A surprising start to the working week for window cleaners Harry Arends and Diederik de Geus. The two cleaned the panels of the De Boshof apartment building in Emmen spick and span, as if it was a day like any other. But due to a sudden, technical problem, the window cleaners were forced to take a break at a height of 25 meters. The cabin wouldn’t go down anymore.
The duo depended on a mechanic from Rotterdam. It was five hours later before he got the aerial platform working again and the cleaners returned to safe harbor.
“We started at 7:30 am, and just went to work. It went well, but then the container said: ‘Hey, stop,'” Harry Arends says. He and his colleague tried to make the best of it, so they got coffee and biscuits from the residents of De Boshof.
It’s a mystery why the window cleaners couldn’t get their booth to work. “Last year it was also broken, the repair cost a lot of money. Unfortunately, it stopped again.”
The fact that the mechanic had to come from Rotterdam was a hard blow. “We were very curious how we could come down, but we were not afraid. At wind force 5, the poop only becomes quite thin”, Arends puts into perspective. “Then you swing from side to side.”
They don’t have much time to continue talking about the ‘high point’ of their window cleaning career. “The boss called and we move on to the next job.”
Watch the full conversation with Harry Arends on Radio Drenthe here: