Doing the dirty work for the NHS

It is clear I am entering a job-satisfaction-free zone after my frank interview with Jane, one of the domestic supervisors at the hospital. "Ours is not a pleasant job," she says, stating the obvious. "And I think it's only fair that you know that.

"There's a psychiatric ward on site and some of the patients have a tendency to urinate and the rest of it in the corridors. You will have to clean it up. It's all part of the job."

And what will be the fruits of my hard-earned labour? A grand £3.70 an hour, with a 42p daily attendance allowance on top. If I am absent for a day, the allowance is docked for the rest of the week. There is no sick pay or paid holidays.

It comes as little surprise, then, that relevant experience, references or the ability to speak English are not deemed necessary job requirements.

Sodexho, the company which runs Ealing hospital's cleaning contract, is understaffed and not in a position to be choosy. There has recently been an outbreak of a virus which caused vomiting and diarrhoea, affecting both patients and staff. One of the supervisors admits to me that the virus spread quickly because there weren't enough cleaners to contain it.

Around 95 per cent of my colleagues are Asian women with children my age. The rest are immigrants from a variety of places. They are all impressed with my command of the English language, even after I explain that I have the advantage of being born here.

My first job is hanging curtains with Jean-Luc, who has worked at the hospital since coming to London from Paris four months ago. He doesn't mind working from 8.30am to 8.30pm every weekday as the pay is better than at home.

On one ward I receive my first taste of the predominant attitude towards those of my ilk. Having accidentally gone to the wrong room, a nurse addresses us as if she thought we were mentally retarded.

"Not bay seven, side room seven," she shouts very slowly. I avoid the temptation to shout back that I am not thick and instead apologise in the poshest voice I can muster.

Later I receive some training about which chemicals are used to clean what. The cleaners are not supposed to mix the chemicals themselves, but I am warned that I might have to.

Picking up a bottle of a suspicious-looking liquid, Jane explained: "This stuff is really, really strong, so you have to be careful with it.

"Strictly speaking, only the supervisors should use this, but you obviously have some common sense so you will probably be asked to use it too."

I return home, shattered, finding little consolation in the knowledge that today was about easing me in gently - it can only be downhill from here.

Day Two

As soon as I arrive, one of the nurses launches into a tirade about the state of the hospital.

I am beginning to learn that, while our work is rarely appreciated, anyone in a cleaner's uniform is fair game for harsh criticism.

The work is mind-numbingly boring, but very taxing physically. I am full of admiration for the other cleaners, like Mrs M (all the older Asian cleaners refer to each other as Mrs), who is more than twice my age but has more stamina than me.

Mrs M has been a cleaner at the hospital for 20 years. She has three grown-up children with stable jobs, yet she still works five days a week. Why don't her children look after her?, I ask. "I look after them," she laughs without a trace of resentment.

Mrs M insists that the staff on her ward are nice, but I am not convinced. Despite the length of time she has worked there, when I ask one of the nurses for Mrs M by name she doesn't know who I am referring to.

We get two half-hour breaks a day, which the women spend in a smelly, windowless locker room in the base-ment, eating their home-made food. The Asian women chat excitedly to each other in Punjabi and address me in their mother tongue, despite my telling them I can't speak it myself.

They are all incredibly kind and keep smiling at me, asking if I am all right and trying to force their lunches on me.

After lunch, I return to the physiotherapy department, via A&E, where a number of elderly people are lying on trolleys in the corridor. One of the cleaners tells me this a common sight.

By the end of the day I ache all over and my hands stink of rubber from wearing disposable gloves.

Day Three

I spend the first part of the morning helping Gita, one of the younger cleaners, mop the floors on one of the wards. She has been off sick for a few days and is still suffering from flu, but has come back to work because she can't afford to lose the money.

Nobody has mopped the floors in her absence and they are noticeably grubby. But when she sees me putting my back into it, she tells me off. "No, no, not like that, you will get pain in your back," she says. After mopping my seventh floor of the morning I am grateful for the advice.

Gita cannot understand why I am working at the hospital and urges me to get work in a supermarket because I can speak English fluently and "the pay is really good".

We finish mopping ahead of schedule, but Gita tells me to sit down before returning to the supervisor's office to get our next task.

"I used to work quickly, but I kept getting more and more work every time I finished something," she says.

The rest of my day is spent with Mrs B cleaning the rooms where the doctors sleep when they are on call. I daren't ask her how old she is, but guess that she must be in her late fifties.

I find myself wrestling the vacuum cleaner from her to try and give her less work as I feel so guilty, particularly because she is on a 12-hour shift. But she is stubborn and most of my attempts fail.

When all 16 rooms are done we go with another cleaner to the doctors' mess. It is a pig sty with coffee cups and half-eaten slices of toast everywhere. I can't see the logic in appointing three of us to this job when there are wards with dirty floors but I keep this to myself.

The new cleaner, an Asian man who doesn't speak any English, only started yesterday but has already been labelled weird after being found talking to the hoover by Mrs B. Perhaps the stress of the job is getting to him.

Day Four

One of the supervisors seems impressed with my cleaning skills and there is talk of making me a supervisor when Granada takes over the cleaning contract in April. The praise is undeserved - I am certain I would cut corners if I had to do the job on a more permanent basis.

After mopping some bloodstained floors on one of the wards, I am back to cleaning the doctors' rooms, this time with Anita, who at 23 is a year younger than me. She came here two years ago following an arranged marriage to a British Asian. She is determined to escape the hospital and attends evening classes to learn English. She hopes eventually to become a beautician.

Anita, like many of the cleaners, urges me to get myself a better job. "Learning computers" seems to be seen as the best way to ensure a more lucrative career.

When all the rooms are spotless I am sent to intensive care. When I get there, one of the surgeons is up in arms because she insists the last cleaner did not do a proper job. At first I panic, thinking the patients are knee-deep in syringes, but it turns out that my main tasks are to clean the doctors' toilets and take out their laundry.

It strikes me that some doctors seem more concerned about their rooms than the cleanliness of the wards.

As I come to the end of my final day I can't say I'm sorry to leave. But I am sorry to say goodbye to the other cleaners. I would love to take them with me and rescue them from the drudgery of their work.

Perhaps they don't always scrub the floors quite as hard as they could and they might dawdle from time to time. But after doing the job for just four days, I can't say I blame them. Nobody would want to do what they do, yet without them the hospital could not function.

While people are paid terrible wages, with no sick or holiday pay, for doing such unpleasant, back-breaking work, the problem of dirty hospitals is unlikely to disappear.