Instructions from Church Headquarters (scan)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32605347/Mormons-FIRING-THE-JANITORS-Letter

Template for use by Stake Presidencies (scan)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38795446/Mormon-Church-Letter-Appointing-Members-as-Janitors

Church Headquarter Letter
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Dear Priesthood Leaders,

As “member involvement” in cleaning meetinghouses of the Church continues to expand, the paid custodial force has continued to dwindle. Per direction from the Presiding Bishop, we have reached the time to fully engage church membership in the ongoing weekly cleaning of meetinghouses. The following statements provide the support required to implement this change in policy.
“We are asking Church members to assume a greater responsibility for cleaning and caring for Church meetinghouses.” --Gordon B. Hinckley

“Members of the Church are invited to participate in the cleaning of their buildings in such a way that, by their sacrifiece, they will come to honor and resepect and love those beautiful houses of worship” --Bishop H. David burton

Accordingly, the following changes are to be implemented:

-The ongoing day-to-day cleaning of the meetinghouses will now be the responsibility of members instead of paid custodians.
-The Church will no longer pay employees or contractors to perform day to day meetninghouse cleaning
-Paid meetinghouse custodian positions will be eliminated globally, to be accomplished via a voluntary reduction in force
-The FM Group will continue to provide adequate cleaning supplies to the members, allowing them to perform their cleaning duties
-Clean-up of buildings will now be coordinated through Stake and Ward Physical Facilities Representatives
-The FM Group will continue to perform “deep cleaning” activities not considered to be day to day or weekly cleaning, such as carpet cleaning
This change in policy will be effective July 1, 2010. Thank you so much for your support It is apleasure to work with all of you.

STAKE PRESIDENCY TEMPLATE LETTER
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Dear Stake Members,

For several years now, members of the church have been sharing the responsibility of keeping our buildings clean along with professional church maintenance employees. We feel it has been a good experience as we have worked together to keep our houses of worship clean and respectable.

The church has recently made the decision that ALL the cleaning responsibilities will now be done by members of the church. This will free up a significant amount of money to help those in need and will give church members additional opportunities to serve. Specifically this will mean complete cleaning of the restrooms, chapel, gymnasium and periodic deep cleaning assignments. To facilitate this, each building will have laminated cards that will specifically explain each of the cleaning assignments to be completed on Saturday. This work will require a minimum of 20 to 25 people each week. Additionally, there will be a few essential jobs needing to be done on Sunday by the last ward in the building at the end of their block.

A Ward Specialist will be called to supervise and train all ward members in these efforts. We would hope that everyone consider ways they personally can keep the building cleaner. Examples would include: refraining from brining food into the chapel, cleaning up your bench when you leave, making sure your classroom is clean after using it, cleaning up after any auxiliary meetings or family events and, of course, taking your turn on a regular basis to clean on Saturday.

We are blessed with beautiful and sacred buildings. We have an obligation to do our part to keep it clean and to make it a place wherein all will feel comfortable and feel the Sprit in abundance,

Sincerely,
[Stake presidency signatures]

> This will free up a significant amount of money to help those in need and will give church members additional opportunities to serve

Um, no. Tithing is not used to help those in need. At least not five or so years back, when I was in the bric. Welfare funds came from FO collection, never tithing.

That sounds like an outright lie by the stake presidency,

As a ward clerk, I certainly didn't see any increase in the amount of fast offering assistance paid out in the months since this policy was implemented. If anything, fast offering expenditures have gone down as higher ups have clamped down on spending.

"This will free up a significant amount of money to help those in need". What a crock of.......well, you know ;)

If nothing else had made me leave the church, this would have. This is BULLSHIT. "Opportunity to serve" my ass. Who are they kidding? WHY are they REALLY doing this? To save money? So quit building mega-malls, you morons!!

What if you have a ward full of slobs? Some of us can't stand the thought of cleaning up other people's messes, especially in the toilet. I would NEVER NEVER NEVER do this.

