Profession laundry worker

Laundry workers operate and monitor machines that use chemicals to wash or dry-clean articles such as cloth and leather garments, linens, drapes or carpets, ensuring the color and texture of these articles is being maintained. They work in laundry shops and industrial laundry companies and sort the articles received from clients by fabric type. They also determine the cleaning technique to be applied.

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Personality Type

• Realistic / Conventional

Knowledge

• Types of staining

  Check the fabric for different kinds of stains such as invisible, perspirative, and oxidation stains. Understand the right way to deal with the defects by testing the nature of the stain, the type of fabric (absorbed, built up and compound staining) and the colour fastness of the dye.

• Quality standards

  The national and international requirements, specifications and guidelines to ensure that products, services and processes are of good quality and fit for purpose.

Skills

• Collect items for laundry service

  Collect the dirty pieces of clothing or other linen within the facility and send it to the laundry service.

• Distinguish accessories

  Distinguish accessories in order to determine differences among them. Evaluate accessories based on their characteristics and their application in wearing apparel manufacturing.

• Maintain relationship with customers

  Build a lasting and meaningful relationship with customers in order to ensure satisfaction and fidelity by providing accurate and friendly advice and support, by delivering quality products and services and by supplying after-sales information and service.

• Inspect dry cleaning materials

  Check which items are suitable or unsuitable for dry-cleaning by interpreting care labels and decide which dry cleaning processes may be required.

• Apply prespotting

  Remove stains in dry-cleaning by using the pre-spotting technique. Use a spotting board, which vacuums the garment attached to the spotting board through air suctions. Use a spotting gun to apply steam to loosen the stain and use a blow dryer to dry the fabric.

• Eliminate stains

  Use stain removal equipment to remove stains without damaging the fabric. Carry out garment and stain detection to identify the specific staining type such as wet or dry side staining in a safe and appropriate manner.

• Operate tumble dryer

  Operate machine to remove stains and achieve clean clothes. Measure the minimum and maximum load to insert in the machine and select the appropriate drying process for eventual moisture and leaking problems.

• Clean household linens

  Wash linens such as sheets, towels and table cloths with water and soap or detergent. Clean linens by hand or by the use of a washing machine.

• Identify cloth items

  Count and collect the items, and provide them with the drop off and delivery dates. Fix tags with a safety pin or staple, describing important information about the customer. Apply special colored tags for different sorts of treatments, and assemble and re-assemble the order after the laundry and dry cleaning process.

• Operate tunnel finisher machine

  Handle wide or narrow body tunnel finishers which remove wrinkles from garments. Insert the material in a steam chamber, making the fabric moldable.

• Maintain customer service

  Keep the highest possible customer service and make sure that the customer service is at all times performed in a professional way. Help customers or participants feel at ease and support special requirements.

• Operate washer extractor

  Prepare the equipment and safely load and unload clothing items in and out of the washer extractor. Select the right washing programme, recognize faults and malfunctions with the machine and report this to the right person.

• Read care labels

  Sort clothing items according to their colour or fabric by inspecting and reading care tags or labels. They indicate agitations, how a particular fabric should best be washed, bleached, dryed, ironed and cleaned.

• Distinguish fabrics

  Distinguish fabrics in order to determine differences among them. Evaluate fabrics based on their characteristics and their application in wearing apparel manufacturing.

• Iron textiles

  Press and iron in order to shape or flatten textiles giving them their final finishing appearance. Iron by hand or with steam pressers.

• Handle linen in stock

  Manage laundered items and store them in safe and hygienic conditions.

• Use solvents

  Clean products or surfaces by using solvents to dissolve or extract other unnecessary substances.

• Maintain cleaning equipment

  Clean and preserve the equipment and material used for cleaning purposes in a proper state.

Optional knowledge and skills

Source: Sisyphus ODB