When you take a lunch break where would you choose to eat? Do you sit on a toilet seat or at your office desk?

The office desk is what most of you are probably thinking right now. But read on! Research has shown that it could be safer to eat off your average toilet seat than your office desk. Scientists from Arizona University took samples from 100 offices across the USA and found there were 400 times as much bacteria on your average desk as on the average toilet seat. Does your average Aberdeen office cleaner clean the important part of your office?

Almost certainly you will be sitting in front of your computer with a keyboard. That keyboard will probably have around three thousand microbes looking to get onto your hands right now.Your mouse is a little cleaner with only around 1700 But the telephone – that thing that keeps ringing whenever you are trying to do your work – has 25,000 microbes per square inch.

Alba Office Cleaning company is regularly in touch in office managers throughout Aberdeen city and visits places which are cleaned by other cleaning companies is now no longer amazed at the lack of knowledge of office staff about the need for regular thorough cleaning.

I remember hearing from a typist who was complaining that the office cleaners had left the waste paper bin on a chair and how inconvenient that had been for her having to put it on the floor beside the desk. The cleaner had probably lifted the office bin to empty it and ensure the area was vacuumed (believe me I have seen office cleaners who would have vacuumed around it rather than move it for cleaning).

I asked her which was the most important job for the cleaner in the office around the desks. To be told to make sure that the bins were emptied and the floor was cleaned every day but office staff would clear their own desk so papers were not disturbed. I asked her to move a few papers back and spread out some clean paper in front of her. I then lifted the keyboard and tipped it upside over the clean paper and gave it a few gentle smacks to loosen the dirt and crumbs that were lying inside it. After speaking about some other cleaning priorities and the stats I quoted above we signed a cleaning contract to provide that office with a regular cleaning contract which included the desk-tops and computer equipment using our own specialist cleaning staff.

I simply ask that when drawing up office cleaning schedules we give more attention to the welfare of office staff to get maximum performance from them.