What I Learned From Industrial Cleaning

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A couple of years ago I was working in a video store everyday. It was a pretty sweet job. I got a huge amount of reading done and I got to watch a whole lot of movies without paying a cent. Surprising as it may seem, it wasn't the most high paying job in the world. Also, I'd been there for close to 6 years total (part time and full time) so I figured it was well and truly time to move on.

I was looking for basically anything that paid better than where I was. I had no real qualifications, other than maybe 'good customer service skills'. It may come as a shock, but those skills don't get you that far on their own. I applied for a job as an industrial cleaner at a power plant, and got it. The hours were kind of cool. Other than getting up really early, which I don't think I'll ever be used to, I got to be home by 3:30 in the afternoon. I spent the last few hours of the day going for walks by the beach or going out for a skate. That part of the job was nice.

For a while I got a kick out of being Homer Simpson, walking around the power plant in overalls and all that. I got my very own helmet with big ear muffs and got to buy food from the work cafeteria. Thinking about it now gets me down at how crappy it all was, but when it was still all a new experience it was pretty fun.

So what did I learn from my work as an 'industrial cleaner'? I'll rip off the point form I read here.

1. When applying for a new job make sure you know exactly what it is you are applying for - When I accepted the job I wasn't 100% sure what it was I was getting myself into. I was employed as a cleaner for the plant was through a subcontractor. Before I could start I had to go to a days worth of dodgy training videos about using a vacuum cleaner that attaches to your back and not bending over to life heavy things. Woot! I walked into that job thinking that perhaps I'd be cleaning toilets. Turns out that I would be shoveling and hosing coal dust. The only toilets I would see would be the ones that I would be flushing after use....well almost. That brings me to my next point.

2. You can have more power than your employer - What I mean by this is that I learned to say 'no' instead of just being a doormat. The cleaning company was short an employee at another plant down the road, so I was asked if I wanted to go and do an extra 3 hours of work cleaning toilets and mopping floors at this other plant, after I'd finished a full days work at my regular job. I said I'd help them out for a couple of weeks until they could find someone else. They didn't find anyone else because it was a crappy job. Something else I learned is that guys that work in power plants need to have more fibre in their diet. Yick! I almost threw up a couple of times cleaning the stinkiest, dirtiest toilets I have ever come across. Anyhow, the first day I arrived at this extra job I found out that I was supposed to be working 5 hours. After a little hesitation I flat out refused. Screw them. I was doing them a favor and I didn't want to get home quite that late. I agreed to do 3 hours, not 5. Funnily enough, that was fine. Then, when no new worker came, I told them I wasn't going to keep working the extra hours. It was too much and I was extra buggered from it. They didn't like it, but funnily enough that too was fine. I think that if I had been working there a few years earlier, and I had been a bit more of a push over than I was then, I would've been screwed over a lot. I found out when I got my all my 'extra' pay that it wasn't even the same amount of cash as working half a day of my regular job. BAH!

3. Racism is still rampant - I worked with a few older guys who had been doing this job for years. The things that came out of their mouths surprised me. They were filled with unapologetic opinions about every single thing you could think of. There was an occasional, 'I'm not racist but.....all Aboriginals are black drunken bastards' or something like that, but usually the 'I'm not racist' was not present. At first I was shocked. Then I was just bummed and depressed that this went on and that I could do nothing to change it. I got in the occasional argument/debate, but it was mostly falling on deaf ears. These guys were set in their ways.

4. Sexism is still rampant - I'm used to guys leaning over to me and saying, 'Check that out!'. It's kind of strange, but I can deal with it. This was 10 times worse than that. These guys would sit at the kitchen table we had set up in our cleaners room to eat lunch and flick through their porno mags like they were the daily newspaper. It was really surreal for me. I'm not against pornography or anything. I think blanket statements like 'All pornography is degrading to women' are more than a little ignorant. Sure, a lot of it probably is, but a lot of is probably empowering to them. I don't know. I'm no expert no the matter, but blanket statements are generally rubbish. Things are much more complicated and broad than that. Anyhow, back to the topic at hand. Sexism ran rampant. There were a couple of girls who worked in the office who were young and attractive. They weren't even wearing any crazy revealing clothing, not that that makes it okay either, but these guys would walk behind them saying the most horrible things you could think of. Some even spoke of rape, saying, 'She'd thank me for it' and this kind of thing. It was really unnerving.

5. Work safety is a joke - Sure, I had more protection than my friend pictured above here, but when you're shoveling coal in a very enclosed space, a pair of glasses and a flimsy face mask do very little to stop coal dust from getting into every orifice. I never really had any hay fever problems before working there. After a few of months, I started to sneeze all the time. Crazy booger sneezes too. I went to the docs and he gave me some drugs, but he said that the only real solution was to stop working there. Also, this power station is falling apart. Everyday I was cleaning up huge oil and coal spills. I hope and pray that nuclear power doesn't make it's way to Western Australian shores. Anyone who hopes that it does should visit the coal power plants and see how crappy they are. The place is falling apart, but it's too expensive to fix so we just had to keep patching it up. There have been more than one occasion when massive explosions have happened. Imagine if these spills and explosions were more than just coal and oil, but nuclear. I don't want that on my doorstep. Well, I'll get off my anti-nuclear pedastool now. Let's just say, I didn't feel safe working there at any point in time.

6. Slackness at work is expected - My 'supervisor' as a cleaner spent his days sleeping, suing the phone for personal calls to his son in England, and generally ripping off his employers, and he got paid more than me to do so. I'll admit though, I slacked off a fair bit too. It's hard not to. When I was working I worked hard, and I worked harder than anyone else cleaning there, but there's only so much you want to do before you realize that you're not getting any kind of reward for doing it. It's not like I took pride in my cleaning work. It was a job.

I could probably go on, but I'm getting really bitter and that's not the most interesting thing to read.

Mid last year, when it was just about unbearable to go to work, I started looking elsewhere. That's when I scored my job at Saltmedia, making and installing signs. That was a good time. I kept that job up until just a little while ago. I'm not sorry it's over, because I'm studying now, but it taught me that I could do a job that I actually enjoyed. At this point in my life, when I can pretty much do whatever I want, I shouldn't waste that opportunity. I live in a relatively wealthy country. Sure, I think we need to share that wealth, but to not take advantage of it also and do a job that makes me feel like a have some kind of purpose would be foolish. We can do whatever we want. That's what I've learned over the last couple of years. Now I'm much happier and less angry and bitter. Being surrounded by people who completely suck in a job that you hate is not a way to live.

jej