To report the cleaner

[EmotionalLimbo]

I'm a PhD student and work in a doctoral school office with several other researchers, all doing our own thing. It's a wonderful quiet space and we're very lucky.

Well quiet that is until the bins are emptied every afternoon. I'm not sure if the person who comes in is a cleaner because I've never seen her do any cleaning in this office but she might do in other parts of the building.

She's just so loud. She's talking on the phone using Bluetooth earpieces so it looks like she's talking to herself. It's so distracting and it's not a work conversation because it's a foreign language.

I've contacted the estates people to ask them to tell her to stop as it's annoying everyone but nobody dare say anything. It's not my job to tackle her.

AIBU?

What is wrong with you?

Unless she keeps doing this and has been told not to previously, there is no way she will get the sack unless they want to get rid of her bc she is a bad cleaner.

The OP could be working class? Would that be better?

She will not be sacked. Why are you assuming I'm middle class? You've no idea of my background. You sound like a mean girl. Her job is not noisy. She doesn't need to be on the phone every day while doing it.

There are lots of mean girls on MN as you have now found out.

I find them very funny. I hope that you are just ignoring them.

These posts are batnuts. It'd be the same issue of you were on an all parties corporate conference call, in a lecture, doing a medical consultation. Hell, with the funding situation ATM, it's highly likely the PhD student is going the cleaning on the side elsewhere. Good luck in your research and don't take any notice of the mean and willful misinterpretations on here.

@EmotionalLimbo I understand the neurodiverse element. I have ADHD and find background noise very intrusive. This doesn’t matter if I’m doing more mindless/admin tasks but is a real issue if I’m actually having to think about something. When I moved from a shared to single office at work, it made a big positive difference to my ability to focus. I do understand your frustration, but I’ve had to learn over the years to deal with people first and issues second.

I think what lots of posters are getting at is the human and social element of this. It’s a relatively minor issue, unless she is there for a long time and it’s genuinely causing people to make errors in their work. The nice thing to do would be to just speak to her yourself - you’ve flagged concern about doing this in front of others, but you could catch her separately, ask to have a quiet word etc. If you approach it this way and are friendly, she will hopefully respond positively. If you ‘report’ it, it might make her feel unwelcome in the office, she might always be wondering who it was she pissed off, etc. Yes, ideally she wouldn’t be making this noise but she’s probably making calls to pass the time in a fairly mundane job. Try to see the person.

On a wider point, do you say hi to her, smile at her, know her name? That might make the day a bit pleasanter for you both - and of course if you make the effort with pleasantries, it makes raising issues easier (apologies if you already do this, but it doesn’t read that way). Also, in our offices/departments, we have always got the cleaner a Christmas present. They are often an under-appreciated colleague doing an important job. We would all soon notice if the cleaner wasn’t there!

I am doing cleaning on the side myself!

The amount of dilemmas on here that could be solved by USING YOUR WORDS. Just ask her to stfu, politely.

Omg full of assumptions

shame on you

You said "It's not my job to tackle her."

Nobody said you should empty the bins, just have a word with her....how difficult is it? You're acting like a 5 year old instead of an adult.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can assure you my response would be the same no matter what language she spoke in.
The lady is a cleaner, and the fact that the OP thinks she herself is far more important and feels it's appropriate to report her rather than have a quiet word with her, are the points I have responded to.
She (OP) said she was a cleaner herself....if she is a paid cleaner, I hope people treat her with more respect than she is showing to others.

Tackle was probably the wrong word to use.

I don’t think the OP would report them to head of whatever

that’s why so many are afronted

tey OP came in her obv because they thought something is off

which has been confirmed

Language is a gateway to your thoughts

You what?

Academic here.

There are universities, even ‘good’ universities, where this is exactly what happens.

Consider yourself lucky to have someone coming through to empty your bins, OP. She is probably on a zero hour contract, because most UK universities have outsourced maintenance work. (That way they can claim they do not hire anyone on zero hour contracts)

You are in a group environment. If several of you are bothered by the noise, why not approach this worker with a nice bottle of wine, box of pastries or bunch of flowers and explain the problem? Put the onus on yourselves, not her and ask nicely if she could be quieter

If you are the only one who is bothered, I think realistically you need to suck it up.

If you are thinking of a career in British academia, this is a baby step towards dealing with the unreasonable habits and demands you will find in the undergraduate population.

Punching down is exactly what it sounds like. Good luck with the phd…

It's not punching down. It's asking for a quiet space to work.

OP, not sure why you are getting a hard time.

The cleaner is unprofessional. She does not respect the norms of the premises she works in. If she is chatting loudly on her phone throughout to someone who is unlikely to be a work colleague, she is not focusing on her cleaning job either.

This is something that OP is within her rights to draw to the attention of the cleaner's manager. OP does not have to put herself in a situation which could get personally unpleasant via a face-to-face confrontation with a contractor who is not performing her duties satisfactorily. It is the manager's job to manage the contractor's behaviour at work.

You sound absolutely unbearable OP. Poor woman.

Why am I unbearable? I really don't understand.

I'd quietly have a word with her LM - she most likely doesn't realise the disruption she's causing. (Not sure why so many are in an uproar, you've been totally reasonable and polite! In a normal office, I can understand maybe this would be a weird complaint, but you're doing a lot of deep work, so it's understandably distracting.)

Which is what I've done.

Academic here too. Former corporate director. A bottle of wine? She doesn't want to date her just ask her to be quiet. FFS all you need to do it politely ask her if she knew it was a quiet space. Ha ha ha. Cheers thanks. That's it. Maybe the way you are treating undergraduates is what's delivering this generation of angst filled hand wringing people unable to communicate in the real world for fear of multiple imagined offenses. I guarantee if a cleaner or worker or security did that in a deal room or conference call they'd get removed immediately and their manager would deliver a redress (not the people involved). Such a crazy reply. Take her out for a meal. Move her into your home. Buy her a kitten. Wtf.

But the point is, you're not asking! Most posters have said you should ask her to be quiet. But you didn't. You went straight to going to her manager, potentially impacting her job, WITHOUT asking her directly. I know you've said you didn't want to embarrass her in front of the office, but you could have stepped out with her as soon as she arrived, said something in the kitchen area, etc. You had ample times to have a conversation, but you skipped that and then asked on here if you were unreasonable. To which most people said yes.

People on here love a perceived David vs Goliath story.
No matter what your role in an organisation is, coming into a quiet working environment and disturbing the peace is rude. We had a director that used to do it (the others manage not to) and it was just one symptom of his inability to read the room