Once a week I vacuum the floors

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There are two rooms whose cleanliness I’m responsible for at work. I’m also responsible for the cleanliness of the car and the bus, and I share responsibility for the cleanliness of the bistro with the kitchen staff.

Plus I have some storage units downstairs and up on the third floor. I share responsibility for the neatness of the storage units with Maintenance. The storage units don’t really have to be clean, just neat.

Usually that means once a week I vacuum the Activity Center and the Wellness Center. Then I Swiffer them. Used to be someone from Housekeeping swept and mopped the Activity Center, but I think that was pretty short-lived. Maybe somebody from Housekeeping still does it on the days I’m not there; I don’t know. I guess anything might happen on the days I’m not there. It’s nobody else’s job in the world but mine to keep the floors of those two rooms in the building clean.

Anyhow, between the bead jewelry class, happy hour, and the twice-a-month ceramics class, the Activity Center needs to get vacuumed and mopped at least once a week, and since I don’t have a mop, I use a Swiffer WetJet. It’s not very good. I don’t recommend it as a product, although it is easy to use and less messy than a mop. It gets the floor just clean enough that you think, “I guess that looks better,” and move on with your day.

There are two bagless vacuum cleaners that usually get left to charge in the silverware-rolling room off the main dining room. They’re okay. Not great, but okay. Better than the Swiffer, but not as a good as the big bagged upright vacuum cleaner they keep back in Memory Care.

I like to borrow Memory Care’s vacuum whenever I can. My key fob works on the Memory Care door, so I let myself in a few times a week to say hi and visit my Memory Care counterpart and borrow her vacuum cleaner. She’s nice. She always lets me use it. I trained her on the big bus over the last few months, so she can drive it now, too. She was nervous about the bus at first but she’s done real well. She’s better than I was, my first few months, getting the bus through the front turnaround. The clearance bar is at 9’ and the bus is about 9’1 so you always bump it going through, no matter what. Lucky the clearance bar is soft, so it doesn’t matter.

People like to see a young white man¹ using a vacuum cleaner. They don’t necessarily mean anything pointed or political by it. They just like to see it. It makes them feel cheerful. I think people feel that it looks lucky, like the building has a lot of luck to it. It makes them feel good and buoyant in their hearts.

I don’t especially like vacuuming, but I don’t dislike it, either, and I certainly like a clean floor. I even more certainly like receiving positive attention when I’m vacuuming, so I guess taken holistically I do like vacuuming, as long as it’s at work and I have a big audience and I only have to vacuum one bare floor, without any heavy furniture or carpets to move out of the way.

Always make sure someone sees you working hard before ten in the morning. That’s one of my work rules. I didn’t used to have work rules, because I didn’t work for a long time, about twelve years. I didn’t used to like the jobs I had, so I didn’t need rules. I like the job I have. I have a lot of rules now.

Always make sure someone sees you working hard early. That way it cements their mental image of you for the day as hard-working, so if you want to take it easy in the afternoon no one will remember it.

Always say yes if someone from another department needs your help because they’ll remember that you said yes and they’ll help you out next time you’re slammed or short-handed. Also if you don’t you’ll get discussed as a not-a-team-player, which is no good. Always double-check when someone says they’re wearing their seatbelt in the company car, because people will lie happily to your face about it but the insurance will blame you just the same if you get in a crash. Always keep a lot of good snacks in your office but keep them in tubs so you don’t get ants. Never rush. It’s fine to hustle, but you shouldn’t rush. Don’t just remember people’s orders during coffee hour, say “No sugar, two stirrers, right?” so they can have the pleasure of saying “Yes, that’s right.”

If somebody falls down and they have to wait on the floor for a caregiver just sit on the floor with them, unless they tell you to go away. You can’t help pick somebody up off the ground unless you’ve been specially trained, but people feel embarrassed sitting on the floor, and a lot of the time it’s less embarrassing when someone else is sitting there with you. Also then you get a pretty good sense of whether the floor needs vacuuming.

If somebody has bad memory problems, they’ll still notice if you’re impatient with them. Even if you’re still being polite while you’re being impatient so you think you can technically get away with it. Everybody notices when you’re impatient with them, so if you do feel impatient, take a break and find a way to keep it to yourself. They might miss a lot of other social cues but being able to tell when someone else is irritated with you is about one of the last things to go. Anyhow what do you have to do that’s so goddamn important? What’s the rush? It’s senior living, there’s no need to rush. You’re not a doctor or a fireman; you can wait a minute.

If someone walks past when you’re vacuuming and they say “They make you vacuum the floors, too?” you don’t have to make a joke about it, but you can always say it saves you from going to the gym. Even if you go to the gym more than ever now, because you’re worried about sarcopenia, you can still say it saves you from having to go to the gym, because that’s the sort of thing people say to each other to pass the time and express non-hostility. But let other people make corny jokes to you more often than you make them in return. You start making a lot of corny jokes, you’ll never stop.

They’re your floors. It’s good to keep your floors clean; you can take a good kind of pride in it. People go through a lot by the time they get here. It’s important to be of good cheer. Not cheery, always, and not with a forced smile, but good cheer and a clean floor, that’s important. That’s a good rule.

A lot of people, they move into a place like ours as a married couple, only one of them outlives the other. A lot of people will leave the nameplate on the door the same, so you have to find out by word of mouth how many couples live in the building, and how many people are keeping the name up as a sort of memorial.

Sometimes a couple will move in and one of them will die almost right away. That’s a hard thing. Sometimes it’s a relief, too; that’s another hard thing.

There are plenty of people who live here I barely ever see, because they don’t really participate in the building’s social calendar. This is perfectly fine. Some people just want a small apartment, place to sleep, the knowledge that a care team is downstairs in case of emergency, and to be left alone to manage their own social life as they please. I don’t think everyone in the building needs me, is what I mean; I don’t think they all need to see me vacuuming in order to feel good.

It can be easy, working in senior living, to think you’re special when really you’re just forty.² Give it time; you’ll have the same problems.

In the final count I really do think bagless vacuum cleaners can’t stand up to bagged. I don’t want that to be true; I keep buying bagless vacuum cleaners, thinking this one’s going to be different, but you really can’t beat the bag. The filters on the bagless vacuum cleaners just can’t handle the fine dust. You’re always having to break the whole damn thing apart to clean it. But you got the vacuum to clean things, not to have another thing to clean.

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1. Thirty-nine, but it’s all relative.

2. Like I said, thirty-nine, until this November, but I’m getting ready.