Cleaning a few windows at an old Irish hospital - Very few

On the first day, an annoying little Englishman said we'd have to get a signature from every ward in every building. "Did you hear the mouth on him," Diarmuid said, which is funny because the Irish curse a lot. I don't know how much his English-ness made him seem foul-mouthed to Diarmuid; but I had found him dirty, too. Anyway, The little fella gave us a packet of sheets that listed the wards, including space for a signature on each of them. And he was adamant that one signature for the whole job wasn't going to be good enough. This was really bad news.

In even the moderately-sized "Sacred Heart" orthopedic building, there were ten wards. That meant getting the signatures of ten women. You could expect to meet at least one who was intent upon seeing that you'd done the job right — in other words, that you'd done the job.

We fretted about this. The implication was that we'd have to clean every window; or at the least that we would have to "chance the arm" in every one of the many wards throughout the whole raft of individual contracts. The mere act of chasing down signatures would make the job last considerably longer. Diarmuid asked our supervisor and he said that the contract stipulated one signature for each building. Never mind the ward supervisors. We made the appearance on two days, and did most of the work at Sacred Heart orthopedic — but not all of it. The maintenance man encountered us a couple of times around the place during, but we didn't see him or look for him at sign-off time. Diarmuid got the receptionist's signature on the docket, and we moved on. At Community Care, a smaller building on the other side of the complex, I tried to get the signature, but the head nurse refused. We had to finish the building — most of it. She signed the docket.

It's kind of bad sometimes, but you can't clean every window — and you have to act like you did. You get stuck between corruption and little old nuns who don't understand it. The sister at Community Care had noted that the mortuary was included on that docket, and we'd have to come back and do that. The door was locked. We left it. The docket had been signed.... The other smaller buildings went without a hitch.

Then it was time for the dreaded St. Patrick's. Patrick's is big, and it's complex. Just looking at every window takes a bit of time. This is the main, old hospital building. It's a big old building with bizzarre ammendments that have no aesthetic relationship to the old grey limestone original.

Out back, in one of the set of awkward protrusions, is a four-story-tall section just full of windows made of small panes — too small to fit a squeegee, and extending higher than our biggest ladder. There are other ongodly contructions back there, too, some awkward-looking glass.

We agonized over Patrick's. We showed up there for days, hardly motivated to work. We spent a bit of time in front of the building; we did some inside windows. Diarmuid did a real good job on the general office, and we naturally did all the windows in that area. Somebody said that the wooden ones upstairs were going to be replaced, so we didn't go near them.

It was a terrible process of doing slight bits of the work against the resistance of dis-motivation and without the incentive of a "job done" goal.... only the docket mattered, only the signature.

Some of the windows in Patrick's were manky Some looked as if they hadn't been cleaned in years, and probably hadn't. And there were hundreds. There were more than hundreds.

We made our way about the building in an un-organized fashion.

Then, after a time, Diarmuid suggested I get the signature. I didn't like the idea, but couldn't really argue with it. He would normally care for that procedure, and wasn't paid a supervisory wage. Plus, he provided transport. As a request, it was more than fair. I took the docket book to the receptionist's desk. It was a Sunday. She would have referred me to the office on a weekday, she said. She didn't know whether or not it was okay for her to give her signature. She went upstairs to find somebody. An older gentleman came down the stair, and brought me up to the room where he'd been sitting. He brought me to the nearest window, which had not been cleaned.

It overlooked the front of the building, where we'd just been working. He couldn't sign the docket. He was friendly about it.

We cleaned some more windows. For a couple more days we made an appearance. We worried more. If we had to do every window, we knew, we'd be screwed. We considered turning the job away. We had that option. It would only have meant losing the work we'd done.

At the end of the next business week, Diarmuid decided he'd give it a try. We had all our gear packed up to go, and he went into the building while I waited. When he got back to the car, he looked disappointed.

Heading out of the parking lot, he said "look in the docket book." Why? Just look. A little irritated, I did so. There was our signature. "It was brilliant," he said. He'd caught them at the head office when they were leaving for the day — for the week. A head manager had had just enough time to chat briefly and to sign the docket.

Later, at the pub, I told the story to a friend of ours, with special attention to the part about the guy who'd shown me the uncleaned windows.

Liam said "That's because Americans have the strange idea that you should do the work that you get paid for."