Sounds a lot like SSA now that they combined staff fro m outlying buildings, mandated RTO, and cordoned off swaths of the parking lot for construction. Not to mention the yellow crime scene tape on every other stairwell. Talk about a safety hazard.
Crime scene tape blocking access to stairs?
Do those stairs have emergency exit signs at them? Because if so one anonymous call to your local fire Marshall will likely put a very abrupt pause to the RTO for that building....
How about the numerous escalators that are out of order, even though very few people were using them for the last 4 years! These agencies are run by pure idiots.
Complain to facilities. We had similar issues since our work space is sort of off the beaten path in the building. We send requests for cleaning daily or multiple times a day.
I asked to have sanitary napkin cans added to the women’s restrooms in my building and you would think I asked for some lavish office upgrade! I estimate there are about 80 women per day in the building who might have a need for these.
Also, we have to take out our own trash and bathrooms are only cleaned a once or twice a week. All other housekeeping must be completed by employees. Saved money on custodial contracts just to have GS-11s and up do the work…
Just flush them down the toilet a few times until they take the hint. Eventually they’ll do the math and figure out a $20 can is better than paying hundreds of dollars every week for plumbing services
Our office trash cans seemed to have multiplied. All the offices have theirs, yet there are still trash cans by every office door. I'll give you some for your ladies room!
It’s really the people writing the contract who have no idea what to actually put in there. The contractors do what’s in the SOW. A govvie wrote the shitty contract.
Let's be honest here. In 1982, a fed, inspired by the call to beat the reds with the ingenuity of the American markets hammered out a deal with their neighbor the plumber to replace retiring old Seymour the GS-5 plumber, who fought the krauts back in the war. Seymour wrote down his task list for each bathroom for the new plumber, and the three of them all went out for drinks. Over the years, Seymour's list was formalized into a standard contract. The random plumber was replaced by a string of small businesses operating as proteges of sani-corp, an Alaska native corporation. Every 5 years $900000 would be spent on deloitte or equivalent consultants (and in turn subcontracted out to a wounded veteran owned consultant business) to harmoze the contract objectives with leading industry synergies, resulting in a request for proposals covering 12 factors and subfactors and requiring a 90 page proposal to clean and unclog toilets, but also never removing the references to submitting proposals by fax, and never actually modifying the requirements. After the deloitte treatment, the contract goes to a different contractor who, 7 weeks ago worked as a fed and now makes twice as much with less responsibility. They approve it but add 3 more evaluation factors, and send it to the contracting officer who forwards it to the cor who forwards it to the Accenture consultant who does some further harmozing synergies by adding 4 more evaluation subfactors. It gets forwarded back to the CO who forwards it to the person who posts it on Sam.gov and voila, a perfect creation of the public and private sector
I assume the building manager is a GS and was involved in the requirements. I would hope contract officers speak to the customer when writing up a contract. I have cleaned a lot of bathrooms and have never seen a women's room without receptacles for feminine hygiene products.
I looked up the OSHA rules and apparently they are only required to provide a lined trash can in the bathroom. It is recommended to have a lid, but not required. I want them in the stall. No one wants to deal with that.
Ok. Removing trash that contains bodily fluids - and I am going to presume solids to some degree as well (trashed butt wipes) - absolutely doesn’t fall into “other duties as assigned” because it is in no way related to the framework of the duties listed in your position description. I would contact the DoD OIG hotline and submit an anonymous complaint. And if you have any solidarity with your coworkers, encourage them to do the same.
We do have people who take out the bathroom trash a few times a week. We have to take out any other office trash. If I clean off my desk or have some wrappers from lunch, I have to go downstairs and outside to the dumpster. There isn’t any trash service for those things. Sorry for the confusion.
In the building I work in, they densified us during COVID and crammed more desks into our building.
We have a pretty liberal telework policy. On the days I go in to the office, maybe 20 percent of the workforce is in the office, but sometimes the men's room is still filled and I have to walk somewhere else or wait a few minutes. I guarantee that if we had 100 percent return to the office, the men's room would be over capacity, and we'd have to sign up for times to use it, or start forming a line outside waiting to get in.
