Sorry, I am not buying that line from the hotel. Management does not always know what the staff is doing for starters, and chlorine based products were the lead disinfectant being used in the first few months of the COVID outbreak. Few other agents were known to kill the virus. Some individuals do disgusting things in hotel rooms and staff are forced to use what is available to clean up. There was a TV report (20-20 if I remember correctly) a few years back that checked random hotel rooms for body fluid evidence and found a disturbing amount, including bloody mattresses that were simply flipped over. My opinion is the hotel did not want the negative public attention with business being as bad as it has been.
The following post will contain my individual opinions based on my personal experiences and observations from 20+ years in the bar/restaurant industry (
some of which was within a hotel environment)... including March ---> May 2020.
Long story short:
I believe the hotel when they say they were not using chlorine bleach to sanitize for Covid. They were likely better stocked with the industrial grade cleaning products they would've needed to comply with what was mandated in order to stay open for business.
Long story long:
Hotels in general have a lot in common with restaurants when it comes health and safety standards and compliance procedures. There are Industry-specific advisory boards which provide entities under their umbrella with continuously updated news and study results along with the corresponding changes to "best practices" which occur as a result. While there may be some slight variations in policy state to state (
LA and TX being my wheelhouse, not CO) - I'd imagine it would have been in a hotel's best interest to keep up with these mandates as [IME] compliance was required in order to stay in business. Here is an example of a
Hotel Advisory Board Covid Compliance Guideline Update (PDF) released in June 2020. Within this document there is a link to all
EPA-approved cleaning products that comply with the CDC standards and protocols.
A corporate entity will often have an industry expert vendor under contract for all the "chemical" products required by their subsidiaries and the usage/best practices are determined at a corporate level. The expert vendor is responsible for making sure the products supplied are in compliance on behalf of their clients.
Ecolab and
Auto-chlor are examples of these vendors... Each of which have their own line of products for specific areas of cleaning/sanitizing... Laundry, bathrooms, food prep, dishwashing, etc... These products are industrial grade and are not available for purchase by the general public at a retail outlet. Their usage is for specific applications and dilution is set to one specific ratio. Here's
an array of Auto-Chlor disinfecting products. None of them look like store-bought bleach... nor do they smell like it.
Another major difference between these industrial grade products and the commercial grade products for public purchase as the Covid shutdowns began -
AVAILABILITY. When the Covid shutdown began - There was a run on cleaning products at retail stores... Bleach in all forms, Lysol, Mr. Clean, etc... were out of stock and no ETA for the products' return.
Corporations with expert vendors under contract didn't experience the same supply issues that those without them did. Resources on hand were immediately tallied and rationed across their client list and assessments made for production of certain product lines going forward. My "boots on the ground" experience in Texas during March 2020 - Our vendor representative set up a meeting with FOH and BOH management where he explained that "cosmetic" variations of certain product lines had their production suspended in order to allow for expedited production of universal "baseline" products in order to meet demand. We were given an updated product sheet for our location and recommended par level adjustments as well as product usage "spec sheets" for anything that employees needed to be advised upon.
Inspections were frequent and comprehensive in order to remain open for business. These were done by trained Health Department officials who would be on the lookout for evidence of sanitization "freelancing"...
The smell of bleach would be a dead giveaway and invite further scrutiny. Therefor - I believe them when they say they weren't using it.
ETA:
Had I continues reading ahead - I see you have covered many of the points I was trying to make... and you did so in a far more concise fashion. Cheers!
IMO Barry got what he wanted most out of the sale: the proceeds....and he got to keep them all to himself, winner take all. No one else matters, just Barry.
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