"Clean This Up"

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Anyone else have a little trouble when they're told to "clean up" or "tidy up" something?.. Or when you're given a similarly broad instruction? It's always confused me a little when people tell me to clean up a mess. At wok today a manager said to clean up the area around the register because it was a mess. It looked a lot better to me than it often is, so i said that it already looked clean to me. He said that it didn't look clean to him, and his opinion is the one that matters. I asked what he meant by cleaning it, and he said to move certain things and put things up.. Thing is, if it doesn't look messy to me, then how am i supposed to know what to do with the so-called "mess"? There were a couple things that were sitting there that i could put up, because someone just left them there, so i put those up. And then there's a few things that customers left from other departments, but i can't leave to put them away when i'm the only one there at the time.. So i put them in a pile on another desk by the register. And the rest of the stuff i just moved around, hoping that it's new location would look less messy to the manager.. Because it's stuff we use and stuff other people had been using earlier(i don't want to out it somewhere where they can't find it later, do it?).. And i don't know where else to put the stuff(and if i put it somewhere else, they might just think i'm making the place i put it "messy") I don't see how people expect you to know what to do with a vague instruction like "clean up." They need to give more specific instructions.. Like telling you evereything they think is in the wrong place and where they want you to put each thing. I left before that manager ever came back, but i'm sure i probably did something wrong. I suppose this all goes back to not understanding what other people are thinking and what they want from you.

One place I worked, everyone had stacks of files on their desk, and so I was quite perplexed when I left a notebook and pen out on my desk to get to the next day and the boss told me to put it away because "we try to keep things tidy around here".

Another place I previously worked, the store had a layout plan and everything had a place, which was nice because everyone then always knew where everything was. We were never told to clean something up because everything was always in it's place at the end of the day and we additionally did a wipe down on the store.

When I tell people to clean something up, it depends on the context. I'm not the neatest person in the world, but when I do a good cleaning, I do a GOOD cleaning, and I expect others cleaning with me to do the same, which basically means cleaning from the cobwebs on the ceiling to the floor, including the baseboards and everything in between.

But at the same time, if a person walked into my room and told me to straighten up my desk, I'd be at a loss because as messy as it looks, things on my desk are generally in their place, meaning a place I can find it, where it will stay until I need it because there is no other place for it.

It's my desk anyway so they really have no business telling me how to organize it.

I get lots of cases like this. When these NTs foolishly give us vague instructions. I just do a very through job. So that the boss doesn't complain. But they always do. When working hard. It seems to be done not as how they'd do it. (Well no F Shi, sherlock! You didn't telepathically upload instructions into my brain). So I do the work in the way that gets it done.

Yup, this happens to me too. Often with my mum, she goes on about how everything is always messy and dirty and disgusting (OCD much?), yet I have no idea what she's on about

Ugh, tell me about it .

I'm a messy person. I admit that. But my landlady is the biggest clean freak ever (or her husband is- she blames him for it, thought that makes him either a total coward or her just trying to look better).

I put a lot more effort into cleaning here than I would at home, but jeez, nothing's enough. I was told off for leaving stains around the rim of one of their saucepans (it's a black saucepan. The stains only show up if you hold it up to direct daylight. I did clean it. I just didn't use a magnifying glass). So the next time, I clean the frying pan, hand it to the landlady and ask 'is this ok?'. Apparently there was a tiny mark on it, but 'it would do'. There was nothing there. I specifically checked that there was nothing there. Half thinking of bringing a microscope in to make a point.

I set off the fire alarm because nobody told me to open the window before cooking (I'm not used to over sensitive alarms) and then later on, I get told off for opening the window, because now apparently I'm making the doors rattle and keeping people awake...

Don't get me wrong, I get the reasons behind some of the rules. I just wish they'd written them down and given me the book beforehand. Is it stupid to suggest that people who open B&Bs and hostels in their houses should be open to the fact that not everybody will automatically know to do things exactly the same way the B&B owners have done for the past 30 years? It just seems a little small minded.

Um. Yeah. One of those NT things I think I'll *never* get...

~Kate

Yes. I used to get kicked around for it when I was a kid and couldn't clean something up because the instruction to do so was too vague.

I have my own method of cleaning things now, which works for me and is very systematic. I keep my apartment cleaner than most NTs keep theirs. But if I had just been shown, as a child, how to figure out how to do a multi-step job, then I wouldn't have had to wait until my late teens to learn to clean a room.

Vague instructions always messed me up. In former jobs being told to clean always irked me, it looked clean to me. In school, a similar instruction was "fix". I can remember the teacher in third grade (before i was dx'd) would hand me a math paper back with one instruction in red ink: FIX. I always associated fixing something with it being broken. i spent 4 days a week inside during recess trying (and crying) to figure out what she meant by "fix".

by tenth grade, in french class, we given assignments like translating from english to french using one of two methods. My understanding was that we were to choose the method and use it throughout the assignment. i completed the assignment and attempted to hand it in, the teacher took one look at it and said "i dont want it, its wrong" she refused to clarify her response, telling me she gave me the instruction "in plain english" my school did not offer spec ed french classes and i ended up failing that class with a 34, 70 was the minimum to pass.

I hate ambiguous instructions. "Go clean your room" ok do you mean straighten up? dust, wash windows, sweep, mop, or wash the ceiling?

My favorite was when i was a cashier at a grocery store, the shift manager would come by and say "if you have time to lean you have time to clean" my register was spotless and i was not allowed to go to another register to clean it. I guess they wanted me to look busy, even on a tuesday at 9 pm (one customer per hour if you're lucky).

I like to keep things clean. I don't like looking at a mess.

Of course, my interpretation of clean is taking a stack of files and throwing them in a cabinet.

As a child, if I made a mess and got told to clean it up, I knew what they meant. I made the mess, I had to clean it up.

But I remember when my little brother dropped his popsicle on the sidewalk, my friends told him to clean it up and I thought how the heck to you clean it up? Now today I realize they maybe meant pick up the popsicle sticks and the remainings but leave the liquid.

My little brother also had difficulty with cleanness. What was clean to him may not be considered clean to my mother or I. So after a while after he clean something up and if mom asked him if it's clean, he'd say he doesn't know. so after a while mom always had to go upstairs and check the playroom and see if it was clean under her standards.

I also remember being six and my mom told us to clean our rooms but my room was already clean but she said it was a mess. I didn't know what to do so instead I was taking things off the shelf and putting them back on it and my mom thought I wasn't cleaning. I didn't even know I should have asked "what do I need to clean?" "What's your definition of cleanness?"

However at work if I am told to clean something, I ask how do I clean it and what do I do in there. So my supervisor had to give me all these steps of what I be doing. Now I know what clean means at work. It's just dusting and vacuuming and picking stuff off the floor and emptying the trash. In one of the rooms, it's picking up newspapers and putting them back on the table in the pile and the rest. If something looks clean to me and I am told to clean it, I ask how do I clean it. Of course at work I learn things by rote because I know what I have to do that is cleaning.

I would be confused too if someone told me to clean something because what do they mean? Like if I got told to clean the kitchen, what do they want me to clean? The floors or sweep or wipe the counter tops, clean out the fridge and tossing out the old food or expired food, doing the dishes, emptying the dishwasher, what?