In this country, there are always "janitors" to clean the facility so people do not learn to clean except maybe at their own home. As a person grown up in Japan, it was a totally different story. At school, we clean our own classrooms, bathrooms, hallways, everywhere! even outside streets. There are no janitors so we are all responsible to keep our school clean. We learn to work as a group and learn how to clean. I remember that I was so surprised to hear that kids don't clean at school in this country!
I really like the idea of "clean on our own". After all, it's our school, our work area, our stuff... Shouldn't we be responsible for our own mess?
2 コメント:
I enjoyed reading this post. I also believe in cleaning our stuff ourselves. I think cleaning our own school taught us more than just "how to clean". Like you said, it taught us to work in team and to help each other... My mom used to tell me "clean your given area and also clean bit of your next person's area as well because if you say "hey, the line ends here" and your friend also says the same thing, there'll always be a small gap that'll not be cleaned by neither of you". I feel that this concept of doing your own stuff and doing bit more than what you are given to do became part of who I am...for example, at work, I don't like hearing people go, "it's not my job to do this and that" cause if everyone says that, there will always be some jobs that'll fall under no one's task list...
I noticed in your post that you said "this task used to be a headache to a manager"...have American workers at your company gotten used to cleaning their own work stations now that they are working there for a while?
I totally agree with you and what you said about the "boundary" of own task is very American. They are very proud to be specialized to their OWN work/task but the line is very clear and if tasks are not falling into their boundary, they insist that that is not their job. That is so familiar here... same for the cleaning. Unfortunately my American colleagues used to think it was not their job, but now they are used to it.
Nowadays we have "5S" program, which force every single employee to clean and wipe their own work area, which we never did that past year. There are still some who think it's stupid to clean, but majority are cooperating very well and now our office is much cleaner!!!
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