In today’s busy workplace, increasing numbers of people are choosing not to take a lunch break, either because they have too much to get done, or because they want to create the right impression in an office where everyone seems to be dedicated to their job and not their stomachs.
However the trend for eating lunch at desks is not only bad for your mental well-being, but it could also be very bad for your health too.
After all, look at all those crumbs that end up on your mouse, keyboard, chair, screen and desk – you can’t just shake them off, can you?
The Problems Of Eating While Working
If you eat at your desk every working day, even if you try very hard to be clean and tidy, you’ll find that by Friday afternoon there will be a very noticeable littering of crumbs and debris around your workspace.
There’ll almost certainly be crumbs stuck in your keyboard, sticky rings on the surfaces, and possibly even food that has been trodden into the carpet around your desk. All that food debris will be turning your desk into its own ecology, and without being properly cleaned up, bacteria will set in that will be a hazard to the office environment.
Not only will that bacteria manifest as disgusting residues under your keyboard keys, causing them to get stuck when you type, but it will also end up causing an unpleasant odour that will pervade through the office.
Although, in the majority of cases, thanks to effective professional office cleaners, the situation rarely becomes this serious, the bacteria will still remain, and while it will be lower in number, your desk will still support over 400 times the amount of bacteria on a typical toilet seat!
Eliminating Staff Illness
As companies lose a lot of money every year due to staff illness, it makes sense to keep the workplace as hygienic and clean as possible to minimise the amount of time off that workers are taking due to sickness.
Most infections are passed on via touch, and office workers touch around 10 million bacteria a day, lots of which result in illnesses like flu and colds. It’s possible to reduce these risks by following good hygiene practices.
When eating in the office, staff should always wash their hands before they eat, use clean cutlery and crockery when eating instead of using their hands, use a napkin to cover the desk and keyboard area to catch any crumbs and debris, avoiding using their mouse or keyboard when they eat and always washing their hands after they eat. Of course, the best way to keep the desk area clean is to ban staff from eating at their desks completely.
If your desk areas are already showing the ill effects of staff eating while working, calling in a professional cleaning team to perform a deep clean of the area will help to bring hygiene levels back up to scratch and ensure that the workers are well protected from illnesses.
