Increase Workplace Safety - Janitors Closet

An orga­nized jan­i­to­r­i­al clos­et enhances work­place safe­ty and can bet­ter serve a jan­i­tor. Ensur­ing to adhere to HAZ­COM and include chem­i­cal infor­ma­tion are addi­tion­al ways to enhance safety.

Video Tran­script:

Hal­ston:

Oh, Hey! Do you work for The Budd Group?

Speak­er 2:

Yes, I do.

Hal­ston:

Do you think you could help me find Ms. Rhonda?

Speak­er 2:

Right in there.

Hal­ston:

Oh, okay. Per­fect. Thank you.

Speak­er 2:

You’re wel­come.

Hal­ston:

Excuse me. Are you Ms. Rhonda?

Ms. Rhon­da:

Yes! Hi.

Hal­ston:

Hey, I’m Hal­ston. I’m the safe­ty manager.

Ms. Rhon­da:

Hi, Hal­ston, nice to have you.

Hal­ston:

Yeah, I was­n’t able to find you up in your office.

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, I’m doing a lit­tle bit of stock in here in our clos­ets, try to keep things straight­ened out. It’s very impor­tant that our clos­ets stay well-organized.

Hal­ston:

Well, that’s per­fect. I was actu­al­ly here to talk to you a lit­tle bit about spring clean­ing and what all goes into get­ting ready.

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, it’s some­thing that we do on a reg­u­lar basis, and it’s very impor­tant. Stay­ing orga­nized is part of what we do. One of the things that I real­ly strong­ly rec­om­mend is get­ting our prod­ucts out of the boxes.

Hal­ston:

Okay.

Ms. Rhon­da:

And get­ting it on the shelf in a place that’s easy to reach, because you don’t real­ly want peo­ple reach­ing then tak­ing your emp­ty box­es and get­ting them removed from your closet.

Hal­ston:

Now, why does stuff has to get out of box­es. Why can’t we leave it in there?

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, it’s some­thing that we don’t real­ly talk a lot about, but the glue that is on these box­es often­times con­tain roach eggs.

Hal­ston:

Wow.

Ms. Rhon­da:

Once they get warm in the build­ing they start hatch­ing, and that cre­ates issues for our facil­i­ties. It’s our job to pro­tect and main­tain our facil­i­ties. So we want to get things out of the box­es on the shelves in a good place that’s easy to reach for every­one, and then get rid of the box­es and the clut­ter. Speak­ing to clut­ter, that over there is going to be a prob­lem, and we’ve got to make sure we keep our floors clear because that is an ene­my to our safety.

Speak­er 4:

Time for pro safe­ty tip num­ber one on how to keep your jan­i­to­r­i­al clos­et safe. Make sure your clos­et is well-orga­nized, and store reg­u­lar­ly used and heavy items on the mid height shelves to avoid hav­ing to reach too high or bend too low to pick them up. Make sure you take time to clear your clos­et of any debris or clut­ter to avoid tripping.

Hal­ston:

All right. Well, let me help get this out of the way and get it wound up for you.

Ms. Rhon­da:

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. That actu­al­ly is one of the things that we need to be check­ing on a rou­tine basis when we’re doing our spring clean­ing and prob­a­bly at least once a month. This cord is a bit of a problem.

Hal­ston:

Oh, no!

Ms. Rhon­da:

First off, there is no way that this is going to go into an out­let prop­er­ly, and it’s miss­ing the most impor­tant com­po­nent, the ground prong. That’s going to be a prob­lem. And as you can see, there’s some oth­er issues. We’ve got some open cord, which is expos­ing … The insu­la­tion is now exposed and the cords are exposed. Wow, this is prob­a­bly an extreme sit­u­a­tion. We’d nev­er want this to hap­pen, but a lot of times you get this type of fray­ing when you’ve got a con­stant bend in the cord.

Hal­ston:

Okay. Let’s say I’m one of your employ­ees and I have a cord that looks like this and I bring it to you. What would you do with it?

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, I’m going to have to take this cord com­plete­ly out of ser­vice. It’s unsafe. It’s a fire haz­ard and absolute­ly no way can we be able to use this, and I need to have this dis­posed of imme­di­ate­ly so no one else uses it.

Hal­ston:

Okay. You men­tioned look­ing through our equip­ment. What oth­er things might we want to inspect dur­ing the spring cleaning?

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, as you know, we all vac­u­um. So one of the things that you’re look­ing at, again, you’re going to look at the ground prong on your vac­u­ums to make sure it is present. This ensures that that vac­u­um is safe to oper­ate, but you’re also look­ing at some oth­er things. You’re going to be sure that you’re check­ing the bag to make sure it’s not over­filled and that the fil­ters are not clogged.

Hal­ston:

How does that one look?

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, this one, I would replace it. I think it prob­a­bly needs a lit­tle bit of work. When they get over field and blocked, then the vac­u­um actu­al­ly is putting out more dust than we’re actu­al­ly pick­ing up.

Hal­ston:

So how would an employ­ee go about replac­ing it? Who would they need to contact?

Ms. Rhon­da:

I would con­tact my imme­di­ate super­vi­sor or the lead, and maybe even your oper­a­tions man­ag­er. You’ve got to be sure you have plen­ty of replace­ment vacs and you should have fil­ters on site to be sure that your vac­u­ums are oper­at­ing effi­cient­ly. And you don’t want to cre­ate too much drag on the motor because before you know it, you’ll burn it up.

Hal­ston:

Very good. The fil­ter is also extreme­ly impor­tant because even for safe­ty rea­sons, we have to make sure we’re clean­ing the air like we’re promis­ing our client we’re going to do.

