Some people's full time job is to wash windows.
They saddle themselves in, get pulled up by a cable, and wash the windows on impossibly tall buildings, and gain a fly-on-the-wall view of various walks of life.
The corporate world, birthday parties, anything else you could imagine-the possibilities are endless.
u/Noah19or22 asked:
Window washers of reddit: what is the most memorable thing you have seen while on the job?
Here were some of the answers.
Soldiering On
Good friend is a window washer for downtown office towers. They get notice of the day the windows are being washed, yet he says it's shocking how many people are freaked out by them being outside their window.
Weirdest though? They came across a dude watching porn on his office computer, when he noticed the window washers, he just gave them a big thumbs up and kept watching.
I've Seen....Things
I work for a private estate in the local polo club. I was under the impression that the owners were not home at the time, but I was wrong. I was washing windows this particular morning and I came around to the restroom window and got an a prefect view of this older couple in the shower together (the window looked out on a private fenced in patio, so that's why it wasn't fogged glass. The window by the toilet is the same way. Bad design in my opinion.)
I've never moved faster in my life than I did catapulting myself backwards out of view of this naked couple. I don't believe they saw me because the next time we ran into each other, everything seemed normal from their end haha.
Too Close For Comfort
Housekeeper checking in. This one lady liked to feed birds, like 50lbs every two weeks. No screens, sills caked in filth and the windows themselves had been neglected over time. They were Anderson windows so you could pull them in from the inside. Well the tension string broke and I'm literally holding the window by a string and this bird straight up flies into my face. I was shocked, the bird was shocked, I screamed, I like to imagine the bird did too. Bird flew away and I got the window locked back in place and called maintenance. This was on the second floor too.
Blowin' On Through
A tornado.
We'd had little warning before we saw it about 1 kilometre away. It didn't appear to be moving side to side much, which indicates that it's coming towards you. We winched down about 4 floors, jumped onto a fire escape and got inside the building. Rode out the storm inside and then went home.
Absolutely Chuffed
Not my story but my brothers.
A very famous female comedian in my country had a house in our area and in her bedroom above the bed was a life-size "paint me like one of your French girls" oil painting of her starkers. He nearly fell off the ladder in surprise and she was stood at the bottom wetting herself laughing cause she knew what was coming
We Know More About You Than We Care To
I used to window clean hotels, which meant going room to room with a master key to let myself in. I've seen quite a few sex toys being proudly displayed on bedside tables, but the one situation that stuck with me the longest was just walking down the corridor and hearing two middle aged people going at it in one of the rooms, it was a Georgian hotel in the Cotswolds so very echoey, their screams were getting louder and louder and people were actually coming out of their rooms because it was so audible, all the housekeepers at the end of the corridor were doubled over laughing. That couple had no idea how intimately they shared their experience with us.
Civil Servants
Window cleaner for over 12 years now. I've seen horrible things. Also hilarious things. Once helped catch a pair of yobs who were on the run from the police, was just minding my own business cleaning a customer's windows when the fence panels behind us in the garden exploded. Like it started raining splintered wood and dirt! Some scum had nicked a car and cornered way too fast, they shot the corner jumped the curb and obliterated the garden and the nicely parked up BMW in the drive. Both nobheads ran immediately and hopped the gardens and in seconds out of nowhere there's a helicopter circling and k9 units on them both. They were flat face down on the pavement in a matter of moments, big burly coppers pinning them down.
Seen plenty of big double ended toys, strap one etc left out on the beds of undiscerning customers. Lots of naked old dudes and people who were in the shower not knowing we were there only to scream. It's a good laugh as a job really, folk are always alright and it's nice to have a cuppa on the job and a biscuit.
We Done Scared Each Other
Not a window washer, but I was the victim.
It's a Saturday morning and I wanted to have a nice lie in. My headboard for my bed is up against the window so I sleep facing away from the window and have to turn around to see what is outside/to open the curtains. On this fateful day, I woke up to some sound but it wasn't alarming so I just carried on as usual, stretched, then turned around to open my curtains.
