5 Guidelines for Protecting Our Residential Building Maintenance Staff

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

Many, many of us in Boston and its surrounding communities and indeed across the state live in apartment or condominium buildings.  In our cities, we urban cliff dwellers live cheek by jowl with little thought until now that we should be practicing physical distancing. We are also very used to the convenience of building managers or superintendents, accepting or delivering our packages, letting repair people into our units, in some cases greeting our visitors, or coming to assist us in our units if a problem develops with our appliances or any household apparatus.

While we are now practicing physical distancing, we may not be giving a lot of thought to our supers or building managers and what we as residents should do to help keep them safe. These employees who make our lives comfortable and convenient and perform all kinds favors and kindnesses for residents face the same dangers that we face, only they are supposed to continue performing their jobs.  In my condo building in Cambridge, our management company, First Residential, a very large national firm, has issued guidelines  to our residents to help keep residents and our building super and maintenance people safe.  Here they are below and I hope you find them helpful.

  1. Maintenance and the superintendent should not be asked to enter a unit unless there is a true emergency.
  2. Residents should postpone scheduling any non-essential trades people to be in the building.
  3. All requests of the building super should be done by phone.
  4. Do not go to the building maintenance office or the superintendent’s unit.
  5. Do not make requests for utility shut offs, or access to common areas unless there is a real emergency.

In addition to the above, those of us in apartment or condo buildings usually take elevators on a daily basis.  As a courtesy to one another, it is probably wise not to share elevators with residents from other units and it would be  good idea also to wear gloves or place something between your finger and the elevator floor buttons. This same wisdom should be applied in all common areas and all commonly used entrances and exits. While our employees are most likely wiping down buttons and doorknobs, they can’t do it every time someone enters or leaves the building, so a little help from all of us makes our buildings safer.

Do YOU have tips to share? Add them as comments below!

Get Our COVID-19 News, Tips & Resources!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Read Our COVID-19 Roundups:

Kelly Smith, Prenda CEO, on Microschooling & the Future of K-12 Learning

/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Kelly Smith, founder and CEO of Prenda, a company that helps create flexible learning environments known as microschools. Often described as the “reinvention of the one-room school house,” microschools combine homeschooling, online education, smaller class sizes, mixed age-level groupings, flipped classrooms, and personalized learning.

Lockdowns – Lawless or Laudable? Grading Gov. Baker’s COVID-19 Emergency Orders 6 Months On

Join Joe Selvaggi and Pioneer Institute’s executive director Jim Stergios for a conversation with Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby about the lawsuit against the Massachusetts Governor’s executive orders. They will explore what can be learned from the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what must be considered when devising a new way forward.

“City Upon a Hill” Massachusetts Monuments & Memorials: 25 Resources for K-12 Education

In Pioneer’s ongoing series of blogs here, here, here, and here on curricular resources for parents, families, and teachers during COVID-19, this one focuses on: Introducing K-12 schoolchildren to Massachusetts monuments & memorials.

U-Ark Prof. Jay Greene & EdChoice’s Jason Bedrick on Yeshivas vs. New York & Religious Liberty

/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Jay Greene, the Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and Jason Bedrick, the Director of Policy for EdChoice. They discuss their timely new book, Religious Liberty and Education: A Case Study of Yeshivas vs. New York, about the recent battle between Orthodox Jewish private schools and New York's state government over the content of instruction.

Drug Rebates: How Pharmacy Benefit Managers Manipulate Price & Limit Choice

/
Join host Joe Selvaggi and his guest Dr. Bill Smith as they discuss the complex incentive structure between drug manufacturers, health plans, and pharmacy benefit managers. In this episode, they focus on how drug rebates work and how a system intended to optimize value may actually deliver higher costs and fewer choices. Joe and Bill also use this framework to speculate on the price of a COVID-19 vaccine, and who will likely pay for it.

Michelle Rhee, Former Chancellor, D.C. Public Schools, on Leading Urban District Reform & the COVID-19 Moment

/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and guest co-host Kerry McDonald are joined by Michelle Rhee, founder and former CEO of StudentsFirst and prior to that, former chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS).