00:00 – Matt McCoy
What’s a story from your team that still sticks with you and makes you proud of the work that you do?

00:03 – Annie Laplante
You know what? It’s really about the team members and where they come from.

I had this one team member — he was from Mexico — and he had been working with us for a while. During one of our annual meetings, he came up to me and shared his story.

Back in Mexico, he was a dental surgeon. A very prestigious profession. But there were gangs, and one day a gang leader came to him, pointed at his 12-year-old daughter, and said, “She’s next. I choose her to be my girlfriend.”

So he made the decision to leave everything behind and move to Canada to protect his family. He ended up working with us as a cleaner. He always kept his dental chair in his basement — a reminder of who he once was.

One day, while sitting in his basement feeling sorry for himself, his daughter came downstairs, hugged him out of the blue, and said, “Thank you, Daddy. Because of you, I’m safe. I’m so proud of what you do — even if it’s just cleaning.”

When he shared this story at our annual meeting, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

That’s when we realized why we do what we do. Cleaning is just the vehicle. The real purpose is making a difference in people’s lives.

In our organization, there are so many stories like this. That’s the strength of our group. We could be doing anything — we happen to do cleaning, and we want to do it very well — but it’s all about the people. The people we serve, and the people on our team, and their stories.