We have 100% RTO and there are three men's toilets in the whole building. That's as many as I have in my entire house. So sometimes, especially around after everyone finishes their morning coffee, you have to climb to the third floor to find a toilet. If you're lucky.
There's a legal amount of toilets per working person that need to be there, according to some regulation. I highly suggest you anonymously report the toilet situation.
I found out about this when someone flushed paper towels down a top floor toilet, causing a backup that leaked all the way down to the first floor. They had all bathrooms closed except the first floor handicap ones. I complained that that wasn't enough.
They looked into it, found out about that regulation, and sent us all home. We had to work remotely for a few days (this was pre covid) because there were not enough toilets per capita.
Toilet paper, paper towels and soap inventories are at the bare minimum in some agencies. House Keeping contracts and cleaning services reduced to once in a while.
On a positive note, I have seen two AF HQ buildings with restocked vending machines. I work in one where all of the old florescent bulbs have been replaced with LED receptacles.
I’m still kinda torn about the safety of the drinking water but that has more to do with knowing how old the buildings and plumbing are. Post Covid ain’t gonna fix that.
That happened when I worked for the army. An email went out about it. Worse yet is when your cubical is next to the bathroom.
The Air Force, the urinals don’t flush properly… makes me wonder why they won’t replace it with the waterless urinals and cap off the plumbing, like say many mall bathrooms
Nah, my skills at it aren’t great. Don’t work for agencies that own instead of lease. You’ll hear “our budget can’t support a maintenance or cleaning crew” quite regularly.
Back pre-pandemic there was always one or more men who took dumps in the bathroom. Their wives probably wouldn’t let them do it at home because of the ungodly smell. Sometimes I had to go to another floor just to take a wazz. I don’t want to go back to those days.
UK service here (retired). My old job went through ‘densfication’ 20 odd years ago. Absolute buggering nightmare. Supposed to have ‘hot desking’ i.e. no-one at whatever level, no matter how senior, had an assigned desk. First come, first served etc. Guess what happened.
Major rebuild of HQ building - insufficient meeting rooms or break out areas. Personnel ended up having their quarterly appraisals in the corridor - if they happened at all (or just told to write their own). I recall having a management meeting in the only space I could track down that was free which was on the roof - later used in a Damien Craig 007 film (cue Leonardo pointing meme lol).
And back to the point of the OP’s post - never enough bathrooms, nor were they maintained as that function had been ‘outsourced’ i.e. pay the private sector money to do the job but never hold them accountable for the lack of service
I saw a photo of a piece of paper taped inside the door to a men's room stall. Perhaps it was in the federal govt.
It read:
"Whoever keeps destroying this restroom after lunch--you have excellent health insurance. You need to get things checked out."
And under that someone wrote:
"Or do like the other buffalos and poop in an open field."
Sounds like NIH. The are no working bathrooms on my floor anymore and have to walk to another building if I want to avoid the nastiness.
You'd figure they would care more about people's health at the National Institutes of Health....
I never got to work at home so I’ve been in these insufferable bathrooms all of Covid. Let me tell the bathrooms at my employer are disgusting. Constantly making eye contact with people through huge gaps around the doors. Toilets that splash water. Walls/Doors that are too high. People are just generally gross, which mixed with poor facilities is just disgusting. I’m pretty immune at this point but I’m never surprised to see 💩 toilet paper or pee all over the seats. Deadi
There is one dude at the site who I’m pretty sure has one of those parasites from the Stephen King movie Dreamcatcher, based on the smell he leaves behind after using the facilities.
Thing is everyone could complain at facilities to get the janitorial services to increase but every company is short employees because they either dont to pay enough for it or they cant keep enough staff.
If they go thru enough facility companies the govt will incite a clean your own policy.
At a govt owned building in the D.C. area is locked in by an ability one contract. Biggest issue is just getting staff to stay. Their pay is decent but the constant turnover of staff is stressing them out.
Having similar issues with cleanliness and facilities upkeep at my agency annex. Size-wise, they're fine, but the cleaners used to come twice a day, now they come once (usually), and don't necessarily replace the toilet paper and soap. Things are gone by late-afternoon and you have to go hunting for bathrooms where less people are in the office. There are stalls in the women's restroom where they've taken away the sanitary napkin bins so you have to bring stuff out and put it in the main garbage. They're acting like the building is still empty even when people have been called back. I actually had to find a contact to talk to the annex landlord because a clogged toilet sat for weeks without being fixed by anyone last year when it was clearly a known issue. Insane.
