First day working for another carpet cleaning company horrible!!!

Well everyone, I started a new carpet cleaning tech job aside from my own business to help with the slow hours during the winter.

I got to the job site in the morning, a 25 story condominium. I was told that with two portables and 3 workers we have a total of 12 hours to clean roughly 18000sqft of carpet (all hallways).

I'm thinking this is ridiculous, they are one cord 100psi crap portables with almost shot vac motors. How can you even clean properly with them to begin with let alone clean at all doing 750sft an hour.


To cap everything off: THEY DONT PRE-SPRAY/AGITATE/DWELL. They do nothing at all, they only extract with hot water using the dinky 1.5" inch wands with low flow two jet.

I am 6"2 and using the tiny dinky wands that come with the portables will have my back shot in less than a month. Especially with the scraping technique the head technician wants me to use.

The general manager is a great guy but doesn't know anything about carpet cleaning and has counted on his two 18 year veteran employees to tell him how it's supposed to be done. In fact today is the first time the general manager of business contracts has ever been on the job site to see his technicians clean.

I think I have to be upfront with him and tell him that they are essentially ripping their clients off by spray and sucking and not really cleaning the carpets. I mean I can clean at least 1300sq/ft an hour using a CIMEX with decent chems and get the carpets looking a lot better than they will ever looking using the methods that his veteran employees use.

I mean i'm only 22 years old and I hate to tell off 50+ year old so called veteran carpet cleaners. But I have to call Hacks when I see them. I noticed a large coffee stain in front of the door and I said we needed to treat that with the proper chems (a peroxide/ammonia preferred chem), instead they told the general manager up front that they just need water to extract and that's all. I shut off my portable and asked the general manager if I could be frank. He said yes, so I told him that we are not following industry standards set out by the IICRC by a lightyear. I told him that I would show him proper techniques and equipment if he was interested. I am going to follow it up with a crash course 1080p video so he can see the stark contrast between a technician and a Hack who wants to get the job done in 4 hours so he can sit around for a day and a half and smoke while getting paid.

Needless to say I have created some bad blood between the hack employees and myself. But I don't care, I am going to re-vamp their carpet cleaning division to something that at least meets proper standards for carpet cleaning.

Anyways my 2 cents for the day, I am juts so glad I have TMF to vent and be amongst professionals that actually clean carpet properly.

I didn't tell my boss off, He was actually asking me about certain methods and was interested to know about all these other things. From what I gathered he wants to increase efficiency and provide the client with the best job the company has to offer. It's the other two employees (carpet techs) who are set in their ways and cut corners and essentially cheat the company out of decent work.

The manager is completely up to suggestions he told me, so I will give them to him.

I mean I honestly don't care if I get fired, not like a need the cash really bad. I just think those techs need to get put in their place and the manager needs to know how they really work when he is not around and all the shady crap they try to pull (leaving early, half assed cleaning, constant smoke breaks etc etc.)

lol your right shane. I probably shouldn't. But it is my nature, we live in a town of over a million and business is everywhere. Helping the general manager improve his business isn't going to hurt mine.

Not telling them how to run their business. I'm showing them how to clean carpets. This is what they do right?

I thought you guys were all against the splash and dash low balling cleaners that take your jobs away? Whose side are we on here.