It got into all the vehicles and sometimes the standard vacuum cleaners that they had down at the Cleaning Section weren't sufficiently powerful. Or, in the case of the wet mud, they didn't make any impact at all and different cleaning materials were needed. And the other problem was that in the various car parks the vehicles would have different sorts of dirt in them - not all the same kind. This was because those scruffy, inconsiderate drivers would drive many different vehicles in a day and go to different destinations and walk over different terrains. Their cross-contamination of the vehicles was a significant problem and Paul had already introduced a scheme whereby the drivers had to change their shoes or boots between each journey - the Clean Below The Ankle policy - but strangely, this had not made much of an impact on the dirt problem. Paul assumed that this was simply because they weren't doing it diligently enough.
This morning for instance, one of the cleaners had had to hoover out a limousine that had been used to go to a hotel with a gravel drive, then clean a fork-lift truck that had been used to lift crates of vegetable matter and lastly try and scrape wet sand from an off-road four-wheel drive car. He had needed different tools for each job. How wasteful, thought Paul. It would have been so much easier if all vehicles encountering sand were parked in one place, mud in another, and so on.
He stood up and tried to think this through. It was however clear to him that such a scheme could not work as it it was impossible to predict what sort of dirt any given vehicle would encounter on its journey and moreover, there were other considerations when parking it in a nominated area - namely what sort of engineering maintenance it might need by the teams of mechanics that fixed, serviced and generally prolonged the life of all the vehicles after their journeys. Even Paul conceded that their task was paramount. But the cleaning issue still irked him.
He did what he normally would in these circumstances and convened a focus group to make an 'options solutions' list. The group's message was clear. As the vehicles had to stay in the areas where they currently were, so the drivers should stay in fixed areas too - as opposed to the criss-crossing of the compound that happened now.
Paul put a poster on the canteen notice board to this effect. He was pleased. Job done.
*
He supposed he should have expected it though. Never did he come out with a brilliant idea without the tiresome drivers challenging it at the first opportunity. This one was no exception.
"For heaven's sake, Paul!" they moaned. "We can't just switch round and drive all the vehicles in one particular area. There are all sorts of different ones needing all sorts of different skills to control. We aren't all trained in all of them, you know."
Paul sighed.
"If you just stayed in one area then it would only be one type of dirt that affected those vehicles." He spoke as if to little children. "Then we would only need one type of cleaning equipment per car park."
"But Paul," they chorused, "Take Tom here. He currently has two vehicles in Car Park D - a Ferrari and Jeep (he's still waiting for the European Universal Saloon)." Paul ignored the dig. "There's also a JCB in that area. Were he to drive that he probably crash it and cause all manner of harm. Last time he drove one of those was at the Drivers Training School over twenty years ago. Things have changed a bit since then."
"Are you telling me that you can't all drive all the vehicles here?" Paul was incredulous.
It was the drivers' turn to sigh. "That specialisation for you, Paul," they said.
Paul turned, looked out of the window and then closed his eyes just wanting the dirt to go away.
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