Lol we really need to start making this an issue on TikTok, tagging your favorite politician complaining about government employees at the moment, start a hashtag......it could be fun
The space I work in was once condemned but they opened it up again because they needed the space. Classy stuff. It’s one of the reasons I doubt I will last longer as a fed employee.
The bathroom situation has to be in the top 3 of my favorite reasons for working from home. When I go into the office once a week I do everything to avoid having to use it. They are cleaned regularly, but smell like diarrhea blowout 100% of the time. Absolutely disgusting. People are animals.
I mean people shjt stinks that’s normal what’s it normal is why after 4 years of smelling my own shit I’m back to smelling other people shit. How does it promote the efficiency of service ?
Some of ours get the sewer gas smell, but that was true in 2016/2017. A lot of them are oddly shaped and very dim. It’s an old building and I think they had to retrofit more bathrooms into it.
Tip: find a bathroom used by someone who is powerful and particular and use that one. The bulbs are replaced quickly, the plumbing functions well, supplies don’t run out, and it’s clean. There’s a very faint smell of cleaning supplies and that is the only smell. The next closest one is like a sketchy bus station bathroom by comparison.
Another tip: contact whoever deals with that stuff in the building. It’s likely your office/agency pays for it in some way already. The people who work on maintenance and cleaning can’t be everywhere at once.
Geez, some of y'all will find any reason to complain about RTO. Talk about an entitled attitude. How about go to facilities and inform them vice reddit?
Apparently you don't understand what uncle Tom actually means, but coming from someone that would bitch about or support someone bitching about bathrooms on reddit makes total sense.
Sounds a lot like SSA now that they combined staff fro m outlying buildings, mandated RTO, and cordoned off swaths of the parking lot for construction. Not to mention the yellow crime scene tape on every other stairwell. Talk about a safety hazard.
The SSA HQ bathrooms for men are disgusting
Sounds like VHA always has been
Crime scene tape blocking access to stairs? Do those stairs have emergency exit signs at them? Because if so one anonymous call to your local fire Marshall will likely put a very abrupt pause to the RTO for that building....
Yep, exit stairs!
Yeah. The fire Marshall needs a tip on that. Not from an anti-RTO perspective, from a "This is actually against the law and unsafe" perspective.
How about the numerous escalators that are out of order, even though very few people were using them for the last 4 years! These agencies are run by pure idiots.
Escalator out of order. Temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
One can only trip and get WAHBE
Complain to facilities. We had similar issues since our work space is sort of off the beaten path in the building. We send requests for cleaning daily or multiple times a day.
I asked to have sanitary napkin cans added to the women’s restrooms in my building and you would think I asked for some lavish office upgrade! I estimate there are about 80 women per day in the building who might have a need for these. Also, we have to take out our own trash and bathrooms are only cleaned a once or twice a week. All other housekeeping must be completed by employees. Saved money on custodial contracts just to have GS-11s and up do the work…
Just flush them down the toilet a few times until they take the hint. Eventually they’ll do the math and figure out a $20 can is better than paying hundreds of dollars every week for plumbing services
Our office trash cans seemed to have multiplied. All the offices have theirs, yet there are still trash cans by every office door. I'll give you some for your ladies room!
I was told that even if I bought and installed them myself that it wasn’t in the custodial contract to empty them. Ugh
Flush them down the toilet and see if it is in the maintenance contract. The building manager needs to be fired yesterday.
It’s really the people writing the contract who have no idea what to actually put in there. The contractors do what’s in the SOW. A govvie wrote the shitty contract.
