The Professional Bathroom cleaner

After the rigorous 3 years spent trying to learn how to manage a hotel and its various aspects, but then finally not working in the hotel industry, the only takeaway I appear to have had from the course, was my attitude to life, and doing things.

To do things there are 2 ways, one the Amateur way where you ask or learn from somebody before you do something. The Professional way is to pick up the info from somewhere and in the supreme confidence that nothing you do, can possibly go wrong, go ahead and do it. The results do not matter as long as “the Professional” has followed his own brilliant ideas. The brilliance sometimes is diminished by the attitude of others who have not understood the significance of a Professional way of doing things.
One such enterprise was my bathroom cleaning mission.

While in college, my instructor had drilled into my head, how cleanliness is next only to godliness, and to check it, you had better look at all the hidden corners where normally, even self respecting germs wouldn’t bother. The bathroom had to be dry always, unlike normal Indian homes where it would be wet after somebody’s shower. The toilet was the lab where you acted out your secret desires to murder germs, bosses and such like creatures.

And … in case there were stubborn stains on the tiles which refused to go away, your ultimate weapon was THE ACID.

Everybody in the family, except for yours truly, was away for the vacations, and as they say, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. And.. so I decided to clean the bathroom. It is beside the point, that, the bathroom was clean and dry already. But since I didn’t have anything else to do, and the urge to do something extra-ordinary came about, I decided I would use the bathroom as my lab. To clean the few hardwater stains and the imagined numerous other stains, I decided I would do it like a professional. I went out bought some bathroom cleaning acid and got ready.

Now, a few days back, I had got another bathroom cleaning agent and had liberally sprayed it all over and scrubbed it clean. The newly shining bathroom was appreciated by the wife. This is where the devil lay in wait, for me to be alone in the house, and incite me to take the bathroom cleaning to the level, beyond which no mortal, could aspire to surpass.

I went into the bathroom and liberally started pouring the acid all over the floor, the walls and the washbasin. My first warning, that something was wrong, was when the liquid sizzled angrily, as it touched any surface. I hadn’t seen, concentrated acid in this form, since maybe my college days. The second warning was, when there was whiff of, pungent gas, that opened my nose, which had been clogged by cold for 2 days, in a jiffy.

But as a professional, I believe it is my responsibility to leave no task half done, so I went ahead and quickly emptied half the bottle in the bathroom. Even before I finished, the gas exploded in my nose. It was like somebody had pulled an electric cable through my nose into my brain and connected it to a bell. The moment the bell went off, I gasped for air. In the couple of seconds it took me to understand the situation, my eyes started watering, and my lungs cried. Without further ado, I exited the bathroom in 2 graceful bounds like the antelopes in National Geographic.

Once outside, I realised that the monster I had unleashed in the bathroom had come out into the hall as well, and I wasn’t safe there too. I opened the door of the hall, and all the windows as fast as possible. But the electric quality to the air, persisted. So I switched on both the ceiling fans. This made it worse, my eyes started watering and I was starting to feel like somebody had woken me up from deep sleep with an electric shock to my sensitivities.

I tried tying a cloth around my face, going into the bathroom and opening the ventilator windows wide. I did look like one of those bandits you see in the comic books, and had to exit once again from the bathroom in true cartoon character fashion, when my mask proved ineffective. I waited for it to drain away by itself.

It took around 2 hours of waiting outside my house, for the power of the acid to diminish, enough for me, to venture back into the bathroom, and do a quick scrub, pour water, and wash away the remaining acid which hadn’t flowed into the drain by itself.

Of course, as we professionals talk of disastrous episodes, it was a ‘learning experience’. The Tiles in the bathroom were clean[the colour did not change dramatically as I hoped, because, it was clean enough in the first place).
Funny how, I haven’t seen any sign of mosquitoes, for 2 nights straight now. Must tell the acid manufacturers of this additional benefit. Though I suspect if there were people in the house when I tried out this experiment, and they weren’t as nimble as me, I would probably be buying body bags.

Must say, and I am sure you will agree, there is nothing to match the way, a professional does things.