Cleaning girls are not afraid of portable toilets
Wearing their staff t-shirts, Heidi and Anne put on their rubbers gloves and start opening the doors of the line of portbale toilets. Waiting in the wheelbarrow is a big pile of clean and white rolls of toilet paper. How have the girls ended up in this particular voluntary work?
- It was all planned, laugh the girls.
- Well, Anne isn’t old enough for selling beer yet for instance, so we had to take what we could get and that was cleaning work.
The girls did the cleaning work on both Friday and Saturday from noon to four. In return they received the usual free entry to the festival area, meals on duty and staff t-shirts.
- It’s nice enough, especially when the sun is shining. Rain would’ve been worse, then we couldn’t even bring new toilet paper because it would get wet in the barrow already, the girls note in unision.
Heidi has experience also in nursing so smell and excretion aren’t really an issue.
The good part of the job are the customers, the festival audience.
- For example, when we bring new toilet paper when the old roll has run out, the reception is usually very grateful, the girls say laughing.
Helpful diligence is evidently natural for both girls, and they keep their remarks to themselves even though some toilet users would probably deserve them.
- Well, I just noticed that all kinds of stuff had been stuffed into the bowl, stuff that definitely shouldn’t be there, Anne says.
- And especially there near the food stalls people could put their trash in the bins provided and not just strew everything on the ground, the girls repeat the gentle wish often expressed also by the festival organisers.
Text: Kaisu Parviainen
Translation: Hanna Laaksonen
Photo: Eetu Mononen