Thursday, September 30, 2004
Cleaning Staff
Am I the only one who thinks it is fairly insulting to label your trash with "BASURA" written in large print? Could it be someone's profession to clean up trash in an office building, but they simply don't understand the word "TRASH"? Why do we assume that not only can they not speak English, but they speak Spanish and they cannot understand the most job-critical English word, trash? Maybe we should assume that they cannot read and we start using a trash icon; would that be reasonable?
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The cleaning crew here at my work comes from a group home. Some of them have mental problems and others well I don't know...they just have problems. So random things happen around here. For example they like to put the Trash/Basura cans in my cubicle. So one day I'll have just mine and then another day I'll have like 3. Everyone near me knows that if their trash can is missing they should look in my cubicle.
ReplyDeleteAnd actually none of them are spanish - well that I've seen.
And to answer your question - yes I think it is rude, but what if this is the situation. You put your "Trash" out for a week and you have a sign that says Trash, but it never gets picked up. One day you try "BASURA" and low and behold it works. Should you use BASURA next time of see if the icon works just as well?
Today my trash can was upside down.
ReplyDeleteI like the "icon" idea. None of this "basura" crap. What if they hire some guy from Russia who comes over here trying to learn english as a second language - and then learns that to get the most basic of jobs, he needs to learn spanish first. Not having it. Besides, there are plenty of people of spanish decent working as doctors and lawyers and doing a really good job at figuring out what the trash cans are without having the spanish word for trash written on it. It is insulting to think that just because someone's job is to take out the trash - they must be an imbicile, and can't figure out the word trash. No way. If they are so dumb, and the rest of us are so smart - then why do they have such a low-stress job, when the rest of us measure our productivity in TPMs (Tums Per Minute). I like your icon idea.
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