Simple Ways to Make Someone's Day

Workplace Cleaners

• Pour liquids down the sink. Don't pour them in your office trash bin. Liquids leak and make a mess when the cleaner dumps your garbage―then the carpet has to be scrubbed. And so do the cleaner's clothes.
• Don't overload the wastebasket. "Heavy magazines fall right through trash liners and tear them," says Barbara Henry of Front Royal, Virginia, the Building Service Contractors Association International's 2007 Custodian of the Year.
• Let the cleaner know what's trash. To prevent dumping stuff by mistake, cleaners generally aren't allowed to remove random boxes in the vicinity of the wastebasket unless they're marked as trash.
• Be sure trash lands in the can. It's disrespectful and demeaning to make a cleaner crawl to reach items you could have easily placed in the bin.