It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a....

Every morning our communications team updates a section on our company intranet called Industry News. Our communications folks are very good at sharing articles about Pinnacol, our industry, and other topics such as health and wellness. A day or so ago one of the articles had an interesting round-up of stories related to celebrating the Labor Day Holiday. One of those stories involved the profession of window-washing. Ho-hum you might think.

The story wasn't talking about washing normal windows. It was about cleaning windows on the tallest structures in the world from the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center, to the Space Needle and the Burj Khalifa. Not familiar with the Burj Khalifa? It now holds the honor of the world's tallest building at 2,716 feet and 160 stories tall. For a fascinating look at this now 3 year old tallest of the tall click here. What I found interesting about the Burj Khalifa, apart from its physical size, is that its so tall they actually put the observation deck on the 124th level rather than at the very top.

What is common among all these buildings, apart from being very, very tall, is that they have a lot of windows that need periodic cleaning. And the cleaning of these structures remains a fairly manual process. I'm always fascinated by the tremendous variety of jobs that people are involved in on a daily basis. I can only imagine what it must be like to be perched 100 floors up with the wind tugging at you as you feel the stretch and bounce of a narrow ribbon of rope which is the only thing that separates you from a long plunge to the ground below. I'd guess though, that if you talked with some of the people doing this unique job its become very matter of fact, just another day outside of the office.


For a look at some of the pictures showing folks washing windows in some very precarious positions click here. I for one won't be quitting my day job anytime soon to join them!