Then I see his face. The window cleaner clearly didn't expect me to open the curtains and got a little scared. I too didn't expect to see someone's face looking back at me through the window, early on a Saturday morning. He saw me almost fall off my bed in sheer terror. Paying him at the door when he was done, was funny. We both laughed and pretended it didn't happen.
A Little Bit Of A Brighter Day
Not a window washer, but I saw a window washer dressed up like Batman while cleaning the windows of the cancer ward in the hospital (grandmother had cancer). The child cancer center was through a different door on the same hall as the elderly (60+) cancer center. I was 9 at the time and thought it was awesome, cheered me up for a while.
Documentary View
This was 25yrs ago. Cleaning 2nd floor windows in a hospital from ladders. I arrived at a window to see a lady giving birth. The child was probably half in and half out is as best as I can describe it. The people in the room were so concentrated on what they were doing they didn't notice me so I made a hasty descent.
A couple of windows further down (same floor) I see a man pacing up and down with his hands behind his back. Dark hair, tidy mustache, around 30. Will never forget his face. No idea why he wasn't in with his partner but I had no doubt this was the father.
Skip down a few windows (3 mins per window including moving the ladder so not that long) and I arrive at a window to see the lady being wheeled in on a wheelchair with the baby in her arms, the other mothers (maternity ward) clapping, and the father walking behind with a huge beaming smile.
It felt like it was out of a movie with a camera following the story. Quite unforgettable.
Window Washers Reveal The Strangest Things They've Seen Through The Glass
My eyes! MY EYES!!!!
Window washer. Now there is a job that doesn't cross your mind often does it? You know they make like $80 and hour?! All to just dangle miles in the air while cleaning windows and trying not to plummet to their deaths. They see into the world and half the time nobody notices.
Maybe they should make $180 an hour. Nobody ever asks a window washer, "how interesting was your day?" You don't really think they'll answer with anything outside of the mundane right? Seems like a simple, monotonous career. But how wrong you'd be if you thought that. They know more secrets about civilian's lives than the FBI.
Redditor Trailerboy531 was dying to ask... Window washers of Reddit, what is the strangest thing you've seen on the other side of the glass?
Poor little rich girl.
GiphyThe weirdest thing to me is a mansion with round the clock staff inside, they even wear uniforms. It's just this one rich dude his wife and their two kids. I'm not allowed inside, but I can see the wife. She's surrounded by the serving staff, but she never talks to any of them, and they don't talk to her. She seems really sad and lonely.
That's a touchdown!
I was washing the windows at the store I worked at when I was younger, and I watched a naked man running down the street get tackled by the police.
Let me, entertain you...
GiphyI washed windows once, still not sure if it was on purpose but was washing skylights on a regular house and the daughter walks into the bathroom naked and starts checking herself out. She was the same age as me, like 20 at the time. I didn't know what to do so I apologized. Her parents heard and made fun of her the rest of the day, I've never seen someone turn so red as when her dad said "so you were giving the cleaning boy a show?" They were getting ready to sell the house and I was there for another 8 hours cleaning.
Oh Lord!
I only did the job for about 8 or 9 months but saw two unexpected things.
Got to the top of the ladder and saw a guy I know is a priest enjoying some porn. I scurried back down the ladder hoping he would hear me and then slowly went back up. He obviously had heard me because when I got back to the window he was standing up reading a bible.
The other time I got to the top of the ladder and saw a woman in her 80's sitting on her bed completely naked. I was sure she saw me so I gave her a few minutes before going back to the window. When I get there she's sitting in exactly the same place, still naked, smiling at me. I got a job in an office soon after.
Awwww.....
My (maternal) grandfather was a window washer in the 1930s. He saw my (eventual) grandmother on the other side of the glass.
That's gotta sting!
GiphyI was volunteering for the first time at this small place a while ago because high school, and they gave me a simple job. A bottle of spray and a towel to wipe down the windows.
So I did it obediently, and I was looking through the window. I could see across the road there was a sidewalk and some apartments. On the sidewalk, there's some trees, not too small or big, just your average tree. I could see this lump dangling on a branch, and I immediately recognized it as a wasp nest because my neighborhood had a lot.