Speak­er 4:

Clos­et safe­ty pro safe­ty tip num­ber two, take time to look at each one of your exten­sion cords for dam­age. This dam­age could cause an elec­tri­cal fire. Also, check your vac­u­um bags and fil­ters. We want to make sure our vac­u­ums are clean­ing safe­ly and effi­cient­ly. And final­ly, inspect any oth­er equip­ment that you use reg­u­lar­ly for defects.

Hal­ston:

Cool. Well, what else do you have to show me about spring cleaning?

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, it’s real­ly impor­tant that we’re check­ing all of our trig­ger sprayer bot­tles, make sure that they’re clear­ly labeled and iden­ti­fied. For exam­ple, this is a big no-no. This bot­tle is not labeled. It does not have a label, and I have no idea what is in here. That’s kind of a problem.

Hal­ston:

Okay. What do you do with it?

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, what I’m going to do is dump these chem­i­cals out because I have no idea what it is, and any­thing placed in here could cause a chem­i­cal reac­tion and that could be a dan­ger to our employ­ees or the envi­ron­ment. So what I’m going to do is dump this out and get rid of it.

Hal­ston:

All right. So if it does have a label, what are we look­ing for on the label? What kind of stuff needs to be on there?

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, it’s real­ly impor­tant that your labels are com­pli­ant and that they’re going to iden­ti­fy the name of the prod­uct, the appli­ca­tion that it’s used for and the chem­i­cal, the main active ingre­di­ents that are in there. It’s going to give you a lot of oth­er infor­ma­tion as well. It’s going to give you a num­ber to call in case there’s an emer­gency, but every bot­tle must con­tain a label.

Hal­ston:

Very good. So we’re look­ing for what is it, what’s in it and what is it used for.

Ms. Rhon­da:

Cor­rect.

Hal­ston:

Very good. And if your employ­ee noticed that there were a bunch of bot­tles that were miss­ing labels, what would you ask him or her to do?

Ms. Rhon­da:

First thing I would ask them to do is rid the bot­tle of any chem­i­cals, and then I will bring them all of the labels. It’s real­ly impor­tant, it’s a step that we some­times get con­fused. We put the label on the fresh bot­tle so that what­ev­er goes in there when you’re mix­ing the chem­i­cals and dilut­ing them, it makes sure it con­tains and match­es what’s on your label.

Hal­ston:

Got you. Very good.

Speak­er 4:

Pro safe­ty tip num­ber three, take time to make sure every sin­gle bot­tle in your jan­i­to­r­i­al clos­et has a label. And if it does­n’t have a label, pour the con­tents out and con­tact your man­ag­er for a new label imme­di­ate­ly. Final­ly, each bot­tle should be labeled before it is filled. That way, we can ensure that the con­tents in the bot­tle match the label.

Hal­ston:

We have all of our bot­tles labeled, but we want to get a lit­tle bit more infor­ma­tion about the chem­i­cals we’re using. Where would we go to find that?

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, it’s impor­tant that every one of our sites has a safe­ty data sheet man­u­al. This is very impor­tant. A lot of times you’ll hear it referred to as the SDS book. It’s real­ly impor­tant that because we have infor­ma­tion here that iden­ti­fies each chem­i­cal that you have on site, any dan­gers, prop­er PPE to use, it also gives you a 1 – 800 num­ber to call in case there’s an emer­gency. So each site is required to have one of these.

Hal­ston:

That’s great. And here at The Budd Group, we have anoth­er option for you to go get infor­ma­tion about the chem­i­cal you’re using, and that is at www​.bud​dgroups​ds​.com. If you go to that site, you can type it into a search bar, what­ev­er chem­i­cal you’re try­ing to use, and it’ll take you right to that chem­i­cal and pull up the SDS for it. Or in the case of an emer­gency if you real­ly need­ed to find out infor­ma­tion on a chem­i­cal quick­ly so that you could tell the med­ical provider what you were using or exposed to, you could call 1 – 866-BUD911 and we would be able to get that infor­ma­tion to you real­ly quickly.

Ms. Rhon­da:

I’m so glad, Hal­ston, you brought up these posters. They have been a won­der­ful addi­tion to The Budd Group and our safe­ty pro­gram. It keeps every­thing right up front. Every site should have one of these posters in one of your jan­i­to­r­i­al clos­ets, at least one. If you have a large site you might need more than one poster. It’s very impor­tant that we keep this infor­ma­tion avail­able to our employees.

Hal­ston:

Absolute­ly. That’s a good point. And, one of the things that’s on this poster is that if you need even more infor­ma­tion, you can request the haz comm pro­gram that The Budd Group has from your super­vi­sor and they will be able to give it to you. All the haz comm pro­gram is, is a cou­ple page doc­u­ment that explains how The Budd Group han­dles haz­ardous communication.

Hal­ston:

It says that we want to have posters like these, it says that we need to have SDS books and it says what to do in the event of an emer­gency. Well, Rhon­da, this has been a lot of fun and I real­ly appre­ci­ate you tak­ing the time to show me around the clos­et and tell me what it takes to get ready for the spring.

Ms. Rhon­da:

Well, Hal­ston, it has been great to see you again. Come back any­time. In fact, I could use an extra hand any­time you’re around.

Hal­ston:

All right.

Speak­er 4:

Time for the final pro safe­ty tip on how to keep your jan­i­to­r­i­al clos­et clean and safe. Every sin­gle Budd Group account should have a safe­ty data sheet binder that con­tains all of the safe­ty infor­ma­tion on every chem­i­cal used at that account. This infor­ma­tion can also be found at www​.bud​dgroups​ds​.com. And final­ly, if you have more ques­tions about chem­i­cal safe­ty at The Budd Group, you can request a copy of The Budd Group haz­ardous com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­gram from your supervisor.

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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