Increase Workplace Safety - Disinfecting a Bathroom Stall

It is impor­tant in prop­er­ly clean­ing an office to safe­ly dis­in­fect a bath­room stall. Using dis­in­fec­tant spray prop­er­ly, wear­ing PPE gloves and PPE gog­gles, and con­fer­ring with addi­tion­al clean­ing tips are good clean­ing safe­ty practices.

Video Tran­script:

Speak­er 1: Hel­lo, Budd Group team. This safe­ty train­ing top­ic’s going to be a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent. This month, we’re going to be talk­ing about the essen­tial job func­tions that our folks are doing day in and day out and how to per­form them well, effi­cient­ly, and how to do them safely.

For the first one, I have our sub­ject mat­ter expert here, Tan, who is going to show us how to safe­ly and effec­tive­ly clean a toi­let stall. Tan, first ques­tion for you. What do we need to get this job done?

Tan: Well, first, you will need to have your safe­ty gog­gles on, which I have on, you will need to have gloves. You want to have on all of your PPE.

Speak­er 1: That’s right. PPE.

Tan: PPE.

Speak­er 1: Good first step. All right, what’s next?

Tan: Next, you want to have your toi­let brush, which I have here.

Speak­er 1: Perfect.

Tan: The sec­ond step, which would be a disinfectant.

Speak­er 1: Okay. Can we use any­thing or does that have to be a disinfectant?

Tan: It has to be a dis­in­fec­tant that is in your SDS book.

Speak­er 1: Okay, very good. If I’m not wrong, I think it’s impor­tant we use a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent types of dis­in­fec­tants here. It’s real­ly impor­tant to know which dis­in­fec­tant you’re using and to make sure that you know what the dwell time is. Oth­er­wise, you may not be killing things that you’re sup­posed to be killing if you don’t leave it on there long enough.

Tan: Cor­rect.

Speak­er 1: Very good. All right. Any­thing else?

Tan: Next, you would need your rag cloth, which we use restrooms.

Speak­er 1: A red one. Does the col­or matter?

Tan: Yes, the col­or mat­ters. Here at the Budd Group, we have five dif­fer­ent types of clean­ing cloths and using the right ones is super impor­tant. The red cloth is for san­i­tary appli­ances like toi­lets, uri­nals, and bath­room stalls. The yel­low cloth is for gen­er­al clean­ing like sinks, hand dry­ers, and coun­ter­tops. The green cloth is for clean­ing and food prep areas and break rooms. The blue cloth is for glass sur­faces like mir­rors and win­dows. We also use a smooth light blue cloth for pol­ish­ing. If we don’t keep these cloths sep­a­rate and use them cor­rect­ly, we could be spread­ing bath­room germs all over the place, even a sur­face some­one could be eat­ing on.

Speak­er 1: All right, so we’ve got the tools we need, we know what we need to do the job, so I guess it’s time to get into it.

Tan: Yes.

Speak­er 1: But I got to be hon­est, now that we’ve actu­al­ly made it to the stall, it real­ly does not look that dirty. Are you sure we need to waste our time clean­ing it?

Tan: Yes. Cut the light and I will show you why.

Speak­er 1: All right.

Tan: As you can see, we have a lot more work to be done.

Speak­er 1: Yeah. It looks like the bowl is clean, but the area around the toi­let is still quite dirty.

Tan: Still needs to be san­i­tized, yes.

Speak­er 1: All right, so if we still need to clean it, I guess the next thing is why don’t you show me how to do it? Walk us through it. What do we need to do?

Tan: Okay. First thing you need to do is have your dis­in­fec­tant cleaner-

Speak­er 1: Okay.

Tan: … which would be your Virex.

Speak­er 1: All right.

Tan: In order for this to dis­in­fect any bath­room areas, you’re going to have to spray the com­plete toi­let, uri­nals, han­dles, and every­thing, and you it to be on dwell time for 10 minutes.

