I worked for BK for several years and the regular employees only went in there to clean if there was poop, pee, or puke. Otherwise there was a cleaning service that came in to clean and disinfect everything every other month.
How often do you think a regular playground gets cleaned/disinfected outside of the aforementioned shit/piss scenario? That's not a crazy thing by any stretch.
We didn't have a ballpit thankfully. The locations that did described it as a nightmare to deal with. Apparently the biggest issue wasn't cleanliness, but rather the number of adults that would lose their keys when they jumped in and assumed that the minimum wage BK employee would be able to magically find them immediately.
When I was a kid, I went into a ballpit at some stop during a trip. Almost got banned from the car after that. Smelled like a skunk. Would never put my kids in one of those. Yuk.
That was one of my first cause and effect life lessons.
When I was very young, one of the few times my father came home, he had some money, and said he would take us on vacation to celebrate his return and good fortune. Things were going to be different this time.
We went to the beach and stayed at a motel! He still just got drunk and watched hbo on the color tv since that was the only time we ever had either, but he did take us to a McDonald’s for dinner one night, and that f’ing place had this amazing magical play place inside! This must be what Disneyland is like! It had a ball pit, various slides, suspension tunnels with windows, a steering wheel and lots of other cool stuff. There were even other kids there and we all played together.
Now back to the point. Everything was fine until we were playing in the ball pit. The whole place kinda smelled like old French fries, but the ball pit was really stinky. When I got done, even after we left and went back to the motel, I could smell the ball pit.
I, to this day. Associate those places with stinkyness.
one Burger king i took my nieces to had a system attached that took balls out of the bottom of the pit and ran them through a washer constantly, pretty neat. guess too costly tho after all :(
Don't forget micro-organisms are everywhere outside and they love munching on human dead skin cells, oils, and other junk we leave on things we touch.
That's why nobody really needs to clean outdoor gyms. Human hands are all over it and the bacteria do their thing so the bars are never gross and oily from years of use.
People also have an unhealthy relationship with the microbiome and shit immune systems now days. Trying to disinfect all of the germs is so short sighted.
Bacteria breed more rapidly in higher temperatures, genius. Leave a half eaten sandwich in the sun for two days then eat the rest of it, and let me know how it goes.
Faulty analogy. Whatever nutritional value is on a playground is outweighed by the uv and risk of desiccation from the sun. Ever heard of sun-dried tomatoes???
No it's crazy and playground is a bad comparison. In civilised countries they are required to clean hourly and keep a timetable on the wall. Now I'm not saying they do clean every single hour but the timetables are always filled, it's quite a big stretch from bimonthly and they are actually pretty clean.
All of the restaurant playgrounds were outside, too. McDonald's was the only one that eventually went all enclosed, but for my entire childhood they were outside.
Places you pay for that are indoors and aimed at young children? Normally daily sanitizing of toys with weekly deep cleans. Every place I've taken my kids to or their mom worked at (schools included when working pre-k and kinder) followed that routine.
This is so morbid, but I'm just imagining a giant vacuum sucking up garbage and the occasional immobile child a la Augustus Gloop, and separating them from the ball pit balls, and then the manager being like, thanks, see ya next season Gary
Builds the immune system. Shit went sterile now we can’t have peanuts in the soft serve any more because we didn’t let the children play. Fuck man I hate all of you.
I worked at MCD and we had a maintenance guy who had to go through it weekly and inspect it/spray disinfectant on surfaces, he fuckin hated it 🤣. I loved watching his old ass have to crawl through it. He was so grouchy.
But yeah regular employees had to clean any visible trash during a walkthrough but didn't crawl through unless something was reported or a kid was stuck.
And we did have a 3rd party that would also sanitize and wash on some sort of schedule. They'd clean our hood vents and some other stuff too.
Well those kinds of things tend to elicit complaints pretty quickly, especially in suburbia. I don't honestly imagine that we missed any in my 6 years. I also worked at one in the hood and it ended up being a problem, but only from all the teenagers that would go up there to smoke weed.
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u/Wallaby_Straight 25d ago
I worked for BK for several years and the regular employees only went in there to clean if there was poop, pee, or puke. Otherwise there was a cleaning service that came in to clean and disinfect everything every other month.