I remember thinking to myself, "Man I feel bad for whoever has to take care of that." (For some reason I thought people like beekeepers didn't exist) Lo and behold, a white middle aged woman, kinda chubby, probably in her 50s, is watching from a reasonable distance. She goes back into her apartment, and comes back out with a metal baseball bat. I stopped wiping the windows and watched with horror thinking, "Uh oh." I started heading towards the door to yell stop, but I wasn't quick enough. She runs up to the nest and takes a good hit at it. And I guess she tried to run away from the nest, but sprinting is a bit hard in your 50s, and her weight didn't help. Yikes. She got stung and she kinda fell on the ground in the process. Wasp stings hurt like hell. I told the store manager what happened and she called an ambulance. She got whisked off, and that's the end of the story.
That's quite the green... thumb?
My boyfriend has done a lot of high rise window washing. As he was doing his thing, a man walked into an office, unzipped his pants, proceeded to pee into a potted plant, and walked back out as soon as he was done doing his business. The man was never aware that he had an audience.
Paging Lady Marmalade...
I used to wash the windows of a house that turned out to be a brothel.
Should've known really the signs were all there. Different men answering the door, all beds were king size with silky sheets Showers in every room Etc...
I can do this blindfolded right?
Giphy- 2 BDSM rooms.
- A room full of hitler memorabilia.
- A room full of cardbodboxed drinks.
- christmastree in july
Those are the things on the top of my head.
This little piggy stayed home.
A piglet. As in, a baby pig, not the Winnie the Pooh character.
No idea why he got an office on the 10th floor.
Just come out here and do it yourself then!
The strangest was a woman who watched me to my work from the other side, pointing at all the streaks and spots as if I were missing it all. Her windows were filthy because we'd had a rain storm followed by a dust storm (only in Texas). I knew it'd take more than one pass to get it all, so I started with the big squeegee to get the bulk of the dirt off before going at it again with the smaller one that doesn't leave streaks. She was losing her mind tapping during the first pass, tapping on the parts I was going to go over again. She pointed out the wet streaks that dry up almost immediately into nothing but clean window. She pointed at the spots I had to really get at when the squeegee didn't get them. She pointed at me a lot, and I'm not sure what that was about.
As part of the job, I also remove any spider webs or hornet/wasp's nests I see. Wasps/Hornets aren't really a big deal if you get the jump on them. You reach up, grab their mud nest, and just smash it in your hands before they get out to bite you. This lady kept freaking out and making barfing faces whenever I did it. She looked completely disgusted. She didn't ask me to stop cleaning her windows though, so I don't know what she expected me to do. Not do what I was contracted to do?
The lady clearly thought I was a neanderthal. She later complained that she had to do all the work, pointing it all out to me. I tried to explain that I could sit in a bus and point out the route, but that doesn't change the work the bus driver is doing. She complained that I couldn't be that smart because I was a window washer and window washers are lazy. I explained it was one of two jobs I was working while taking a full course load at the university.
Thanks for the invite... I'm gonna go!
GiphyI used to be a professional window washer for mostly very high end houses. Worked on a few celebrity homes but I really don't have any interesting stories from them. Here are the top 3 weird places I remember working.
The first place, wasn't a single occurrence but a particular client. To picture this guy, imagine a more boring version of Steve Carrol Carell.
This dude had a larger house. Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 3500 square feet. He had the Rolladen shutters around his entire house. For those who don't know what they are, imaging metalish window covers that roll down over the whole window. Something you'd see in a zombie apocalypse movie. That in and of itself wasn't that weird. But I still remember the first time those shutters went up. The guy had zero furniture. None. Nada. Nothing except for a very basic queen sized bed with white sheets in one of the bedrooms. The guy would follow us around from the inside and leer at us the entire time we'd be cleaning the windows.
Then when we'd do the inside, he'd follow us around with a roll of paper towels and dab up any minor droplet that would hit the ground. Keep in mind, we always used drop cloths when we cleaned inside glass. We were used to working in the nicest of nice homes so we were always very careful to not get water on the floor. Wasn't good enough for this dude. He'd literally stand 2 feet behind you with the roll and just stare.
Next place that I can remember that was weird was this gay couple's house. They were super friendly and perfectly normal for the most part. The inside of their house however, was unsettling.
