06/09/2026
The dark side of being a small business owner…
We make every effort we can to keep our prices low so people have a local option to host events. For events lasting late into the evening, especially those serving alcohol we often require a cleaning deposit (that is returned if the venue is cleaned up - we provide a small list and cleaning supplies - and everyone is out at the end of contracted time. Needless to say my group last night did not get thier cleaning deposit back. In fact shortly after midnight (all groups have to be out by midnight) they walked away leaving it like this. The frustrating part is when I agreed to book a late Sunday event (something we won’t do again) I was assured the building would be taken care of, and cleaned up on time. I stressed my concerns multiple times and was told not to worry about it.
But instead I walked into the venue at 1230 am this morning, and cleaned until 6am… which gave me just enough time to drive home, put on clean clothes, grab a frozen coke at McDonalds and get to my regular job by 630am on no sleep.
I spent almost 6 hours cleaning last night, another hour plus tonight servicing our walk behind mopper (the floor was so gross it got clogged and wasn’t working properly), and mopping again. I still have work to do, and probably 100 plus seat cushions that need to be taken apart and washed. A few are so bad they probably won’t come clean. So the cleaning deposit I got to keep definitely wasn’t worth it to us, but again we make an effort to keep things affordable.
Unfortunately, that group is no longer welcome
To host events at our building, and makes me wonder if I should raise deposits to keep incidents like this from happening again, but there is always the risk of scaring people off whenever you do so as well.
To those who use our building, respect our space and clean up after yourselves, thank you! It’s unfortunate more people don’t show the same care for our building you do.
