NOEL KING, HOST:
Some of the most essential workers right now are people who literally confront the coronavirus when they sanitize public spaces. Antonio Martinez (ph) has a franchise with the cleaning company Anago. He's been running his business in Miami for 13 years. He says he has a lot of clients.
ANTONIO MARTINEZ: Medical facilities, doctor office, regular office - I have a car dealer, a hotel, exterminators (laughter).
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
He normally visits sites during the day and trains his employees how to clean properly. His business is doing way more deep cleaning than ever before.
MARTINEZ: It's crazy (laughter). Everybody wants their desk, their doors, the elevators, their handles, the refrigerator - everything that everybody touch on a daily basis, they want everything disinfected, which is not common.
KING: Because Martinez cleans medical facilities, he already had the masks and the gloves. But as COVID-19 spread, he went to hardware stores and bought full-body suits for extra protection. And he's told his employees - if you're not wearing PPE, don't work. They get paid hourly, and now what they're doing takes twice as long.
MARTINEZ: People think that disinfecting is just taking, like, a Lysol wipe and clean the surface. It doesn't work like that. You need to spray the entire office. You wait between a minute to two minutes for the chemical to kill the germ, and then you wipe it down. That's the way it's supposed to be done.
GREENE: Antonio Martinez is 49 years old. He has two children. And his family is worried about him.
MARTINEZ: Especially my wife - don't go; be careful. But I have to go. I'm like a captain of any ship, and I want my employees to see that I'm there for them, for our customers.
GREENE: Martinez says with millions more Americans now unemployed, he and his colleagues feel lucky to be working.
(SOUNDBITE OF HANDBOOK'S "CAN'T TALK NOW") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
