Could You be an Airport Cleaner
When you are next travelling through an airport take a few moments to look at how clean it is. Are the floors strewn with litter and detritus? No you don’t.
Most busy airports employ an army of cleaners whose job it is to keep the airport terminals clean and safe for passengers. They perform their work while surrounded by busy people headed off on business trips and harassed families going away for their annual vacations. The packaging from the airport fast food restaurants is enough to fill the airport bins several times over each and every day.
Marie is one of the busy cleaners at Glasgow’s busy international airport. She had previously worked at both Aberdeen and Edinburgh but said that she preferred Glasgow.
A typical day for Marie and those in her team will start at 4 a.m. when she starts the early morning shift, preparing the airport for that days influx of travellers. She says that the biggest problem she encounters is unattended bags. ‘Even with the heightened awareness of terrorism people can still forget and wander away from their bags. If i come across an unattended bag I am obliged to report it to airport security. Some poeple can get quite upset when their hand luggage is treated like a bomb.
Marie told us that she doesn’t really meet many rude or obnoxious passengers but it does happen occasionally. She said: ‘Only last week I encountered a young woman who purposely dropped her rubbish on the floor in front of me’.
As well as the unattended bags that might be bombs and the occasional rude passenger Marie has to deal with all the odd things that people leave behind. She said: ‘I’ve lost count of the number of laptops, mobile phones and MP3 players that I have picked up over recent years. I’ve even found a wheel chair, a false leg and a bag containing an inflatable love doll.’
A key skill of anyone working as a cleaner in an airport is the ability to deal with people from all walks of life and from a variety of nationalities. ‘The ability to remain calm when a passenger is panicking because they may miss their flight is definitely a bonus’ said Marie.
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