A New Broom Sweeps Through The Drivers Routine

'What have you broken now?' said the boss as I returned, with a resigned sigh. I held up a window cleaning squeegee and the rubber became detached from the plastic claw and fell to the grimy floor.

'Last week it was the mop,' he went on, being accompanied by plenty of sighs.

'And the week before it was the bucket,' the sigh had become one long, continuous blast.

There was some valid excuse. A new regime had been instituted by the other boss. Because of the high diesel prices, buses were to have to park up, usually in a lay-by rather than returning to base. And as we were being paid to sit in the county's finest lay-bys, a light bulb had gone off inside the boss's head and he came up with the ingenious idea of making the drivers clean the buses while they waited. So we were equipped with their own personalised bucket, mop, squeegee, dusters, bottle of Flash, can of Pledge and various rubber and plastic implements which I hadn't a clue what to do with them.

If there was the remotest chance that we would forget the bucket, our names were written on in large letters, written in black indelible ink. The buckets were then placed in a line on a bench near the duty roster sheet. It meant that it was physically impossible to walk past them without feeling embarrassed.

The idea was right. The execution was not so good. They were so cheap and badly made that they caused consternation. It took an age to put the mop together. When it was assembled, it wobbled  and fell to pieces. The only way, I found to keep it together was to use some brute force and push it downwards onto the floor. It snapped.

I never thought I would take pleasure in looking at other people's cleaning equipment. But I was so enthralled to see a proper wooden brush (picture above) on a boat the other day. That was until I read the writing on the wood. 'Toilet Brush' it read. I moved away a little.

Maybe the crap brushes on the buses were not so bad.