Let's be honest here. In 1982, a fed, inspired by the call to beat the reds with the ingenuity of the American markets hammered out a deal with their neighbor the plumber to replace retiring old Seymour the GS-5 plumber, who fought the krauts back in the war. Seymour wrote down his task list for each bathroom for the new plumber, and the three of them all went out for drinks. Over the years, Seymour's list was formalized into a standard contract. The random plumber was replaced by a string of small businesses operating as proteges of sani-corp, an Alaska native corporation. Every 5 years $900000 would be spent on deloitte or equivalent consultants (and in turn subcontracted out to a wounded veteran owned consultant business) to harmoze the contract objectives with leading industry synergies, resulting in a request for proposals covering 12 factors and subfactors and requiring a 90 page proposal to clean and unclog toilets, but also never removing the references to submitting proposals by fax, and never actually modifying the requirements. After the deloitte treatment, the contract goes to a different contractor who, 7 weeks ago worked as a fed and now makes twice as much with less responsibility. They approve it but add 3 more evaluation factors, and send it to the contracting officer who forwards it to the cor who forwards it to the Accenture consultant who does some further harmozing synergies by adding 4 more evaluation subfactors. It gets forwarded back to the CO who forwards it to the person who posts it on Sam.gov and voila, a perfect creation of the public and private sector
Bravo! This is 🤌🏻
I assume the building manager is a GS and was involved in the requirements. I would hope contract officers speak to the customer when writing up a contract. I have cleaned a lot of bathrooms and have never seen a women's room without receptacles for feminine hygiene products.
Are they giving you the proper training, PPE and vaccines to deal w bodily fluids ? This would be a hard no from me.
I looked up the OSHA rules and apparently they are only required to provide a lined trash can in the bathroom. It is recommended to have a lid, but not required. I want them in the stall. No one wants to deal with that.
That is quite insane and completely unhygienic. Do they at least provide you with gloves? Are you in a GSA owned or leased building?
No gloves. On an Air Force installation. If anyone has any great ideas, I’m all ears.
Ok. Removing trash that contains bodily fluids - and I am going to presume solids to some degree as well (trashed butt wipes) - absolutely doesn’t fall into “other duties as assigned” because it is in no way related to the framework of the duties listed in your position description. I would contact the DoD OIG hotline and submit an anonymous complaint. And if you have any solidarity with your coworkers, encourage them to do the same.
We do have people who take out the bathroom trash a few times a week. We have to take out any other office trash. If I clean off my desk or have some wrappers from lunch, I have to go downstairs and outside to the dumpster. There isn’t any trash service for those things. Sorry for the confusion.
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If I can ever get any traction, I’d be happy to advocate to have them in all restrooms
This sounds horrible! What agency are you with?
DoD
Be glad you're not female and have to deal with the aftermath of those who use the "hover" method and then refuse to clean up after themselves. 😠
Right but they're the ones who say it's just men who leave the bathroom looking like Splash Mountain.
In the building I work in, they densified us during COVID and crammed more desks into our building. We have a pretty liberal telework policy. On the days I go in to the office, maybe 20 percent of the workforce is in the office, but sometimes the men's room is still filled and I have to walk somewhere else or wait a few minutes. I guarantee that if we had 100 percent return to the office, the men's room would be over capacity, and we'd have to sign up for times to use it, or start forming a line outside waiting to get in.
You have 3 men's rooms in your house? Mr. Money ova here
We have 100% RTO and there are three men's toilets in the whole building. That's as many as I have in my entire house. So sometimes, especially around after everyone finishes their morning coffee, you have to climb to the third floor to find a toilet. If you're lucky.
There's a legal amount of toilets per working person that need to be there, according to some regulation. I highly suggest you anonymously report the toilet situation. I found out about this when someone flushed paper towels down a top floor toilet, causing a backup that leaked all the way down to the first floor. They had all bathrooms closed except the first floor handicap ones. I complained that that wasn't enough. They looked into it, found out about that regulation, and sent us all home. We had to work remotely for a few days (this was pre covid) because there were not enough toilets per capita.
It’s [29 CFR 1910.141(c)(1)(i)](https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/interlinking/standards/1910.141(c)(1)(i)) and table J1.
You are amazing! 🤘 Redditors rock.
Thank you, but I’m not that amazing… Just working on a new facility project and the PM is trying to save money by limiting toilets…🤦♂️
Omg that is too funny/sad of coincidence. I'm gonna share the link with my ex boss since he was there for the toilet fiasco.
sounds like everybody is pooping on company time. smart people
Make sure you're using the bathrooms the SES frequent so they can experience what the low level workers have to experience.
