paid to do. You are understandably concerned about getting him in trouble by reporting him, so I would recommend the small sign approach.

And he's probably trafficked because he's foreign

no, it’s a possibility because he apparently speaks no English and because his employer buses him in with others and apparently leaves them there without access to an area for breaks etc or anyone to communicate with in their behalf.

He should be eating/having his break in the relevant break room, not at the OP's desk.
He shouldn't be having his lunch on the stairs, or having a nap at the OP's desk and he should be eating in the designated location.

I would suggest to your manager that you want to get a locked pedestal unit because you had put a pair of earpods into your unlocked pedestal yesterday and today they are not there and you don't know who accessed the drawers but you no longer feel that leaving anything in the office is safe and can they either approve a locksmith to come in and fit a lock to your existing pedestal or buy a lockable pedestal for you or provide lockers for all staff.

It's an invasion of your privacy and yes, you should expect a certain level of privacy even at work. This guy has zero boundaries. He doesn't have his break at the manager's desk or snooze there so why do it at the OP's desk.

Time to find your voice @VerySweatyBetty1

@HollyKnight racism? He could speak any European language you do realise this or not and you realise there are multiple ethnicities on this thread too, who could be the same as the cleaner and also saying the poor bastard has a hard life cleaning up the mess of others. What the hell has happened to critical thinking.

Did you buy the desk ? Do you rent the office ? If not it's not yours. Do you see the cleaner as below you, does he not deserve to sit ?

I’m Scandinavian and years ago my Scandi friends and I took a shitty job in different sort of factories. Every morning we were taken to where we were supposed to work that day, and then taken home again. We had nowhere proper to eat our lunch and were searched before going home. To us it was just a quick job to get some money to travel, to others it was their reality. It really opened my eyes.

Some people assumed we must be poor, but we all came from very wealthy homes.

Oh, and every factory had Indian women who shouted at us and treated us as dirt. It was shocking. At the end of their shifts they had their DH’s waiting in a cars to take them home. I remember wondering if they were treated so badly at home that they took it out on us and treated us like shit. The things you remember..

You are being unreasonable for having so much personal stuff in your office, I have never in all my working years known someone keep knickers in their desk. V weird.

Used to have this in the 1990s. Our CEO owned racehorses and had a TV in his office. Each morning he came in to find the heavy TV and vistor's chair moved to accommodate the security guard who could then watch TV with his feet on the desk.
The CEO mentioned it a dozen times and then billed the people who employed the security guard for his time spent rearranging his office - the bill was a lot more than my salary, this solved the problem.

How dare a cleaner sit down to have breaks, have you not explained where he is the pecking order and high you are???

get a grip and get some niceness in your life!!

I have my own office. It belongs to my Employer as does all the furniture. Admittedly everything is secured due to the nature of my work. However, if it wasn't, I would keep my personal bits in a lockable rucksack under my desk rather than leaving spare drawers in an open drawer.

I'd back off if I were you.

Oh then someone needs to tell all the community care workers and district nurses that their employer is supposed to provide them with an area for breaks when they're out working.

And you should probably let someone know about all the domestics working in hospitals and care homes who barely speak a word of English either. Maybe they're all trafficked too and not just the spouses of people with better English who are here working professional jobs.

It's really not unusual for people who aren't from the UK to work with others also not from the UK. It makes life easier when you can work with people you can communicate with.

As long as you have the office to yourself while you're in work, I don't know why you're getting worked up about it. It sounds like he's in a really weird situation. You should let him know he's welcome to use the space until you come in.

You've "suspected" and you've "nearly" caught him in another office. Sitting at your desk appears to be a fact. But the dozing? How do you know?

And how do you know he got his earbuds back?

Would you be this grumpy with anyone in your perceived personal space or is it just the cleaner?

Oh, and you will have lockable space somewhere. You're a flaming charity - how are you managing compliance with personal data and information? Let alone HR docs?

I have spare underwear in a locked desk drawer at work. I'm menopausal and my periods are now very irregular but start without warning with huge floods. So yes, I keep a full change of clothes including underwear in my desk drawer.

That's quite the jump to take (to modern slavery) just because someone's first language isn't English and they are doing a job that most native English speakers probably believe is beneath them.

Do you own the company? Otherwise, you do not own either the office, the desk, the chair or the stationery

Yes racism. People wouldn't be suggesting human trafficking if they thought he was French. They're imagining someone from a poor eastern European country because that's who they associate with cleaners and therefore human trafficking.

I often find our cleaner dozing in an armchair in my office. I don't mind at all. It's a hard job and I don't begrudge him a bit of a skive if the work gets done.

I think you were mean to essentially hide his EarPods, as they're expensive and you knew he'd be worried. Why on earth wouldn't you give them to him or leave them where he could find them?

I expect he panicked when he realised they were gone but knew they were in your office somewhere. When they weren't on your desk, he thought you'd decided to keep them and opened some drawers. I doubt he thought about your personal effects, just finding his own. Surely anything valuable would be taken home or locked away. I'd open an office drawer if I was looking for something, assuming I'd find nothing except stationery.

I think you're mostly cross because he outsmarted you and your efforts to 'teach him a lesson' failed. And now he's telling his friends you're a thief.

Thank you, a voice of reason at last. The UK can be a strange place.

Because I suspect his job will be to empty the bins and hoover .Not move stuff around desk etc .
Certainly was in office I worked in

What race are Eastern Europeans?

I'm reminded of the scene in 'A Little Princess' where Sara finds Becky asleep in her chair. Sara gives her some cake - perhaps you could try that?

This. And I'd have left the ear buds on the desk rather than put someone else's property in my drawer which had personal possessions in it.

It’s inappropriate and he shouldn’t have opened your desk. He must have a place where he can take his breaks. I’d either ‘speak’ to him directly, politely saying it’s not on and please could he not do it; or I’d make my desk less convenient for him, eg getting a lockable unit and putting the phone charger, etc, in there.

It doesn’t sound great him sitting in the stairway either. What if someone tripped and he or they got hurt?