He’s the man who goes in when the forensics teams have moved out. Paul Maxwell talks to Chris Hunter about his role which is not for the faint-hearted.
Thought you had a traumatic day at work?
It was probably nothing compared to any other day that Paul Maxwell deals with, week in, week out.
Paul, 50, specialises in trauma cleaning for Bearsted based cleaning firm Ideal Response, and if you’re at all squeamish, read no further – his tales are not for the faint of heart.
Blood, guts, bodily emissions of all forms, month old indescribable remains of unidentifiable dead things that died having eaten something dead and indescribable under the sofa in a fly-blown dead man’s living room – it’s all in a day’s work for Paul.
He basically lives in a 9-5 horror film, but unbelievably he’s still smiling.
“I did one last week,” he says over coffee and croissants at the Ideal Response HQ in Bearsted, where the green and tranquil environs make for a stark contrast with Paul’s horror stories.
“It was a guy who was ex-army. His wife left him, and he couldn’t handle it so he slashed his wrists. There was blood everywhere – so it’s a slip hazard.”
Whether it takes a special degree of professionalism or madness to reduce such horror in your mind to ‘a slip hazard’ is debatable, but Paul just sips his coffee and carries on.
It’s not just about trauma cleaning, Ideal Response also handles flood damage repair and restoration, oil and chemical spill cleans, and specialised decontamination.
It’s a far cry from Paul’s former life, deep-cleaning restaurant kitchens, but he won’t be asking for his old job back any time soon.
“I prefer doing this because every job’s different and every job has it’s challenges and it’s how you deal with them. It’s a learning process.”
He’s developed a plethora of skills he never needed in the kitchen-cleaning business – from dealing with grieving customers to simply how best to clean blood off grout.
“It’s best to use a toothbrush,” he says. “But not mine!”