23 hours until the Big Presentation. I’m about halfway prepared, I think. I gave it a good effort yesterday evening and into the night. But then I received an email from our building VP asking for my vote on a cleaning-related dispute she’s having with the building president. If I vote on her side, relations will be good and the building president, an 80+ year old crazy woman, will be upset. That is bad because she’s the reason I can receive packages at home instead of at the post office.

After looking at the contents of the dispute, my vote is for the VP’s idea, so the issue became how to communicate it tactfully and clearly and in a way that won’t make the building president feel slighted. So in the middle of preparing for the big presentation, I got side tracked writing a letter. I spent about two hours on it, finishing and mailing at around 1am. It’s one of those things that’s hard to stop once once started.

Here’s how it ended up:

Thanks for this, <name of VP>.

I would add that the overall cleanliness of the building has changed noticeably over time. I don’t inspect with a white glove or anything, but I can tell–by sight and scent–that the main hallway and elevator are not being cleaned as well as they used to be.

In the elevator, for example, there are now handprints and scuffs and smears that seem to stick around for many days at a time. Sometimes it seems as though no one is wiping it down at all, despite how blatant and common such grime has become. It also often smells bad, possibly because it hasn’t been cleaned with soap regularly enough.  But most importantly, there are now scratches that are starting to add up– and that’s the bigger picture: people tend to treat an environment in a way that’s consistent with how it appears to be treated by others. When little things go uncleaned or poorly cleaned,  people grow to have less respect for it over time, and consciously or not, they start to care less and pay less attention to their personal impact on it. I think we’re starting to see some of that, especially in the elevator.

So, for the sake of the health of the building, and for the pride of the people who live here, I do think the cleaning and maintenance of 519 needs improvement. It seems more likely that this will happen with someone we can build a daily relationship and rapport with, and someone who can commit to developing expertise in what it takes to keep 519 in top shape indefinitely.

Therefore, unless there are other options I’m unaware of, it seems the solution is to hire a dedicated, part-time Super, so that’s my vote.