i work in an office that doesn´t clean itself.  so we have a cleaning crew coming in every evening to compensate for this shortcoming. we also have no  A/C but that´s a different post altogether.

we used to have a great cleaning crew. they looked like people, talked like people and actually were very good at their job. in all honesty they were real people who were really good at their job. now we have a gathering of zombies.

i work late most days. partly because i start late, partly because of time zones and partly because i enjoy the quiet office after 6PM where most people are gone and i can finally think.

cue in the (drumroll) ZOMBIE CLEANING CREW!

they arrive shortly after 5:30PM with their little carts and buckets and trays, dragging their feet across the office floors and slowly starting the process of gathering empty glasses from desks, emptying trash cans, vacuuming and that´s pretty much it.

since i am still at my desk at this time, i am an obstacle. something to be overcome. like the everest.

so far i have been vacuumed, wiped and dusted. i was in a meeting room on a teleconference once, and they walked in like they owned the place, banging the door, yelling HELLO and giving me a suspicious look when i didn´t reply with a smile but rather finished my sentence. a more tolerant person (probably without a pulse) would say give them a chance, next time they will know not to walk into a meeting room when you have a headset on. meh, their memories are wiped clean every evening.

the first time that someone vacuumed over my feet, i had the audacity to ask him to come back later, after i was gone. he didn’t hear me over the noise from the cleaner and yelled WHAT? so i repeated my question, only louder. but he still couldn´t hear me and yelled WHAT? while giving me an exasperated look as if to say “i am trying really hard but i can´t hear you”. so i started pointing at the machine and gesturing for him to turn it off, pointing back at my ear and fervently shaking my head while my face was trying to express discomfort at having your ears violated by a chainsaw  (if this isn´t universal language for turn the fucking thing off it´s too loud, i don´t know what is). his look grew even more desperate as he turned away shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head, and continued to vacuum under my colleague´s desk. he was luckily already gone.

oh and once they didn´t let me go to the restroom because they had just cleaned it.