I can't stop shaking my head. Un-effing-believable.

I couldn't agree more. What a bunch of crap! How long will the members continue to put up with this. As if the church doesn't already take enough of the members time.

I totally agree, DebbiePA. Its bad enough cleaning your own mess up without doing potencially hundreds of other peoples detritus!

They say you can tell how good a company is by how clean its toilet and bathroom facilities are - and all of those are cleaned by a salaried employee qualified to do such a largely thankless job.

Like I said in another thread; The church meetinghouses will become fleapits within 2 years.

I was well on my way out when that letter came. One of my last remaining duties in the church was cleanup captain for one of the teams in our ward. It amounted to only one Saturday every other month, so it was really no big deal. But when they added the restrooms to our list, I emailed the bishop and told him I was through, he had to find another captain. I wasn't going to ask anybody in my ward to clean toilets.

Don't go. Stay home and just mail in your tithing. We can do sacrament meeting through second life. They have already eliminated most of the social activities. Too Messy.

I worked for a good portion of the past 25 years doing cleaning, including toilets. I rarely came across anything disgusting, and when I did, I was always wearing gloves and using a disposable "jonny mop" so it wasn't any big deal.

Everybody poops.

So you never had to handle used tampons and pads?

And you never came into the toilet to find that vandals had stuffed the toilet with paper rolls and flushed poo over the entire floor?

Guess you never worked in a really public place.

tampons and pads in the showers, poo in the shower, I've scrubbed diarrhea out of carpet and off of walls, unclogged toilets...

Yeah, I did get paid (not much, but still), and I heard the men's areas were worse. I worked at a care center and also a fancy fitness center located in the south end of the Salt Lake valley. Rich people are the WORST.

I actually really liked both of these jobs, because of course there was lots more to them than poo.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2011 01:35AM by possiblypagan.

"I'll do it if I want, but you can't make me."

You can force members to class UP by wearing a white shirt, but forcing them to class DOWN and don some rubber gloves to clean up your sh*t may will not fly.

They may rescind this one as fast as Spencer W. Kimball's oral sex announcement.

Anagrammy

wow, nothing like staying EVEN LATER after you've already been there for 3 HOURS and you are starving, your kids are starving, and you have to clean cause your ward is last!!


i would leave RS a couple min early and get the hell outta there quick..

I would not even go to RS - their drivel makes me sick.

I predict that in the not too distant future, the members will be asked to 'donate' cleaning products for the cleaning of the chapels.

It will not end. All this 'I want you to give, give, give, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, but the TBM's will continue to allow themselves to be used and abused.

>> This will free up a significant amount of money
>> to help those in need

Nobody but a very few fanatic Mormons believe that the church is spending their money wisely and putting the bulk of it towards helping those in need as this letter seems to allude. Its time to put up or shut up.

By those in need, they mean the old men with their butts pampered on plush red thrones.

I feel kinda silly asking because I've never been good at detecting sarcasm and the like but I have to ask.

Are these letters for real or is this a spoof?

If these are for real all I have to say is you gotta be kidding me. This is just bizarre compared to what I experienced in the 1970's as a kid.

"Allowing them to perform their cleaning duties?" Like it's a privilege?

This reminds me of North Korean "voluntary" labor brigades that clean the streets on Sunday. It is "voluntary" for the honor of living in your building or in your city. Your loyalty is questioned if you miss too many of these "voluntary" events.

... at least he paid us.

Not much, but still ...

Timothy

"Opportunity to serve"... is that kind of like saying its Ok to let somebody steal your things because it gives you an "opportunity to get robbed"?

They should rename the chapels 'Crapple' because thats what they'll stink like.

not that I will ever set foot in one again.

Health & Hygene laws are been broken here I'm sure of it.

Somebody wrote "shit" in magic marker and then an arrow to point to the rotting shit that has been sitting in the toilet at our stake center for a few weeks.

So, no concern for the jobs that would be lost with this policy? And now, more than ever, the same 5 people will be cleaning the building all month long...I used to be 1 of those 5.