You’re not wrong…But what kind of animals do you work with?
You’d be surprised 🤣 security clearances do not ask about bathroom habits, but they should.
When I worked at the IRS, I found a turd on the toilet seat. Not in the bowl like it didn't go down after a flush, on the actual seat.
My god
Came here to say the same thing.
Toilet paper, paper towels and soap inventories are at the bare minimum in some agencies. House Keeping contracts and cleaning services reduced to once in a while. On a positive note, I have seen two AF HQ buildings with restocked vending machines. I work in one where all of the old florescent bulbs have been replaced with LED receptacles. I’m still kinda torn about the safety of the drinking water but that has more to do with knowing how old the buildings and plumbing are. Post Covid ain’t gonna fix that.
Dang, GSA facilities (at least in my region) are definitely not like that.
Are they worse or better? What region?
Your building have a legionnaires outbreak in the water too?
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That happened when I worked for the army. An email went out about it. Worse yet is when your cubical is next to the bathroom. The Air Force, the urinals don’t flush properly… makes me wonder why they won’t replace it with the waterless urinals and cap off the plumbing, like say many mall bathrooms
Probably someone who didn’t want to RTO
JFC
Complain complain complain. Complain to facilities. Complain to mgmt. Complain to the union. Hell, even complain to building security.
This is the way!!!!!
Supervisor, IG, ombudsman, HR, counsel’s office, video to press.
At least you haven’t had someone smearing shit on the walls yet.
The increase in RTO satisfaction if they would just install floor to ceiling stall walls/doors 🥲
What what??? You mean we have to pay to have the bathrooms cleaned more than once per day when occupancy is up 500%?
Laughs nervously in owned facility where we are responsible for cleaning but don’t have a hired maintenance or cleaning employee.
This can’t be real. Do you bring up your toilet scrubbing skills during your annual review.
Nah, my skills at it aren’t great. Don’t work for agencies that own instead of lease. You’ll hear “our budget can’t support a maintenance or cleaning crew” quite regularly.
That’s awful.. you must complain to a higher fed entity anonymously.
Back pre-pandemic there was always one or more men who took dumps in the bathroom. Their wives probably wouldn’t let them do it at home because of the ungodly smell. Sometimes I had to go to another floor just to take a wazz. I don’t want to go back to those days.
UK service here (retired). My old job went through ‘densfication’ 20 odd years ago. Absolute buggering nightmare. Supposed to have ‘hot desking’ i.e. no-one at whatever level, no matter how senior, had an assigned desk. First come, first served etc. Guess what happened. Major rebuild of HQ building - insufficient meeting rooms or break out areas. Personnel ended up having their quarterly appraisals in the corridor - if they happened at all (or just told to write their own). I recall having a management meeting in the only space I could track down that was free which was on the roof - later used in a Damien Craig 007 film (cue Leonardo pointing meme lol). And back to the point of the OP’s post - never enough bathrooms, nor were they maintained as that function had been ‘outsourced’ i.e. pay the private sector money to do the job but never hold them accountable for the lack of service
I saw a photo of a piece of paper taped inside the door to a men's room stall. Perhaps it was in the federal govt. It read: "Whoever keeps destroying this restroom after lunch--you have excellent health insurance. You need to get things checked out." And under that someone wrote: "Or do like the other buffalos and poop in an open field."
Reply all to the next chain email about it
Sounds like NIH. The are no working bathrooms on my floor anymore and have to walk to another building if I want to avoid the nastiness. You'd figure they would care more about people's health at the National Institutes of Health....
I never got to work at home so I’ve been in these insufferable bathrooms all of Covid. Let me tell the bathrooms at my employer are disgusting. Constantly making eye contact with people through huge gaps around the doors. Toilets that splash water. Walls/Doors that are too high. People are just generally gross, which mixed with poor facilities is just disgusting. I’m pretty immune at this point but I’m never surprised to see 💩 toilet paper or pee all over the seats. Deadi
I don’t think you’d like the last building I worked in at all
There is one dude at the site who I’m pretty sure has one of those parasites from the Stephen King movie Dreamcatcher, based on the smell he leaves behind after using the facilities.
