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:

COVID-19 Roundup from Pioneer: Human testing of a vaccine; NYT best-selling author John Barry on COVID-19 & warmer weather; Just who’s getting stimulus $?; Latest unemployment #s; What will reopening look like?; Tipping point for Telehealth & more!

/
Pioneer staff share their top picks for COVID-19 stories highlighting useful resources, best practices, and questions we should be asking our public and private sector leaders.

New York Times #1 best-selling author John M. Barry on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic & lessons for COVID-19

/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard continue coverage of COVID-19’s impact on K-12 education, joined by John M. Barry, author of the #1 New York Times best seller, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

The past six weeks of Massachusetts unemployment claims total 24.0 percent of civilian workforce

/
The U.S. Department of Labor released its weekly report on jobless claims this morning at 8:30 a.m., reporting that Massachusetts received 70,714 initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims during the week ended April 25. This brings the total of unemployment claims filed in Massachusetts since March 14, the beginning of the unemployment surge, to 725,018. 

Re-opening for business: What should employers and commercial real estate managers do to prepare?

/
Weeks away from re-opening, now is a time when employers and real estate managers must act. To assist our community in doing a great job of preparing, Pioneer Institute, in partnership with the law firm of Verrill, is sharing two checklists that will help you keep your employees safe, anticipate challenges, and develop feasible and useful methods to successfully deal with those challenges when they do.

Report Finds “Reopening Day” in the Commonwealth Will Likely Include Phasing in Businesses and Contact Tracing

New study compares the reopening of three European countries – Austria, Denmark, and Germany – to highlight approaches that could inform the Commonwealth’s reopening strategy.

To Read or Not to Read Shakespeare? 12 Great Ways to Get to Know The Bard During COVID-19

/
With school closures impacting 50 million children across America, and a challenging transition to remote learning,  many parents are seeking supplementary material to enrich their children's academic experience during COVID-19.  Fortunately, there is a wealth of information available to introduce children of all ages to, arguably, the greatest literary figure in the English-speaking world, William Shakespeare.