When you next take a flight spare a few moments to look around the airport terminal. Do you see litter on the floors, discarded food containers and cups, spilled drinks and food on the floors? Not usually.

Most busy international airports employ a legion of cleaners whose job it is to keep the airport terminals clean and free from detritus. They perform their much needed work while others are busily heading off to business meetings or vacations. There are countless fast food outlets who appear to have conspired to serve up their food in enough packaging to fill and refill all of the airport bins several times over every single day.

Marie is an airport cleaner at Glasgow’s busy international airport. She has previously gained experience at various other Scottish airports, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, but prefers Glasgow as it is much busier.

A nornal day for Marie and others on the early shif will start at 4 a.m. when she starts the early morning shift, preparing the airport for that days influx of travellers. She told us that the biggest daily problem she must deal with is unattended luggage. ‘Even with the heightened awareness of terrorism people can still forget and wander away from their bags. When I come across a bag that is not with anyone I am required to report it to airport security. Some people get very upset when they return to find their bag being treated like a bomb’.

Marie says that although she doesn’t encounter very many rude or obnoxious passengers it does happen sometimes. She said: ‘ Last week a drunk man decided to be sick on the floor that I had just polished’.

In addition to unattended bags and obnoxious travelers Marie has to deal with the things that people leave behind. She said: ‘By far the most common things I find these days are mobile phones, but laptops are also common. I even once found a carrier bag that was stuffed full of American dollars.’

A key skill needed by anyone working as an airport cleaner is the ability to deal with all nationalities and people from all walks of life. ‘The ability to remain calm when a passenger is panicking because they may miss their flight is definitely a bonus’ said Marie.

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