The Cost of a Janitor

[moksha]

I wonder what the cost of having a dedicated janitor in every church would be. Do you think we could afford it?

[RubinHighlander]

How long ago was it TSCC reduced building maintenance staff here in UT and started having their Saints receive the blessing of scrubbing those toilets? Like 15 years ago?

Makes me wonder if they have the church office building staff doing all the cleaning there instead of hiring it out.
"Here's you toilet brush Rusty, you are on the rotation list for this week."

[Hagoth]

I wonder what the cost of having a dedicated janitor in every church would be. Do you think we could afford it?

"We are not a wealthy people but we are good people, and we share what we have." Neil L. Anderson

I ran and raised the suff’rer up;
Thrice from the stream he drained my cup,

If we can't afford to help people get safe water when they ask for it, we obviously can't afford janitors. By my calculation, Ensign Peak only has enough funds available to drill 25 million wells in Africa.

[nibbler]

One hundred and one billion. That's why we don't have them yet.

[Red Ryder]

I’m ok with members cleaning weekly.

But God forbid, can we please have someone do a deep clean on a quarterly basis?

Our building smells so bad when you walk in even the Holy Ghost gets offended as we all swear under our breath.

It’s a hint of mold, dirty diapers, stale air, and dirty deacon socks!

[Just This Guy]

I’m ok with members cleaning weekly.

But God forbid, can we please have someone do a deep clean on a quarterly basis?

Our building smells so bad when you walk in even the Holy Ghost gets offended as we all swear under our breath.

It’s a hint of mold, dirty diapers, stale air, and dirty deacon socks!

While I don't argue that the lack of proper cleaning is not a major factor, but I think there is another aspect that is making the problem worse.

In one of their many cost cutting activities, they do not run building AC systems during the week when no one is in the building. OR if they do, it is to a very minimal level. The results in air that stagnates through the week. Moisture in the air is not removed and fresh air is not cycled in. This is a perfect breeding ground for mold and other stuff.

On top of that, maintenance also seams to be minimal. Half the time, instead of calling in a pro, they will guilt a member into trying to fix issues. SO if there are issues they may not be fix and the stuff that is is either down wrong or to the minimal level. It is very likely that bathrooms may not be venting outside properly. Things like baptismal fonts could be contributing additional moisture to the air as well.


In my former ward, the person who was the janitor was forcibly retired in 1999. My mother-in-law was a janitor for CES and maintained the institute building at the university where I met DW. She kept having her hours cut back more and more until 2010 when she told them that she wasn't allowed enough hours to properly do her job and quit.

[moksha]

The cost of maintaining General Authorities is pretty pricey. How many of them do we actually need?

Could the General Conference talks and Firesides be turned over to AI and perhaps have it set to dynamic speaking styles?

Could be fashioned in the image of Paul H. Dunn: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EW7KYvV9rw0

[Gatorbait]

First of all, I think there are way too many meeting houses. In my travels to Utah especially, it is a ridiculous waste of resources. That said, I think that the church ought to hire people to clean the churches, at least the large ones.

Many times I've gone to clean the church and have not minded doing it unless just a few people show up and then it is a burden.

The worst part about the church cleaning business is the poor sap who has the "calling" to get people there to clean it all year. Yuck.

[stuck]

I am on the cleaning crew in our ward. We do it every 3rd month. This is our month and I was only able to do it 1x this month due to being out of town and such. So yes the poor people in charge are stuck with the brunt of it and it's a lot of work for just a couple of people. It would be nice if someone could start a campaign to change this. Also they like to put people like us in there because for myself I am not keen on too many other callings.

[blazerb]

The cost of maintaining General Authorities is pretty pricey. How many of them do we actually need?

Could the General Conference talks and Firesides be turned over to AI and perhaps have it set to dynamic speaking styles?

Could be fashioned in the image of Paul H. Dunn: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EW7KYvV9rw0

We could always ask members to start doing GA work. Every now and then, you'd get called to give a talk at a stake conference or, more rarely, general conference. Members might not be as good at lying about the church's finances, but I'm sure they could do well enough.

[sparky]

Some back of the envelope calculations:

There are ~31000 congregations (wards+branches) worldwide. Most chapels host more than one ward, but maybe in less Mormony places in the world it's still just one ward per chapel. So we'll estimate a ceiling of maybe 20,000 chapels.

Median salary for a full time worker in the US is ~$56K. This would be a large overestimate for a janitor as there are many places in the world where a lower salary would be sufficient, and the job wouldn't necessarily need to be full time.

That puts an upper estimate of $1.1 billion per year. Again, this is probably much more than it would actually cost for the reasons I mentioned above. This is approximately the amount of excess tithing that goes into the Ensign Peak fund every year according to the Widow's Mite Report. And the church gets untold more income from all their for-profit businesses.

So yes, the church could easily afford this.

[2bizE]

Using a real janitor would give back so much time to the 10 families that clean toilets every few weeks

[Mayan_Elephant]

Using a real janitor would give back so much time to the 10 families that clean toilets every few weeks

Also, using a real janitor would give back dignity to the 10 families that clean toilets for the other 10 families.

