Cliff's room has wood floors, cabinets, fridge, closet and TV - one would think it was a hotel room. The hallways look like a hospital with staff scurrying about - but the room is a sanctuary. Cliff is doing well. Thank you all for your kind words. I read them to Cliff and there are tears in our eyes... tears of comfort.
Smiley:
On Cannabis store sign - Weed like to meet you!
Cliff's story continues.....
******************************
Just when I thought I was settling down and enjoying my trucking career, my family cooked up other plans for me.
Apparently, I needed to change jobs. My children at this point were getting settled. Odia had married Larry from Winkler and they were trying to find their way into their lives. Syras was in the Masters program well on his way to his doctorate in psychology.
When Larry found himself between jobs, the women in our lives schemed and decided that perhaps if they combined us, we could partner in a business venture.
Larry’s father had been a janitor all his life, mine had become a janitor in his later years, and both were apparently good at it – they were accomplished cleaners. Larry and I had it in our genes. (Even though it is considered an easy job – to be an efficient cleaner does require a special aptitude and skill.)
We thought we would give it try. Larry chose the name. “First impression Janitorial Services” and also our tag line, “…we are in your corners.” It worked – at least it inspired us. It was something we could sell.
It was a slow start and not always pretty, but we made some good decisions in the beginning and we laid an excellent foundation.
At first it was very much a family run business. Larry was a natural in promotions and protocol, I learned how to calculate the quotes and negotiation the contracts, Syras who has a keen business mind helped us set up the book keeping systems, Odia, Natasha, and Wilma helped clean in emergencies.
We discovered that there was great satisfaction in going into a business establishment late at night, and transform a cluttered office into an organized one by simply taking out all the garbage, cleaning all the washrooms, straightening and dusting desks and vacuuming the hallways.
Larry took the lead in the first promotional campaign landing us our first contracts – a few major ones that laid the foundation and remained with us to the end.
I dealt more with the staff. Our staff were often hard-working people immigrants who had day jobs and worked at night as janitor contractors working one or two evenings a week to make money to send back to their home country to support family that had been left behind. This was great motivation.
This work also attracted the poor – less socially adept. I once had A gentleman who was more or less homeless needing work. He was such a delightful fellow the other staff loved working with him because he was such a good cleaner and singer. As he worked, he would always sing good old gospel songs that cheered everyone up. Because he was such an asset, I made the mistake of putting him on his own and discovered that he was sleeping on the job place after work. It seemed to work out for everyone involved for some time so I didn’t have the heart to address it until his friend came to him and stole from the company.
Stealing was the one unforgivable crime for a janitorial company – even one whiff of suspicion in this area meant immediate dismissal. “Don’t even pocket a dime that you might find in an obscure corner. Take that dime and put it on the shelf nearby so the owner sees it in broad daylight. This is often a test – planted deliberately….” Our company was built on trust.
I could even tell you another story where one of my employees uncovered the deliberate stealing scheme of a longstanding trusted employee and had to work as a secret agent to help the company lay down the evidence to convict. For a while it felt like we were living in a crime movie. (By the way, my cleaner was successful. The thief was arrested saving the company a lot of money that had been leaking away for years!)
But the overall driving motivation is that there is a great deal of satisfaction in leaving a place clean. It’s therapeutic to create order in the middle of the night - it has a kind of mystery to it – a kind of challenge to it.
It could even become romantic like when I cleaned with my wife, who joined me at times. When she joined me, it was almost like a date. There is something adventurous about going out late at night when everyone else is sleeping, drive through a deserted city, few cars or people on the road, punch in the code to shut off the alarm system, and begin to clean. My wife would head for the washrooms to clean, I would pull out the vacuum cleaner, and then together we would dust and clean the glass. Two – three hours later, we would be done and head home, stop at some all-night coffee shop and have great conversations - tremendous satisfaction. Of-course – the sleeping after is deep and refreshing as well. Cleanliness is next to Godliness; they say and it felt that way.
The company grew gradually and we landed great contracts. We cleaned hospitals, funeral homes. schools, hotels, government offices, walk-in clinics, beauty salons, dentist offices, retail - almost everything under the sun
Larry outgrew the company fairly quickly. He was young with unexplored potential so I bought him out and he went into ministry; first as director of Youth for Christ in Altona, then pastoring in Winkler, and now is chaplain at Boundary Trails Hospital.
The money wasn’t bad – with over 15 staff and even more contracts, I managed to bring in a great deal of money = much more than I would ever have expected – but I wasn’t a great businessman. I might’ve been a good boss, but I wasn’t good at making those hard business decisions and allowed a lot of the money to flow right back in to the staff - who deserved every penny of it.
In some ways, I considered it also a ministry providing tangible ways of helping those in need.
I made enough to live off of it and go out occasionally for a good dinner.
The most important part of this job was that it was flexible and allowed me to embrace the next big challenge awaiting our family...
So in hindsight, it was the last and best job I landed. I felt successful. In fact, when I closed the doors to my business, I still had my one of my original contracts and this included even some of the employees. Just the other week lying in my hospital bed I had a call from one of my contracts, wanting another quote.