It is not a spoof. I scanned the original document. It has no redactions, it wasn't addressed to anyone other than "Dear Stake Members". It is a generic letter mailed to all stake members, and I received it because my wife is a member, though we have never set foot in any building of this stake. I have it here. The stake used genuine pre-printed letterhead. The text appears to have been printed by a laser printer. It is not a photocopy. The signatures, along with the stake presidency names, are not in ink, they appear to have been pre-scanned and printed with the document.

I hate the LDS letterhead. Do they think putting JC in huge letters makes them real Christians?

On the Internet, using all caps is the equivalent of screaming. Instead of honoring the Lord, they are screaming his name like an oath:

The church of JESUS CHRIST!!!!! of lds

Next, the members will be mowing the lawn, etc. I'd much rather mow the lawn, though.

I did take note in the last 5 years that the parking lots and sidewalks during snowstorms never get completely cleared either.

As per public toilets as "hello" posted above--I stopped at a rest stop in Wyoming Sunday. I have NEVER seen anything that bad before.

I also used to work at a hospital as a housekeeper while in college. I did it for 3 months. Nobody can tell me BATHROOMS don't get HORRIBLE.

Stopped at a quik mart on the way to work one day for coffee
there appeared to be a brouhaha in the area of the toilets. A loud " oh my god!" followed by a few ewwws and a retch. The icing on the cake was the manager running through the store shouting " its driipping from the ceiling.
The mentally ill can sure amuse themselves with their own feces. And there is at least one in every stake

The 20/80 rule will take over.

As usual 20% of the members will end up doing 80% of the work. The other 20 may show up some of the time, but they'll do a crappy job and it will show on Sunday morning.

"Who the heck cleaned yesterday?" will be a common whisper.


There will be the same kind of resentment that you find in dorms where students have to divide up responsibilities. Most members don't care if another member doesn't do his Home Teaching, but when it comes to the Rest Rooms -- look out!

I love how church leaders use Orwellian terms like "opportunity for sacrifice". That's like "the blessings of hunger" or the "joys of the swine flu". When I heard "Courts of Love", I immediately thought of 1984.

If I were a member, I'd be ticked reading that note. I'd already be giving 10% of my income, plus 1/7 of my week, to this church and now they want me to scrub toilets. If I were a professional making good money, I'd be ticked that they expected me to shell out $1k a month to go to their church and they couldn't afford to pay someone to clean the floors. I'd immediately begin to wonder what they were doing with all that money.

The members built that chapel with their tithing money. The GAs suck up all that money from the local wards and then pretend to do the wards a big favor by rebating a tiny percentage of it. In other churches, the congregation keeps the money and gives a small portion to the central organization. LDS members are supposed to be grateful that they have a chapel when they give ridiculous amounts of money to the church.

I don't want to spend $100 on theatre tickets and then have the actors tell me how grateful I should be for the seats. My grocery store shouldn't tell me how lucky I am that they allow me to take food home after I've just swiped my credit card. In the real world, the people who pay your bills are the ones you thank, not the other way around.

Then again, reading what I just wrote, there is no way I would have stayed in that cult. I was sick of going to church when I left, and being asked to scrub toilets in my Sunday dress (of course, have to wear a damned white shirt and tie!) would probably be the end of it.

I'll bet those chapels are going to look grand after a year of resentful amateurs taking care of them. What about the janitors that they put out of work in a recession? I don't see anything thanking them for their hard work and sacrifice.

As you point out,

Why doesn't it hit Mormons that “in the real world, the people who pay your bills are the ones you thank, not the other way around”?

Why don't Mormons begin to wonder what the church is doing with all the money they give them?

The church will continue to provide more and more "opportunities for sacrifice" as long as the sheeple continue to say “Baa, baa” in submission.

Is this even more harping about mothers bringing snacks for their children? That seems to be an awfully hot topic right now for a bunch of old men who probably never cared for toddlers during a sacrament meeting in their lives!