Not everyone can clean

Some businesses rotate the task of cleaning the restroom among employees. This makes sense if you want morale to quickly deteriorate. Using a protocol such as this makes every one feel like they are cleaning up after everyone else; great for your reputation as an employer.

Other businesses use a competition as a way for employees to avoid being assigned restroom cleaning tasks. The employee who ranks at the bottom on a particular measure has the privilege of cleaning up everyone else’s shit (literally). This has the effect of being a method for punishing and/or embarrassing employees.

Another way of assigning restroom cleaning duties is to assign the task to the newest hire. When the new hire applied for work, this information was left out of the job description. When the applicant was interviewed, this aspect of their position was never mentioned. The new hire hears about it on their first day of work. That would certainly make anyone feel like a valued addition to the staff.

The undercurrent of attitude in all of these ways of operating is the fallacious assumption that everyone can clean. It is this erroneous assumption that results in so many dirty and filthy restrooms which leads us to the next “thing”.

Just because a place “looks” clean does not mean that it “is” clean
Some of the filthiest business restrooms I have ever seen were actually pretty. Unless you knew what you were looking for, you would never suspect that there were multiple layers of filth everywhere. Yes, there was a flower arrangement, and nice pictures on the wall, and pretty containers for soap and paper products; a mirror that shined, fragrance in the air, and attractive lighting. But, beware, the level of bacteria was so high on most surfaces that you should have been wearing gloves and a respirator to be in the room.