It’s called work satisfaction – fulfilling one’s calling in life.
I retired just this last year, December 31, 2021 was my last day.
Smiley:
On Cannabis store sign - Weed like to meet you!
Cliff's story continues.....
******************************
Just when I thought I was settling down and enjoying my trucking career, my family cooked up other plans for me.
Apparently, I needed to change jobs. My children at this point were getting settled. Odia had married Larry from Winkler and they were trying to find their way into their lives. Syras was in the Masters program well on his way to his doctorate in psychology.
When Larry found himself between jobs, the women in our lives schemed and decided that perhaps if they combined us, we could partner in a business venture.
Larry’s father had been a janitor all his life, mine had become a janitor in his later years, and both were apparently good at it – they were accomplished cleaners. Larry and I had it in our genes. (Even though it is considered an easy job – to be an efficient cleaner does require a special aptitude and skill.)
We thought we would give it try. Larry chose the name. “First impression Janitorial Services” and also our tag line, “…we are in your corners.” It worked – at least it inspired us. It was something we could sell.
It was a slow start and not always pretty, but we made some good decisions in the beginning and we laid an excellent foundation.
At first it was very much a family run business. Larry was a natural in promotions and protocol, I learned how to calculate the quotes and negotiation the contracts, Syras who has a keen business mind helped us set up the book keeping systems, Odia, Natasha, and Wilma helped clean in emergencies.
We discovered that there was great satisfaction in going into a business establishment late at night, and transform a cluttered office into an organized one by simply taking out all the garbage, cleaning all the washrooms, straightening and dusting desks and vacuuming the hallways.
Larry took the lead in the first promotional campaign landing us our first contracts – a few major ones that laid the foundation and remained with us to the end.
I dealt more with the staff. Our staff were often hard-working people immigrants who had day jobs and worked at night as janitor contractors working one or two evenings a week to make money to send back to their home country to support family that had been left behind. This was great motivation.
This work also attracted the poor – less socially adept. I once had A gentleman who was more or less homeless needing work. He was such a delightful fellow the other staff loved working with him because he was such a good cleaner and singer. As he worked, he would always sing good old gospel songs that cheered everyone up. Because he was such an asset, I made the mistake of putting him on his own and discovered that he was sleeping on the job place after work. It seemed to work out for everyone involved for some time so I didn’t have the heart to address it until his friend came to him and stole from the company.
Stealing was the one unforgivable crime for a janitorial company – even one whiff of suspicion in this area meant immediate dismissal. “Don’t even pocket a dime that you might find in an obscure corner. Take that dime and put it on the shelf nearby so the owner sees it in broad daylight. This is often a test – planted deliberately….” Our company was built on trust.
I could even tell you another story where one of my employees uncovered the deliberate stealing scheme of a longstanding trusted employee and had to work as a secret agent to help the company lay down the evidence to convict. For a while it felt like we were living in a crime movie. (By the way, my cleaner was successful. The thief was arrested saving the company a lot of money that had been leaking away for years!)
But the overall driving motivation is that there is a great deal of satisfaction in leaving a place clean. It’s therapeutic to create order in the middle of the night - it has a kind of mystery to it – a kind of challenge to it.
It could even become romantic like when I cleaned with my wife, who joined me at times. When she joined me, it was almost like a date. There is something adventurous about going out late at night when everyone else is sleeping, drive through a deserted city, few cars or people on the road, punch in the code to shut off the alarm system, and begin to clean. My wife would head for the washrooms to clean, I would pull out the vacuum cleaner, and then together we would dust and clean the glass. Two – three hours later, we would be done and head home, stop at some all-night coffee shop and have great conversations - tremendous satisfaction. Of-course – the sleeping after is deep and refreshing as well. Cleanliness is next to Godliness; they say and it felt that way.
The company grew gradually and we landed great contracts. We cleaned hospitals, funeral homes. schools, hotels, government offices, walk-in clinics, beauty salons, dentist offices, retail - almost everything under the sun
Larry outgrew the company fairly quickly. He was young with unexplored potential so I bought him out and he went into ministry; first as director of Youth for Christ in Altona, then pastoring in Winkler, and now is chaplain at Boundary Trails Hospital.
The money wasn’t bad – with over 15 staff and even more contracts, I managed to bring in a great deal of money = much more than I would ever have expected – but I wasn’t a great businessman. I might’ve been a good boss, but I wasn’t good at making those hard business decisions and allowed a lot of the money to flow right back in to the staff - who deserved every penny of it.
In some ways, I considered it also a ministry providing tangible ways of helping those in need.
I made enough to live off of it and go out occasionally for a good dinner.
The most important part of this job was that it was flexible and allowed me to embrace the next big challenge awaiting our family...
So in hindsight, it was the last and best job I landed. I felt successful. In fact, when I closed the doors to my business, I still had my one of my original contracts and this included even some of the employees. Just the other week lying in my hospital bed I had a call from one of my contracts, wanting another quote.
It’s called work satisfaction – fulfilling one’s calling in life.
I retired just this last year, December 31, 2021 was my last day.
Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct;
they are matters of education,
and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them. - Benjamin Disraeli
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