Here goes
I did a ride along with a carpet cleaning company a couple weekends ago. The owner wants me to go along with his techs for a day to see what i think about their knowledge, work ethics, cleaning ability, customer handling, and how they work during the day. The catch is, the employee thinks I'm just a new higher, and I'm a semi experience carpet cleaner.
We have 3 jobs for the day. 1 commercial 1 empty town house 1 occupied.
We get rolling at 8am, and head out to the commercial. its standard CGD, we dual wand, takes 3 hours ( the tech is very slow at setting up the equipment). He doesn't measure his prespray as per dilution on the container, and uses the wrong combination for this type of carpet. 9.5 pH instead of 10.5 or 11 for Olefin. We get done with this job. he sits in the truck and i roll up 500 feet of solution, and vac, the tile tools we used, and put the truck back together. its now 12pm, and it took us 3 hours of actual work, 1 hour from 8-9 just waiting for him to feel like getting out of the truck.
job 2. empty town home. We get there and while the tech is talking to the realtor, he gets a call from owner. The owner says there was a set of microfiber couches, and 2 jacquard chairs that he cleaned, and the decking had browned out. He proceeds to argue in front of this client with his boss on the phone about previous bad work... the phone call lasted about 5 minutes with the realtor, check in hand is waiting for him to get off the phone... I clean the entire town house by myself, while the tech is out side on the phone dealing with personal problems, and calls from his boss about the call back we now have to do after this job.. we finish this at 3pm.
Job 2.5 We check out this set of furniture that has the browning on the decking material. The home owner is demanding replacement. The tech has 0 knowledge on how to take care of this problem. I check the truck to see if there were any reducing agents, or acid rinses we could try. We tried a strong combination of Acid rinse, with hot water, no chemical. His upholstery tool was leaking like a siv. The couch could not be saved with the tools we had present.
job 2.7 on the way to job 3, the tech informs me that ' heh you know i got in a car accident with the van the other day, and didn't tell the owner. a car rear-ended me and she didn't have insurance so, we said it was cool, and no report was filed. only damage to her vehicle was sustained ( totaled her vehicle on the ass of the carpet van), but you know don't tell the owner this................ ( what should i do? should i disclose this to the owner. This tech is his senior guy and brings in all most a grand a day.. )
Job 3. We start at 5pm. it is an entire house, and the carpets are filthy. if there was a scale that measured how nasty a carpet was. a 1 would be Brand new from factory. 4 would be the dirtiest apartment 7 would be a Chinese restaurant. and 10 would be this ladies house. ( melted candy, red stains every where. just .. vile.... So we spend 2 hours on this house, and during so the tech gets 40 phone calls and leaves me ( a guy who he presumes is his first day of part time work and only has minimal carpet cleaning experience to his knowledge. To clean this house). He got another call back, phone call. Saying he left a urine treatment area to wet, and its been wet for 3 days. He told the home owner, not to call the owner because he was in trouble for having screwed something up earlier, that he would take care of it... I finish cleaning the house.
Conclusion - it took us 10 hours to do 3 jobs. And the Tech told me pretty much everything his boss DOESNT want to hear...
I recently went over some of the points about his chemical usage, his selling technique, his appearance in front of customers, etc. but i have told him about the personal stuff that guy shared with me that is more then likely detrimental to his company... like the carpet van getting hit, and what he does on his personal time that may be illegal, that he uses the van for personal things etc etc etc.
Which wasn't the reason i was supposed to ride along. I was just there to critique his customer , and cleaning habits..
any advice?
I did a ride along with a carpet cleaning company a couple weekends ago. The owner wants me to go along with his techs for a day to see what i think about their knowledge, work ethics, cleaning ability, customer handling, and how they work during the day. The catch is, the employee thinks I'm just a new higher, and I'm a semi experience carpet cleaner.
We have 3 jobs for the day. 1 commercial 1 empty town house 1 occupied.
We get rolling at 8am, and head out to the commercial. its standard CGD, we dual wand, takes 3 hours ( the tech is very slow at setting up the equipment). He doesn't measure his prespray as per dilution on the container, and uses the wrong combination for this type of carpet. 9.5 pH instead of 10.5 or 11 for Olefin. We get done with this job. he sits in the truck and i roll up 500 feet of solution, and vac, the tile tools we used, and put the truck back together. its now 12pm, and it took us 3 hours of actual work, 1 hour from 8-9 just waiting for him to feel like getting out of the truck.
job 2. empty town home. We get there and while the tech is talking to the realtor, he gets a call from owner. The owner says there was a set of microfiber couches, and 2 jacquard chairs that he cleaned, and the decking had browned out. He proceeds to argue in front of this client with his boss on the phone about previous bad work... the phone call lasted about 5 minutes with the realtor, check in hand is waiting for him to get off the phone... I clean the entire town house by myself, while the tech is out side on the phone dealing with personal problems, and calls from his boss about the call back we now have to do after this job.. we finish this at 3pm.
Job 2.5 We check out this set of furniture that has the browning on the decking material. The home owner is demanding replacement. The tech has 0 knowledge on how to take care of this problem. I check the truck to see if there were any reducing agents, or acid rinses we could try. We tried a strong combination of Acid rinse, with hot water, no chemical. His upholstery tool was leaking like a siv. The couch could not be saved with the tools we had present.
job 2.7 on the way to job 3, the tech informs me that ' heh you know i got in a car accident with the van the other day, and didn't tell the owner. a car rear-ended me and she didn't have insurance so, we said it was cool, and no report was filed. only damage to her vehicle was sustained ( totaled her vehicle on the ass of the carpet van), but you know don't tell the owner this................ ( what should i do? should i disclose this to the owner. This tech is his senior guy and brings in all most a grand a day.. )
Job 3. We start at 5pm. it is an entire house, and the carpets are filthy. if there was a scale that measured how nasty a carpet was. a 1 would be Brand new from factory. 4 would be the dirtiest apartment 7 would be a Chinese restaurant. and 10 would be this ladies house. ( melted candy, red stains every where. just .. vile.... So we spend 2 hours on this house, and during so the tech gets 40 phone calls and leaves me ( a guy who he presumes is his first day of part time work and only has minimal carpet cleaning experience to his knowledge. To clean this house). He got another call back, phone call. Saying he left a urine treatment area to wet, and its been wet for 3 days. He told the home owner, not to call the owner because he was in trouble for having screwed something up earlier, that he would take care of it... I finish cleaning the house.
Conclusion - it took us 10 hours to do 3 jobs. And the Tech told me pretty much everything his boss DOESNT want to hear...
I recently went over some of the points about his chemical usage, his selling technique, his appearance in front of customers, etc. but i have told him about the personal stuff that guy shared with me that is more then likely detrimental to his company... like the carpet van getting hit, and what he does on his personal time that may be illegal, that he uses the van for personal things etc etc etc.
Which wasn't the reason i was supposed to ride along. I was just there to critique his customer , and cleaning habits..
any advice?