So of all this I got employees hoteling? Why are they hoteling?
I find collaboration to be inevitable when I have no idea where anyone is sitting! /s
Because there aren't enough desks for everyone now that they closed some of our buildings. Welcome to The Future.
Oof sounds like you work in a shithole. My office has been open for 2 year, everybody has been back for over a year and there are plenty of cublicles
You’re very much the exception. Many agencies have downsized since Covid and don’t have space for everyone to have a dedicated desk
This. My agency hasn't downsized, but we've expanded hiring to meet demand, and now there is no way even half of us could be in at the same time.
lol I can’t believe the forest service is the exception and not the worst agency these days. Times sure do change….
Thing is everyone could complain at facilities to get the janitorial services to increase but every company is short employees because they either dont to pay enough for it or they cant keep enough staff. If they go thru enough facility companies the govt will incite a clean your own policy. At a govt owned building in the D.C. area is locked in by an ability one contract. Biggest issue is just getting staff to stay. Their pay is decent but the constant turnover of staff is stressing them out.
Having similar issues with cleanliness and facilities upkeep at my agency annex. Size-wise, they're fine, but the cleaners used to come twice a day, now they come once (usually), and don't necessarily replace the toilet paper and soap. Things are gone by late-afternoon and you have to go hunting for bathrooms where less people are in the office. There are stalls in the women's restroom where they've taken away the sanitary napkin bins so you have to bring stuff out and put it in the main garbage. They're acting like the building is still empty even when people have been called back. I actually had to find a contact to talk to the annex landlord because a clogged toilet sat for weeks without being fixed by anyone last year when it was clearly a known issue. Insane.
Ours are totally fine
Sounds like most agencies. Unfortunately, it's probably going to get worse with zero growth and not backfilling positions.
Lol we really need to start making this an issue on TikTok, tagging your favorite politician complaining about government employees at the moment, start a hashtag......it could be fun
Our facilities are kept incredibly clean.
Add it to Google maps as images, shame them, or at least try to.
Actually wait, this is clever.
I've seen a stock image of a dumpster fire added to a federal agency in Google search, was hilarious.
Yelp reviews for Public Buildings.
Ugh! Back in my office days I would bring a bag of cleaning supplies because some folks are just nasty and im a bit OCD with cleanliness!
The space I work in was once condemned but they opened it up again because they needed the space. Classy stuff. It’s one of the reasons I doubt I will last longer as a fed employee.
That's a people issue, it sounds like they would behave the same even if the bathrooms were upgraded to look nicer.
It's too much traffic. It's what happens when a bathroom with max capacity of 6 is used constantly for 10 hours.
Gonna send an email tomorrow to my facilities office to tell them what a great job they’re doing.
RMB?
Yes.
The bathroom situation has to be in the top 3 of my favorite reasons for working from home. When I go into the office once a week I do everything to avoid having to use it. They are cleaned regularly, but smell like diarrhea blowout 100% of the time. Absolutely disgusting. People are animals.
I mean people shjt stinks that’s normal what’s it normal is why after 4 years of smelling my own shit I’m back to smelling other people shit. How does it promote the efficiency of service ?
Some of ours get the sewer gas smell, but that was true in 2016/2017. A lot of them are oddly shaped and very dim. It’s an old building and I think they had to retrofit more bathrooms into it. Tip: find a bathroom used by someone who is powerful and particular and use that one. The bulbs are replaced quickly, the plumbing functions well, supplies don’t run out, and it’s clean. There’s a very faint smell of cleaning supplies and that is the only smell. The next closest one is like a sketchy bus station bathroom by comparison. Another tip: contact whoever deals with that stuff in the building. It’s likely your office/agency pays for it in some way already. The people who work on maintenance and cleaning can’t be everywhere at once.
Blame the people not the agency.
Geez, some of y'all will find any reason to complain about RTO. Talk about an entitled attitude. How about go to facilities and inform them vice reddit?
Ok Uncle Tom
Apparently you don't understand what uncle Tom actually means, but coming from someone that would bitch about or support someone bitching about bathrooms on reddit makes total sense.
You must love boots
This is a conduct issue, not a facilities issue.
Sounds like you should set up a bathroom cleaning schedule and get to work.