Charles
We have a cleaner. His name is Charles. Charles is a man of few words. When he picks up the phone all he mumbles is: “Charles”. At first I can never figure out who’s calling me. “Who’s there?” I say. He responds with more mumbling, until eventually he screams his name out of pure frustration:
”Charles!” Out of politeness, and a sense of guilt because I never recognise his voice, I try to have a little friendly conversation. “Oh, hi Charles, how are you doing?” “Fine.” I hear. The conversations are somewhat unusual. But Charles is fantastic at his job. He mops the floors with military precision. Out of admiration I take my shoes off to carefully tread onto the shining floors after he’s finished. Even unexplainably tip toeing sometimes.
But there is one problem. Charles doesn’t understand why we buy eco friendly cleaning products. “What is this?”, says Charles with a look of disgust on his face while taking out a bottle of our Ecover toilet cleanser. “That’s a very good brand and it’s better for the environment…”, “No good”, he says firmly. I don’t know what to say.
Charles loves chemicals. Stuff that gives the kitchen a glossy sheen and leaves the toilet with the unmistakable smell of bleach. I guess I understand where’s he’s coming from. I used to have a dirt phobia. Everything had to be anti-bacterial. Everything was dirty. But now I know that we’re just polluting ourselves by using chemical cleaning products. We make our water and our earth dirty, and therefore ourselves.
But how do you explain that to a cleaning super hero who hardly communicates? “We have to buy this stuff”, I try (although it comes out kind of weakly). While shaking his head and sighing, Charles grabs the vacuum. Maybe the time has come for me to grab my own vacuum again. Or could I convince him slowly? The eco friendly soap has already been accepted, now the rest. I have to strategise my approach.
“Bye”, says Charles while he heads for the door. “Thanks very much Charles, have nice day!”, I yell quickly. But he’s already gone.
