When it came time to sign yearbooks, student at one Illinois elementary school were after one signature — the janitor's.

Second graders at Alan Shepard Elementary School lined up to their yearbooks signed by Steve Weidner, who's been a custodian there for 15 years.

The photo of him with the entire class anxiously waiting for his ink was posted on RedditFriday morning and quickly went viral. It's been viewed more than 3 million times.

The school's principal told WGN-TV Weidner is a rockstar with the students for a good reason.

More at source: AOL

Find A Janitorial Service Here

STATELINE (AP) — A Lake Tahoe casino employee has been arrested on suspicion of theft after police said he made off with a bundle of $100 bills totaling $10,000 that had been accidentally dropped by a gambler.

Douglas County sheriff's deputies say the gambler had won $70,000 and was walking to an elevator from the Harrah's Tahoe casino floor when he dropped the wad of cash early Wednesday.

Contract janitorial worker Richard Ferrer is accused of sweeping the money into a dustpan, then heading to the employee break room.

The Record-Courier newspaper of Gardnerville reports the entire incident was caught on tape and the suspect told security personnel he stashed the money in a garbage can, where all but $100 was recovered.

The 36-year-old Ferrer told deputies he intended to turn the money over to his supervisor at his next break except for $100, which he planned to keep to himself. That $100 was found under the same garbage can.

The policy for both the Stateline casino and the contractor calls for employees to turn such money over to security.

___

Information from: Gardnerville Record-Courier

Find a janitorial service here. 

Fumes from cleaning products used at work can make existing asthma worse, according to a new study of professional cleaning service employees.

Products such as bleach, glass cleaner, detergents and air fresheners exacerbated asthma-related symptoms for the women, and their reduced lung function lasted until the morning after exposure, in some cases getting worse with time.

"These results support the importance of developing workplace health and safety practices designed to limit exposures to irritant chemicals in cleaning products," the study team writes in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

A wide variety of cleaning products are used by workers in settings like offices, factories and hospitals, write David Vizcaya, of the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center in Canada, and his colleagues. Professional cleaning services are necessary to clean, disinfect, and control dust and mold on surfaces, but a number of studies in recent years have reported associations between exposure to cleaning products and asthma, the researchers note.

Vizcaya and his team evaluated respiratory symptoms over about two weeks in 21 women who had asthma symptoms within the past year, eight of whom also had a longer history of asthma. All were employees of cleaning companies in Barcelona, Spain.

More at source: Huffington Post

Find A Green Cleaning Service Here.

VIDEO: Local woman leads largest janitorial supply business in Indy

 WRTVSHOW CAPTION

Story highlights:

• Laura Sniadecki is leading her family's 100-year-old business into a new age.
• A.G. Maas Company is the oldest janitorial supply company in Indianapolis.
• Laura stays busy as president of the company, but says her most important roles are wife and mom.

Full video and story here at Channel 6 The Indy Channel

Find a janitorial service here.

How about a robotic vacuum that promises to do the job for you? Consumer Reports just tested 6 of the newest versions for noise, run time, and cleaning performance.

Using sensors to map out a room, some do a good job covering ground randomly.
Others clean the floor in a grid pattern.

All can navigate beneath furniture and in and out of tight spaces, but take stock of the area you’re cleaning. You might have to move some furniture. And you may have to pick up wires or cables that will confuse the robot or even entangle it.

Consumer Reports found that some robo vacs aren’t as good  as others. The least
expensive,  the $400 Neato XV-21, didn’t do a great job cleaning carpets or bare floors.

More at source: Ky3

Find a human cleaning service here. 

 

Lincoln mother of five who struggled with addiction and depression died Sunday in Nebraska City, apparently from inhaling a dust cleaner.

Rachel E. Novak was found in the bathroom of a Nebraska City apartment late Sunday morning.

Otoe County Attorney David Partsch said police found a can of Blow Off Duster near her. He said her death appears to be accidental.

Novak lived in Lincoln but had been staying off and on in Nebraska City for the past year, her mother said Tuesday.

"She always struggled in school and had learning and memory problems," Beth Novak said. "Rachel was really just a good kid until her senior year in high school."

That's when she stopped taking medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and started to self-medicate, her mother said.

"She needed someone with her all the time helping her, and when she was left alone she was overwhelmed," Beth Novak said.

Rachel Novak's sister Carolyn Weese said her sister was very outgoing and loved animals and kids, but she struggled with drugs and was depressed.

More at source: Journal Star

Find a cleaning service here. 

SEBRING — The Highlands County School District is saving money by outsourcing custodian services, but the school board has scheduled a workshop to study supply shortages at the schools and to discuss keeping the schools’ plant operator on the district payroll.

School Board Vice Chair Donna Howerton said the board was informed at Tuesday’s school board meeting that schools have been running short of custodial supplies such as paper towels and cleaning materials.

Schools are supposed to have up to three weeks of supplies on hand, she said. The schools say they are ordering the supplies, but they don’t have a three-week supply on their premises.

The school district contracts with GCA, which Assistant Superintendent of Business Operations Mike Averyt is a professional cleaning company with standardized procedures, supplies and training.

In the past schools purchased a six-month supply of custodial needs and had them on the shelves, Averyt explained.

The problem was controlling that much inventory.

More at source: Highlands Today

Find a janitorial service here. 

The crew behind a big time dirty air duct cleaning fraud News 4's Chris Nagus exposed in November didn't give up.

After Nagus confronted their operation in St. Louis, they headed south to Atlanta.

The men behind Anytime Duct Cleaning upsold elderly homeowners in the St. Louis area, telling them their air ducts were dirty and filled with mold.

They offered air duct cleaning for $54.95, then slapped homeowners like Janet Becker of Florissant with outrageous, never agreed-to bills.

Becker owed more than $2,700.

The company went by Anytime, but according to the Better Business Bureau also went by AAA and AA Duct Cleaning.

As a result of News 4's investigation, the Missouri Attorney General issued a temporary restraining order, banning the company from operating in Missouri.

So the company headed south to Georgia.

News 4's sister station in Atlanta found out and set up their own sting.

Video and more at source: Fox

Find a cleaning service here. 

Gastrointestinal illness has gripped 112 people on the cruise ship Celebrity Infinity, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control.

Of the ship’s 2,117 passengers, 106 have suffered from vomiting, diarrhea and other symptoms, the CDC said. The illness has also affected six members of the 964-person crew.

The CDC determined Monday that the outbreak was caused by norovirus. Two staffers from the agency boarded the West Coast-based ship Monday in San Diego.

The Infinity left San Diego on March 29. It made its last stop in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on April 10, according to MarineTraffic.com.

Celebrity Cruises has been taking action since the outbreak began, including increasing cleaning and disinfection procedures, keeping passengers informed and taking specimens from the afflicted for testing by the CDC, the agency says.

This is the third time the Celebrity Infinity has suffered an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness, with others occurring in 2006 and 2013. The ship was built in 2001 and refurbished in 2011.

On Monday, the CDC also put out a report on another San Diego-bound ship, Royal Caribbean’s Legend of the Seas. Of the 1,763 passengers on that ship, 114 have reported ill with vomiting and diarrhea, according to the CDC. Two crew members have also been affected.

Find a cleaning service here. 

More at source:Fox