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?

It really is a strange response isn't it?

Wtf. How?! Seriously, get a life.

Is there something about PHD students, that gives them a sense of entitlement? Is it part of the induction?

Most of us work in offices or have done where people make noise. You put headphones in if necessary, don’t try to get people sacked. You deal with your own situation. You are not a child.

Im in a senior management position now, but my first role was as a cleaner and it taught me a lot. I always treat everyone with respect and I understand how hard other people work.

😆

Ah sorry, I missed that. Well, anyway, sorry you're getting such a hard time on this post - you've triggered a lot of feelings, it seems!

I'm a cleaner myself. Nobody is trying to get anyone sacked.

How is wanting a quiet workspace evidence of treating someone without respect?

Because your punching down

and othering the cleaner

Omg let the lady do her job it’s what a few minutes every day ? Jesus Christ what’s the world coming to

Well then, use your adult ability and buy some headphones or even more difficult speak to the individual.

Or in reality, do what the rest of us (who are professional adults) would do, is respect her job, and wait till she finishes.

Even if you are not trying to get her sacked, a complaint will not look good and also will make her feel horrible when she hears about it.

Lecturer here so understand how intense the PhD process is OP.

I think you should have a word with her before putting in a formal complaint. She genuinely might just not have registered it as a problem. If you mention it and she’s rude or continues being loud, then put in the complaint.

I'm also an academic and I don't know anyone who would tolerate this so I don't know why you're getting such weird responses. I do think the best approach is to speak to her about it first. If it doesn't improve you can complain elsewhere but I think it's always best to give people the benefit of the doubt and a chance to fix things themselves.

It's not a formal complaint. Just asking the manager to ask her to stop using the phone in the workspace every day.

No that's you reading things into it that aren't there.

Hey OP, I understand your issue. If it's not appropriate for the rest of the office to be loudly taking calls on bluetooth, it isn't appropriate for the cleaner to be doing it either. Professional standards apply to everyone, whether that's noise level, personal interaction, confidentiality or whatever. And I agree that provided you are measured in your request/feedback/complaint, it is best to be directed to their manager/s and not to address it to the person themselves.

For some reason on Mumsnet cleaners have special status, where they cannot be criticised for anything except the most egregious crimes. Previous threads I have seen about cleaners [in peoples homes] helping themselves to food, using nail clippers that belong to the homeowner have been filled with people defending the cleaner. It isn't a highly paid job but that doesn't mean it's a free for all. I have been a cleaner in the past.

And what would you do if any other user of the space made a noise?

Email their boss?

How can this possibly bother you so much? I wouldn’t give this any headspace! She’s not there for ages!

It’s the way you have gone about it. You are acting like she’a a malfunctioning appliance rather than a person.

Of all the ways you could deal with this, you’ve chosen the most formal/impersonal.

You could just accept that different people work differently and that it’s a very short time to have to deal with a bit of noise each day.

You could approach her in person and mention in a friendly way that the office is what’s known as a quiet space” and it would be really appreciated if she could pause her calls while she’s in your particular office.

But instead you’ve gone to her supervisor which makes this seem like a much more serious issue than it really is, because avoiding direct interactions and involving a manager usually indicates a serious problem.

No that’s you being blind to your privilege

why did you come on here to ask if you were unreasonable instead of just forgetting it

This is disingenuous. Going to her LM is making a formal complaint. The manner in which you do merely determines the degree of formality.

Not a very nice thing to do to report her to estates.You just need to nicely ask her to be a little bit quieter.Easy really,isn’t it?

This emailed to manager…Hi, could you help with something? The cleaning team sometimes use loud earpieces in the corridor and it’s quite disruptive in the PhD office during working hours. Is there a way to ask them to keep volume lower near work areas?

I think it's unreasonable to send an email about it without trying the more straightforward approach of saying hello and asking her politely first.

Yes that's about it.

I earn many multiples of the salary the cleaners do (as do most of us). I have to concentrate for complicated data processes, coding, research and many other things in a day.

The cleaners are in first thing and chat as they work, one cleaner comes in towards the end of the day to do the bins and suchlike. Sometimes the site team could need to be in checking something about 5 foot away from me and every Wednesday morning, there's a fire alarm test.

It makes exactly fuck all difference to my brain functioning to have them doing their jobs for 10 minutes in a day around me. I'm not so special and important that I'd expect them to creep around like ninjas with bin bags in case they disrupted my Very Big and Special Brain, any more than anybody else is. Occasionally there's an important/confidential meeting, but they're held in a different place and it's obvious that it's not a good time - but the solution to the bins there is to put them outside the door.