Voices from the Crisis: Cleaning crew gets extra help from their boss

Desperate times call for desperate measures and Rosemary Everton will do what it takes to protect her 180 employees.

One of the commercial-cleaning clients of Everton’s Seaford-based Mid-Atlantic Services A-Team Corp is the Delaware State Police: Troop 7 in Lewes. When cleaning its new headquarters, her team must clean the holding cells and Everton is worried that the current shortage of face masks will put her employees “in harm’s way” during the pandemic.

So Everton will soon start sewing employee face masks out of bed sheets.

“I’ve had a sewing machine here forever but have never taken it out. I think I will have to now,” Everton said, adding that the masks will have to be washed and disinfected, then dried after each use.

Rosemary Everton

Gloves aren’t posing as big a problem for the company just yet because employees are using food-service gloves.

“If I wanted to use the good gloves, we’d have a big problem,” says Everton.

The company is now offering a spray disinfecting service to companies and purchased special equipment in response to the coronavirus crisis.

The consummate do-it-yourselfer, Everton and some of her employees made 160 gallons of hand sanitizer this past weekend for her biggest client, the state government.

“When you couldn’t get hand sanitizer anymore, but before things got really crazy, I bought 50 gallons of aloe vera gel,” Everton said.

Everton delivered the product in food-service buckets because she couldn’t get the right containers after state officials told her to “just make it and we’ll find the containers.” Delaware is reimbursing her for expenses related to making the hand sanitizer.

By Lisa Osborne