We got a call from a customer who needed an "emergency" service yesterday. I always love "emergency" services. LOL They've messed up their carpet and now the world will end if we don't get there right away to fix it for them. OK hold the phone, we’ll be right over.

This is a store we had never serviced before. It came our way since we've serviced other stores within their chain of stores. This store will now be serviced by our company in the future.

Here's what happened. Someone had tracked what they thought was tar around the store. So one of their brilliant employees grabbed some Oxy cleaner and went around the store trying to clean up the spots. The result they left behind were big black spots (about 12” wide) all around the store.

When I arrived, the manager told me that the carpet had recently been cleaned within the past couple of months. The carpet was a deep blue commercial loop carpet. When I walked into the store, the carpet didn’t look terrible, aside from the big black spots everywhere. But it was obviously holding a good amount of soil. The spots they were concerned with were mostly concentrated in the front end of the store. They only wanted me to clean the spots.

So I cleaned the spots like normal using the Cimex and Releasit.

Now comes the problem...

After I cleaned the spots there was a BIG contrast with the surrounding areas. It's kind of funny, because the carpet didn't look all that horribly dirty to begin with. But with the scattered CLEAN spots throughout the store it made the rest of the carpet looked AWFUL.

The manager commented on the difference she could see with the clean spots. Having bold clean spots scattered through a moderately dirty carpet, doesn't look much better than having dirty spots scattered throughout the carpet. I realized if I left it like that they'd complain and I'd have to go back and fix it. Not good.

It's nice when the problem is that the carpet is "too clean".

So at that point I guess I could have chosen between three options...

1. I could have cleaned the entire store. The only problem --- the home office had only authorized an emergency spot cleaning and that's all they had accounted to pay us for.

2. I could have gone outside and scooped up a few handfuls of dirt and then smeared them over the clean spots in order to make it look as crummy as the rest of the carpet. As compelling as that option may have been, I decided against it.

3. Here's what I did. I took the Cimex and went back and quickly scrubbed over the entire front section of the store. As I moved to the edges of the area I was cleaning I ran the pads dryer to feather it out. Presto!

The end result: The area that we cleaned clearly looked better than the rest of the store but it fixed the striking contrast problem and overall it looked acceptable.

I just wonder what kind of carpet cleaning they received a couple of months ago. Man I thought it was encapsulation that was supposed to leave the carpet full of crud – LOL. Well whatever method was used last - it left a considerable amount of soil distributed throughout the entire store.

I made $150 for the 30 minute "emergency" service. And they seemed very happy to know that we'd be the ones cleaning their carpet in the future

There’s a lesson here: If you’re ever called upon to clean a small section of a carpet – feather it out to the surrounding areas. This will blend it into the surrounding areas – so that it will look OK.




Rick Gelinas

I had to take care of some grease spots at our airport last night, same thing, you could see a BIG difference! I left it so they would contract me to get it all that CLEAN!

The high end stores I do maintenance monthly, only part gets done each month. Next month, another part. It takes a year to do it all at least once, and some needs done more than once a year, which gets what it needs. Anyway, where I stop, I do make an effort to feather it in to the part not done. naturally, a person can see this is clean, this is not clean- although not filthy- it never gets that bad, but ya know- dingy compared to the freshly cleaned.

Another thing- one of the rooms is polyester, most is nylon commercial, one is olefin berber. You have to walk over a minimum of 100 linear feet on nylon to reach the ployester and beyond that another 50 feet or so to reach the olefin. OK, so why does the polyester ALWAYS look dirtier than the adjacent nylon, and why does the olefin Always look dirtier than the adjacent nylon and even the polyester.

Traffic always about the same in the store with employees and customers.

To me, it says- polyester and olefin attract and hold more dirt than nylon does.

And while I am at it, customers have to walk over 2 wool rugs and a wood floor before reaching the nylon, the wool only needs cleaned about once in 2 years compared to the nylon which needs at least twice a year.

Hmmmm...

Gary