It really is this simple - if the corporation can't afford to maintain and service their buildings, they should divest.

[Hagoth]

Using a real janitor would give back so much time to the 10 families that clean toilets every few weeks

They'd just find another way to steal it from you. Preferably something even more humiliating than cleaning toilets, if they could think of it.

[Just This Guy]

Where I work, when Covid hit, they hired a local janitorial company to clean and sanitize the office, bathrooms and breaks rooms. It was the most practical way to comply with state and company requirements and still keep the factory running. One thing they found is that everyone appreciated having clean, non-smelly bathrooms. Eventually, as Covid ended, the sterilization requirements went away. The plant manager made the call to keep the cleaning of the bathrooms. Sterilization of the office and break rooms got dropped, but we kept that part. Yeah, it's an expense, but it is something that makes life a bit better for everyone. It may not be much but it's a perk for working at this company. In a competitive hiring market, it helps.

This is something that we had enough success with, that it has become company standard.

The contract is for the contractor to clean all bathrooms in the building, twice a day. We provide things like toilet paper and paper towel, but they provide any needed chemicals. Carpeted offices and common areas are vacuumed once a day in the afternoon. They normally send 2 people and it takes them about an hour to take care of everything. So a total of 4 man-hours a day, 20 man-hours a week. It costs between $1,000-2,000 a week. I'm sure they making a descent profit.

So lets take a single meeting house. More to vacuum, but fewer bathrooms and less time walking across a large building. Ideally, you would want to clean twice a week. On Monday after Sunday services and late in the week after Wednesday night youth activities. This is a guess, but 4 man-hours each time? That would be 8 man-hours a week. Let say a cost of $25/hour (includes burdens like payroll taxes, etc.) Maybe $100 a week for consumables (chemicals, etc). That gives us a weekly costs of $300 a week. Let's say a quarterly deep clean costs $1000. This comes to an annual total of $19,600. I'll round to $20k to make the math easier.

There are 14,614 congregations in the US. Lets say average 1.5 wards per building. 7,307 total building. Round that up to 7,500. Overall that is a total cost of $150M for the US. Likely much lower since minimum wage in Utah where most of the buildings would be is much lower than the . If you average costs out, it is only about $10,000 per ward a year to have a clean building. Most wards take in more money than that each week in tithing.

[2bizE]

We know that the members do the regular cleaning of the church, but he church does have deep cleaners come in and do additional cleaning and maintenance that the members don’t do. You would never guess who in my area owns the company that deep cleans many church buildings…..three guesses….








If you guessed the stake president you would be correct.

[Mayan_Elephant]

We know that the members do the regular cleaning of the church, but he church does have deep cleaners come in and do additional cleaning and maintenance that the members don’t do. You would never guess who in my area owns the company that deep cleans many church buildings…..three guesses….








If you guessed the stake president you would be correct.

I wonder if cleaning a church would not be so bad if the damn building looked like a church and not like a cinder block plastic-topped MLM meeting and storage center. I hope they have a repetitive process for tearing those rectangle shitholes down as fast as they scrape the ground and build them.

[Angel]

Service is great, men cleaning their own toilets is great (though amazing amount of virtue signaling with it isn't so great). Some things are not really service. Missionary work isn't service, it is advertising. (Is someone selling a political view serving? selling anything isn't charity). If the $$ saved actually went to homeless shelters, hospitals, care of disabled and elderly that would be one thing. As is, the saved $$ goes to corporation - would it be teaching your kids a good lesson to force them to clean up the offices at Chevron? would it be a good lesson to freely do yard work for some billionaire? True service - clean that poor elderly lady's home - not the church. Some facilities person who needs the work out there - and put kids to work in better service opportunities. good-better-best.

Charity = helping those who genuinely cannot help themselves.
Getting used = helping those who could do it themselves, but would rather you do it for free for them, would like to see you as doormat.

[moksha]

True service - clean that poor elderly lady's home - not the church. Some facilities person who needs the work out there - and put kids to work in better service opportunities.

Sometimes you can spot a cluster of conditions in those who need help: Poor balance, decreased eyesight and hearing, pain in their joints, bent-over posture, and white hair. Chapels tend to have none of those conditions.

[Angel]

True service - clean that poor elderly lady's home - not the church. Some facilities person who needs the work out there - and put kids to work in better service opportunities.

Sometimes you can spot a cluster of conditions in those who need help: Poor balance, decreased eyesight and hearing, pain in their joints, bent-over posture, and white hair. Chapels tend to have none of those conditions.

really frustrating. when those who actually do need help don't get it.

As RS secretary, I collected address/info of new people in ward. A homeless girl walked in one day, and I treated her just like anyone else. No one helped her. She lived in her car in front of our house for almost a year (would not come inside, had been severely abused by brother so could not go home... until brother killed himself... and is now back home). My bishop told me "people like that, I give them $50 - gas money - to get them out of my area".

No long term help. If you are disabled, elderly, permanently handicapped in any way - there is no support for you from the church.

Each time I go into a Catholic hospital, or volunteer at shelter etc. I pay attention to what groups support them. What groups have real charity.