Speak­er 1: Okay, 10 min­utes. It’s got to be on there for 10 min­utes in order to kill all the germs that it’s sup­posed to kill.

Tan: Yes. That’s correct.

Speak­er 1: All right, and I noticed when you did it, you real­ly soaked it. I guess it’s impor­tant to make sure that that thing is vis­i­bly wet when you’re spray­ing it down.

Tan: Yes, it’s cor­rect. Because if you don’t have all your sur­faces and your high con­tact sur­faces san­i­tized, it will not work and it will not dis­in­fect the areas. Your bath­room will not be clean if you do not have the dwell time-

Speak­er 1: All right, I guess let’s spray down some oth­er areas and wait on that for 10 min­utes out.

Tan: All right, here we go. We’re going to spray down your walls. You can do your toi­let hold­ers, your han­dles, your stalls. You can spray down your stall doors. All these areas that I’m spray­ing are high con­tact areas. We mean that every­one touch­es all of these areas.

Speak­er 1: All right.

Tan: You want to make sure you get every­thing in order to prop­er­ly dis­in­fect and clean your restroom.

Speak­er 1: All right, let’s wait.

All right, so we’ve wait­ed our 10 min­utes. What’s next?

Tan: What’s next is you would come over to your toi­let bowl with your toi­let brush and you want to make sure you’re going around in cir­cles. You want to hit all the areas. You want to clean the toi­let on the inside first with your toi­let bowl. You do not want to take your toi­let bowl brush on the out­side of your toi­let because it will spread germs. After you put your toi­let bowl brush up, you will get your red cloth and then I would wipe down all the areas from top to bot­tom all the way to the sides that I sprayed down with the Virex clean­er. You get your han­dles around the sides, the front, in the back until your area’s done. Wipe down all your oth­er areas to make sure that you clean your com­plete toilet.

Speak­er 1: All right, so you have wiped down the toi­let and kind of the area around it. Is that it? Are we done?

Tan: No, we’re not done yet. We need to clean all the oth­er high con­tacts areas in the bath­room. We need to dis­in­fect them as well with the Virex.

Speak­er 1: All right. What some of those?

Tan: Some of the sur­faces that we do want to make sure we dis­in­fect are the toi­let seat, under the toi­let bowl, the flush valve, the san­i­tary box, the stall han­dle, the stalls around the toi­let, the faucet han­dle, the door han­dle, and any oth­er places some­one might touch after using the restroom.

Speak­er 1: Well, Tan, it’s clear that you’re a pro, so thank you so much for tak­ing the time to do this.

Tan: You’re very welcome.

Speak­er 1: Budd Group team, we have a nice 10-step doc­u­ment that’s going to show you exact­ly how to do every­thing that Tan talked about in 10 steps and make sure that you’re clean­ing the bath­room safe­ly and effec­tive­ly. If you need that sheet, you should be able to get ahold of it from your man­agers. All right, onto the next task.

Bath­room clean­ing safe­ty tips. First, make sure you have your appro­pri­ate PPE, includ­ing gloves and safe­ty gog­gles. Next, gath­er all of your mate­ri­als, includ­ing your toi­let brush, a dis­in­fec­tant, and the red col­ored clean­ing microfiber cloth. Then spray all of the high con­tact areas with the dis­in­fec­tant spray. Be sure to leave at dwell time of at least 10 min­utes. After the dis­in­fec­tant has soaked, use the toi­let brush to clean in the bowl. Make sure you don’t use the brush out­side of the toi­let. Then use the red cloth to wipe down the rest of the high con­tact areas that were sprayed.

If you have ques­tions, refer to the 10-step clean­ing man­u­al that your man­ag­er has.

The Budd Group strives to be a God-hon­or­ing com­pa­ny of excel­lence safe­ly deliv­er­ing ser­vices in jan­i­to­r­i­al, main­te­nance, and land­scap­ing; offer­ing devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for their employ­ees; and con­tribut­ing to their community.

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