New cleaning rota at work feels sexist

[Kayleigh1234]

The company I work for has a fairly small office space within a bigger complex. We were told last week that as there’s lower office attendance due to WFH/hybrid, our company is no longer paying for the site cleaning service and we will be responsible for cleaning our small kitchen space and bathroom ourselves.

Fwiw, I believe the real reason is because of cost cutting and the price of that service increased in April which I’d heard the bosses moan about previously.

Anyway, our (male) manager emailed round the cleaning rota today and the first 7 slots are ALL females (every female on the team is named consecutively). 4 male colleagues are then named, before it reverts.

The manager and his usual step up/deputy, are not named despite them being in the office as much as the rest of us. His deputy is the same job level as me and a couple of others, and when he was asked why he isn’t on the rota, he said ‘he hasn’t got time for that sort of thing’.

Am I wrong to feel like this is all a bit off?

This doesn't really make economic sense if you get paid more per hour than the cleaners. Even the boss will be spending work time writing emails telling people off for missing xyz or reminding people to clean the loos after a messy shit! Such a false economy. Is your normal work output expected to remain the same?

Exactly… I spent plenty of years cleaning loos in bars and restaurants to get myself to where I am now professionally, and I spend plenty of time cleaning my loos at home… I’ll be fucked if I’m cleaning the loo at work because they want to cut costs.

Clean the kitchen/break area after myself, and only myself? Absolutely. Clean the toilet after my colleagues? Abso-fucking-lutely not.

It's a workplace not home. They need to provide training and PPE and equipment. All chemicals will need a COSHH risk assessment and instructions. Bathrooms have separate clothes for sinks and toilets, how would everyone know which is which.

I would be pointing to my job description and asking for clarification on where it says I'm to clean a kitchen or bathroom.

Then look for another job.

Are you in a Union?

I wonder if the thinking was that if they put the women first it will be done to a good standard and then the men will have to maintain the standard.
In which case it is sexist to men to assume they can not clean up after themselves properly.

Who is doing your job while you're cleaning?

It’s a toilet not a bathroom and you are mad to have agreed to it. Just say you are not doing it. It’s not in your job description and it wouldn’t be considered near enough to your job description to be considered a reasonable change of duty. You don’t all have to object for you to object.

Plus you need training to use cleaning products at work.

Looking beyond the sexism (I'd expect names in alphabetical order for a thing like this, but would never go along with it) - I take it you're not unionised? This needs a risk assessment and COSHH training at a minimum.

Surely paying income generating staff to do this with their time is more expensive than paying a cleaner? Add to that everyone's wages for COSHH training time. If they're so short of cash that they can't afford 3 x £40 for 2 hours = £120 a week, I'd be looking for a job elsewhere asap, because it sounds like the company isn't doing well.

No Union unfortunately. From what I can gather (it hasn’t started yet), they are expecting us to log off slightly earlier to do the cleaning then.

If the man at your level has opted out, you can do the same I suppose.

Are you actually going to agree to this?

Do you know what weaponised helplessness is?

I'm sure any of your 4 male colleagues will be able to explain it, demonstrate it and assist you in applying it.

Sexist because a male at the same level as OP is not on the rota, neither is the male manager

My first thought was your sanitary bins at work and the legal/H&S of emptying those and came across the following- might be worth further research?

In the bad old days of the 80-90s I'd just stand there with my hand on my hips and say I don't clean stuff with my tits.

Probably can't say that now as someone, somewhere will take offence...

I wouldn’t think they could do this for health and safety reasons. You aren’t trained cleaners, you weren’t hired for this work. Were you provided proper safety gear? I would not be impressed by any of this.

I would just not clean. Ignore it. If boss brings it up just say "No. I'm not doing that." You can bet the guys are going to be absolutely shit at it if they do it at all and the office will rely on the women. I might consider being sick for a couple of days the first day I'm down to clean to give it time for the guys to have shown their colours. And in the meantime start looking for a job at a company with a better attitude to staff

And consider joining a union, there doesn't have to be a branch at your work place. You can look for an appropriate one here: www.tuc.org.uk/joinunion. They don't have the best reputation for standing up to sexism, but the legal advice may still be worthwhile.

So everyone is on the rota so no sex/gender is expected to do any more or any less than the other

I’ll raise some of these (very helpful) points with some colleagues tomorrow. It does seem a bit ‘off’.

Gross was referring to the work bathroom. Not mine haha! I realise how that read now.
I was making the point that I have cleaners. Why would I then go and start cleaning my work bathroom??

As others have said, my problem would be with being asked to clean at all, particularly the toilet. You know that it won't be equal effort, and that may not even be a male/female thing. People just don't have the same standards. What's 'clean' to one person is still dirty to another, and this set-up seems certain to cause friction when the clean people become annoyed at the less-clean people who supposedly cleaned the time before.

It's also not right that two people are excluded from the rota, but tbh I still wouldn't be happy about it even if everyone was included. I'm not sure that listing all the women first, followed by all the men (except the 'I'm too important' ones) is sexist, however. There's plenty enough to be annoyed about with this situation without finding the rota order sexist.

I'd be pointing out the health and safety issues with this,.are they going to send you all on a course first ? How will they accommodate people with health conditions?

Also agree that economically it's really bad business sense assuming some of you are on reasonable salaries.

They’re not all on the rota. There’s a bloke at the OPs level not on it.

Everyone not on the rota that’s a no from me

cleaning toilets absolutely no from me. Surely everyone is saying the same?