Random Spiel, The Janitor's Lesson

Every convenience has been made to look simple despite how complicated these things actually are. I'm just typing away a report while in the office the other day and noticed the department's assigned cleaning service came in on time as expected. Nothing out of the ordinary there right? but I do recall instances when they come in late and sometimes would require a few more follow ups to keep things tidy.

The report I was working on had something to do with health care economics and how intricate our bureaucratic systems are that it has become difficult for a lay person to navigate the health care system. Now if you ask me where this post is heading, it's a post appreciating a lesson about how people tend to simplify things too much and failing to appreciate how these simple things are brought by complicated systems.

So going back to the janitor attending to their duties at the office on time, I asked about their schedule for some small talk. The way I go about these questions starts with simple impersonal questions to complicated ones like investigating something for the sake of it.

They have shifts, they have personnel assigned to the shift per month, and their duties include maintaining cleanliness in the area. There's nothing out of the ordinary from this data right? I asked how do they get the job. They're an outsourced service while working with in-house maintenance personnel too. Before they get to work, they had to go through different background checks by their agency and then another check from the hospital's own HR. They had to sign papers for confidentiality, risks and compensation benefits. I mentioned these requirements lightly but after going through some of the processes to comply with the requirements myself, I knew some of these can take days to process from different government agencies and the prize is landing a job that pays bare minimum wage, not to mention the amount of time spent and cost just to fulfill these requirements setting back the person financially for a couple of days.

Putting aside the job requirements, they had to undergo HR training and other seminars just to certify they know what they were doing (like cleaning stains off the floor, and knowing how to segregate trash), basic stuff right? but all these processes just to certify competency also include collaborating with different agencies within the private and government sector. HR doesn't only coordinate with the 3rd party agency, they also need to coordinate with the Admin office, budgeting, procurement and other offices just to secure the employment of these people as legal, be included in the payroll, and secure employee benefits.

Now for a lay person, this isn't the first thing that comes into mind whenever they interact with someone working for the institution. How complicated it comes just to earn the spot to work in the institution and how the institution itself has maintained this bureaucracy to keep things running as smoothly as possible. The end user experience is now us appreciating how spotless our floors are.

Only when the simple things like having a regular maintenance crew appear on time disappear when we notice the errors in the system and how things we take for granted fall apart. Let's entertain the idea that the janitor never came on time because they had things to do on other departments they are also assigned to. The reason can be rooted from the lack of manpower as the budget for hiring these services got cutdown and the hospital now has to make do with the existing personnel.

Their schedules become packed and the workload becomes unbearable that people just get sick so others compensate by working overtime. The simple mind can just blame the admin for the lack of oversight but the problem can be further traced back to laws and regulatory changes above that impedes handing out the necessary budget to keep paying these services going. I'm not going to get some clean floors within an expected time period all because one someone from some regulatory board upstairs decided to slash a 0 on the budget, this is figuratively of course but you get the gist.

When things work, it's hard to appreciate the complicated systems that keep these simple things together, the bureaucracy behind why things are setup the way they are. Anyone who has ever became a responsible adult has undergone some form of encounter with this bureaucracy in the government or private sector. We all have our own worlds that it's already hard to keep up with the businesses of others, we just know how to complain when the systems that are expected to work for us don't.

Thank you for your time.