We all had our share of Bosses From Heck. If it wasn’t for those outstanding individuals, think how many funny stories we wouldn’t be able to tell!

Here is my first Boss from Heck entry. I was cleaning my kitchen drawers recently and found this.

Building Care Duties

Please note that all the duties are performed at the end of the day. The majority of the tasks are 10 minute items.

Duration: Daily
Responsibility: Wiping down kitchen tables and counters at the end of the day.

Duration: Daily
Responsibility: Check the coffee pot. Turn off the machine and rinse the pot if there is little coffee in it.

Duration: Daily
Responsibility: Make sure the Microwave is clean.

Duration: Daily
Responsibility: Supplying the rest rooms with toilet paper and paper towels for the day and making sure there is soap in the pump containers.

Duration: Daily
Responsibility: Check the hallway if it needs to be vacuumed. If it does, then it must be done.

Duration: Daily
Responsibility: Check the Library & Conference rooms at the end of the day. If meetings or activities were held, be sure that the place is in order. (Chairs neatly, loose papers thrown out, etc)

Duration: Daily
Responsibility: Check the reception area. If the floor has mud or foot prints, take the mop from the Janitor’s room and give it a quick sweep.

Duration: Weekly
Responsibility: Clean out all leftover and unmarked items from the refrigerator.

This list is incomplete. There is one item missing. We were also supposed to collect garbage from the cubicles and the kitchen (aka lunchroom), bag it, and throw it into the container outside. (“Daily”.)

I was given this list in 1999. I worked at a small company. The company provided consulting and training services to car rental dealerships. We also had an IT department that developed car rental automation software. When I started in 1998, the company was renting an office in a commercial area, but it was growing fast and needed to expand. Our owner had a new office built, and we moved there in 1999. It was a nice place, with brand-new furniture and carpeting and our own separate cubicles (before, we were all kind of squashed in the office together).

On the first day after we moved, a group of us were called into a meeting. Present at the meeting were: the IT department in its entirety, the training staff, marketing, HR, accounting, and a couple of middle managers.

It turned out that the owner had decided to save on the cleaning services, so he arranged it for the cleaning crew to only come out once a week to clean the building. For the rest of the week, we were on our own.

We were divided into teams and handed the above-quoted lists. A few of us had the dubious honor of being named Cleaning Crew Managers. Their job was to make sure the cleaning work got done.

We were very likely the highest-paid cleaning crew in the country’s history. This lasted for six months. The person that put a stop to this was actually Mr. Crush. Apparently the upper management asked him what would make him happy with his job, so he wouldn’t up and quit on them. (I told you he was very good at what he did.) He asked for dental insurance and elimination of the cleaning crews. Both requests were granted, for everyone in the company. It sure felt good to have dental insurance again, not to mention not having to take out the smelly lunchroom garbage.

Here is the company’s website. The About page lists a couple of projects I worked on, and describes the company as “an award winning company with over 40 employees”. This puzzles me, because I am sure we had more than "over 40" in my day. I wonder where the rest went. Probably moved on to pursue careers in cleaning.

I will continue later with a story of a man I worked for in 1994.