By: Zoey Pittman
It is a Friday afternoon and as Macalijon’s employees are getting off their shift, the cleaning crew is just starting their shift. The crew cleans every Friday starting at 4:30 p.m. and finish around 7 p.m.
The cleaning crew are assigned certain duties, such as dust mopping the floor in the first building they clean. They clean four buildings at the property.
While somebody is dust mopping, Katherine Moore goes upstairs to vacuum. Moore started cleaning at Macalijon when she moved to Statesboro as a way to earn money while going to Georgia Southern.
Mopping is the most time consuming job. The three moppers begin mopping as soon as the floors are dust mopped and vacuumed.
Everyone carries their own equipment moving in between buildings. Once the work is finished, they return the equipment to their boss, Michelle Brannen.
Brannen is the woman who is manages the work crew. Not only does she assign jobs and give out pay role, but she also dusts all of the offices and bathrooms.
Rene Huggins helps Brannen clean the offices and bathrooms. She is Brannen’s assistant when it comes to cleaning.
Pulling trash is the hardest job because there is so many trash cans. This is a job that is learned through doing other jobs in order to become familiar of where every trash can is.
Christian Lamont throws the trash away into a dumpster in between buildings. “I would rather do trash because I do not have anybody else with me, and it’s not a bad job.”
Chris Graham, one of the moppers, offer to help pull trash bags to make the job go by faster. Often times the crew chips in to help with trash.
Vacuum people are waiting for whoever has the key to unlock the door to the next building. “Who has a key?” Is a common question to hear.
Aside from vacuuming, sweeping stairs is another job. Whoever finishes vacuuming first usually sweeps the stairs.
By the time the sweeper finishes the stairs, somebody is typically waiting on them to vacuum up the dirt. Gale volunteered to vacuum what was swept off the stairs.
Xander Price is a new member and is trying to figure out how to mop efficiently. He has never mopped until he got this job.
Price is catching a key that was thrown at him so he can lock the doors. Part of mopping duty is to lock all doors once the rooms have been mopped.
Moore is giving Christian the thumbs up to go take the last load of trash to the dumpster. Since everyone helps each other out, the jobs gets done at a reasonable time.
It is the end of the job and the vacuums are waiting to load into Brannen’s car. She is very particular about how the vacuums are stacked into her car, so she does it herself.
Lamont and Price are waiting on their paychecks. This is everyone’s favorite part of the afternoon.
Brannen pays everyone for their work and sends the crew home. The crew will meet again next Friday to do it all over.
