Most of the time, when our customers purchase ceramic tile or stone flooring, they are not provided with great maintenance instructions.

After a couple of months or years, the grout begins to look pretty ugly. The customer then begins a cleaning program which takes over her life.

The floor and grout finally get clean, but she makes a vow to never do that again.

That's when she takes matters into her own hands and does something not quite right.

Out come the grocery store floor coatings… she slathers on the acrylic-based “easy-breezy” coating, figuring that is the end of her problem.

However, as the coating begins to scratch, dull and lose its luster, her maintenance nightmare is just beginning and she is about to include you in her bad dream.

Prepare yourself

She calls out to your company. She sounds so desperate for help and you feel bad for her. You agree to help solve the problem and you book the job.

Upon arrival, you notice several issues you did not expect. The shine is completely gone from the entire center of the room, but looks really thick around the edges of the room.

She assures you that it is just that easy stuff from the grocery store and she only used it one time. You figure “No problem.” This will be the easiest money you ever made.

You get out your trusty floor finish stripper and commence work. After several minutes of virtually no change to the shiny edges, you start to get a knowing feeling in your gut. You strengthen the stripping solution to “nuclear” and begin to perspire just a little bit.

Still no luck with the hopped up stripper, and now you are really sweating up a storm.

You ask a question of your customer as you suspect that you are not getting good, honest information from her. She seems to recall that her husband tried “something a few years ago” to help her from having to work so hard to keep the grout clean. She is not sure what it was but was supposed to be harder and more likely to last longer.

You start to feel physically ill. You have spent four hours — with no results — and you have reached the end of the profitable timeframe you bid on the project.

You begin the next conversation with her by stating that you will have to charge more to continue with the plan. Then, this wonderfully nice customer turns into something not so nice.

What does she do? She loudly reminds you of your price quote and how you better finish this job within her budget. Words like “Better Business Bureau” and “My lawyer” seem to come from her lips pretty easily.

You are going to do whatever it takes because you can't afford an unhappy customer. Welcome to the Shine Zone.

The reality

You are about to be taken on a very expensive ride.

Grocery store floor finishes are not designed to be easy to remove. These finishes are also not made to be placed on ceramic tile or stone floors. Not so much because of the tile or stone itself, but the grout. The grout accepts much more of the finish because of the pores and makes it that much more difficult to remove.

Most people, when placing finish on floors, put all the coats all the way to the walls. This causes the edges to have a buildup that is not easy to remove.

The only thing that could be worse is if they used an epoxy or urethane coating. Now you need solvents to remove the edges. That could really be inconvenient to your profit margin and sanity.

The lesson to be learned here is to fully inspect each floor before you say “Yes” to the job.

Understand that people do dumb things when maintaining hard surface flooring. Be aware and look around to see what you are getting into.

Dane Gregory is the commercial sales manager for Bridgewater Corporation, which owns Interlink Supply. He works with commercial cleaners to help them build their businesses by adding services without a lot of additional cost. He also helps them with technical aspects of cleaning carpet, tile and grout and stone surfaces. He instructs classes for each floor surface as well as the Commercial Cleaning Initiative, which covers all these floor surfaces.