All of the walls were painted either blood red or black. Pagan and Satanic looking statues, paintings and decorations everywhere. It was unsettling to say the least. The last was this weird guy with insanely curly hair who had like fifty life sized statues of children on his property. Dude lived alone. My co-worker joked he was an angry old mage who would turn children to stone for walking on his lawn when they weren't supposed too.
Now there is a story point for Grey's...
Wash windows for a hospital certain operating rooms have windows... the Drs just waved at me as I could see this persons midsection cut open on a table. I almost threw up down the side of the building.
Gotta Go
So I was on the unfortunate side of the incident. Went to go #2, the window is right behind the toilet.. you can see where this is going. I turned back to see a guy looming over me through thinly veiled curtains. I immediately flushed and farted out of there. I'm sure he will never forget that.
Private Time
GiphyFinally a question I can answer. We were cleaning a fairly tall building 12 stories iirc adjacent to an equally tall government office building. This office building had several bedrooms on the top level, which we could see from the roof but certainly not from the ground. From where we were standing this bedroom was about ten meters away. As we're setting up a naked dude jumps onto his bed with an ipad and starts rubbing one out furiously. Facing us.
Not weird necessarily but certainly unpleasant.
I'm on the fence on this one dude...
On my first job as a window washer I went to this house and started washing windows and saw my Ex-girlfriend having sex with her new boyfriend. And then she came outside and started yelling at me that "this is insane" and "window washers don't come to people's houses at 3 in the morning" and "I'm pretty sure they carry more than just Great Value Window Cleaner and a roll of paper towels."
I hate when people can't be professional and mature when it comes to difficult jobs.
Nice kicks...
Just a regular window cleaner here. I was once going up my ladders to clean a bedroom window on the second floor at around 8am. As i got to the top of the ladder i was confronted with a couple going for it at an angle which indicated that he was, shall we say, taking the road less travelled.
Fair enough, lots of window cleaners see people naked or doing it, but this dude, for some reason, at 8am, was wearing a pair of socks and dress shoes. Apart from that they were both butt naked.
Now i can only assume that they were too deeply engrossed to have heard the clatter of my ladders against the window sill, but i got done with that window real quick and just about slid down the ladder.
Not looking for a co-star...
GiphyIve been an industrial window cleaner for 20 years now. This is me Other pics there too. But basically I've seen lots and lots of nudity. Lots of drugs, and lots of naked/half naked people in bed. The usual stuff really.
Had one old lady (maybe 50-60-ish) in a dressing gown sat on her chair while on the phone looking directly at me. Nothing new there we get watched a lot but this old lady opened up her dressing gown, spread one of her legs on the arm of the chair. While still chatting away on the phone too with a huge smile on her face. I was thinking maybe she was on a sex line or something and me being there was just a little extra thrill.
Everyone needs a second language...
When I was studying to become a Sign Language Interpreter at Uni, the window washers stopped and stared at us for 5 minutes. We were on the 5th floor. We joked that it must have been their break time, but our lecturer was not impressed.
I washed windows for a cemetery during college and this still baffles me and I am a firm athiest but it was Sunday and the entire building was closed and locked, I was just washing the outside, there wasn't a single car in the entire parking lot and every door was locked, all of the sudden I see a priest walk past a doorway and I thought hmm that's strange maybe my mind is just playing tricks on me about 5 minutes later I see him again for longer and I check all the doors and parking lots again and nothing/no one. It was one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. I also heard children laughing there was well, again on a day they were closed. I assume there was some logical explanation but it still gives me chills.
Window washer. Now there is a job that doesn't cross your mind often does it? You know they make like $80 and hour?! All to just dangle miles in the air while cleaning windows and trying not to plummet to their deaths. They see into the world and half the time nobody notices.
Maybe they should make $180 an hour. Nobody ever asks a window washer, "how interesting was your day?" You don't really think they'll answer with anything outside of the mundane right? Seems like a simple, monotonous career. But how wrong you'd be if you thought that. They know more secrets about civilian's lives than the FBI.
Redditor Trailerboy531 was dying to ask... Window washers of Reddit, what is the strangest thing you've seen on the other side of the glass?