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:

NYT Best Seller Dr. Kate Clifford Larson on Fannie Lou Hamer & the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Kate Clifford Larson, a New York Times best-selling biographer of Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer. Kate shares why she has written about these historical African-American figures, and how she thinks parents, teachers, and schools can draw on their lives to talk about race.

Valhalla Foundation’s Nancy Poon Lue on STEM Access & Equity

This week on “The Learning Curve," host Gerard Robinson talks with Nancy Poon Lue, incoming Senior Director at the Valhalla Foundation, where she will be leading their K-12 math funding initiatives. Nancy shares her recent work with the EF+Math Program, some of the challenges America has faced in ensuring students have a strong grounding in math and science, and the kinds of results she aims to achieve for kids in all ZIP codes. 

Untangling Variants & Outbreaks: Can Vaccines & Natural Immunity Outrun Delta?

Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with author, surgeon, and public health expert Dr. Marty Makary about the COVID-19 Delta Variant, the durability of natural and vaccinated immunity, the benefits of booster shots, and the health risks for children as we move into the fall.

Trevor Mattos Shows How Massachusetts Runs on Immigrants

This week on JobMakers, Host Denzil Mohammed talks with Trevor Mattos, research manager at Boston Indicators, the research center at The Boston Foundation, which educates state and local leaders on the important contributions immigrants are making. They discuss the urgency of this work, particularly in a time of divisive disinformation about immigrants and the uncertainty of the pandemic, and some of the surprising findings on the disproportionately large impact immigrant workers, entrepreneurs and innovators are having on the local economy

Yale’s Pulitzer-Winning Prof. David Blight on Frederick Douglass, Slavery, & Emancipation

This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara Candal and guest co-host Derrell Bradford talk with David Blight, Sterling Professor of American History and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

UVA Prof. E.D. Hirsch, Jr. on Core Knowledge, Equity, & Educating Citizens

This week on “The Learning Curve," co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Professor E.D. Hirsch, Jr., founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, and acclaimed author of the books, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation.