When Excellence Janitorial Services & Carpet Cleaning embarked on its cleaning expeditions, it was shocked by how much of a life-sized petri dish workplaces tended to be. A simple search will tell you that the bacteria on an office desk surpasses that found on a toilet seat 400 times over.
Furthermore, people may wash their hands after using the restroom. Still, they don’t usually do so after touching a doorknob or faucet, making them—and the following—the grossest places in a commercial setting.
1. Breakroom Faucets
Breakrooms are the places in an office with the most germs, so much so that you should ask your supervisor to install a sanitizer dispenser right outside. This would enable the occupants to clean their hands as they enter and repeat as they exit the breakroom.
Their faucets top the dirtiest places rankings because they are a much-used and -touched surface. Designed to spread illnesses, you’d be wise not to touch any part of these areas with your bare hands.
2. Door Handles
Remember how we said people might wash their hands after using the restroom? Well, it turns out that despite 92% of the population saying one should wash their hands after using the facilities, only 66% of the lot do it.
These statistics make door handles, including the one on the microwave, so dirty they probably give workstations a run for their bacteria. The writing on the wall couldn’t be more explicit: wash and sanitize your hands frequently. Go further by asking the cleaning crew to pay special attention to the door handles.
3. Office Desks
Your desktop or any surface you might consider your workstation houses well over 10 million bacteria—excluding viruses and fungi, which are also on your desk. They reach your desk via several sets of hands, making it easier for them to travel across your office.
You can only stop these germs from spreading from a desktop to other areas by assigning daily cleaning services to all the workstations at the end of the workday. You can only go so far without touching your desktop.
4. Coffee Mugs
A University of Arizona researcher discovered that 20% of the coffee mugs in a breakroom carried fecal matter. While that’s equally surprising and disgusting, it’s not the first study of its kind.
Much as we’d all like to deny it, the fact remains that fecal matter is more common than we think. It’s found everywhere, from gym holds to men’s beards.
The fecal matter on coffee mugs doesn’t get there through dirty hands so much as dirty cleaning supplies. Thus, you can easily prevent it by keeping your dish washing supplies clean and separate from the rest.
5. Restrooms
You don’t need anyone else telling you how dirty restrooms can be, especially now that you know many people don’t even wash their hands after using them. Bacteria like E. coli inhabit office restrooms, especially faucets, stall handles, and push buttons.
Although you can easily use these fixtures by covering your hand with a paper towel, it would be nice to have the reassurance of a cleaning crew coming to save the day every day.
6. Keyboard and Mouse
The more you eat, drink, and sneeze over your keyboard and mouse, the dirtier you’ll notice the screen, clickers, and buttons getting, but that’s only the dirt you can see with your naked eye. You can easily clean tacky surfaces and wipe crumbs with wet wipes.
Toilet seats have an average of 50 bacteria per square inch. Do you know how many a keyboard and a mouse have? Keyboards have well over 3,000 bacteria per square inch, whereas a mouse has half that, leaving a toilet seat with only a fraction.
It makes sense in retrospect. A keyboard and mouse get more bacteria because they’re constantly used and aren’t cleaned nearly as much as a toilet seat.
Account for All Dirty Hotspots with Commercial Cleaning Services in Bakersfield, CA
After reading the above, it should be clear that many office spots experience nasty germs due to neglect. Door handles, buttons, and faucets aren’t perceived as dirty spaces, nor are they traditional commercial cleaning fares. It would help if you asked your Excellence Janitorial Services & Carpet Cleaning team to pay special attention to them.
Hire their experienced crew for an overdue carpet cleaning service in Bakersfield, CA, and explore tile and grout cleaning for your restrooms and upholstery cleaning for furniture of all sizes.
Get in touch to request their services.
About the Author
Ben Center used to run a commercial cleaning company back in the day. After a life-changing illness forced Center into early retirement, he started reading influencer books and writing an autobiography that’ll (most likely) never see the light of day. After the pandemic renewed Center’s interest in commercial cleaning, he also began blogging.
