By Jennifer Meek, Director of Marketing for Charlotte Products

It’s rare to find someone who works at the same place for a quarter century and still loves it. Meet Ernie Adams. Ernie started on the production line at Charlotte Products in 1996. Twenty five years later, he’s still happy to come to work each day.

“I fell in love with that job immediately,” he says. He’s been carefully mixing Charlotte Products cleaning solutions ever since. “What I do is a little bit like mixing up a huge cake. I start with water, and then I add many different chemicals and powders, depending on the recipe for that product.”

Any of the Charlotte cleaning and disinfecting solutions on your shelves—from floor finishes to disinfectants—have most likely been mixed by Ernie. He’s part of a two person team responsible for operating and supervising our 13 mixing tanks, weighing every batch, managing inventory and ensuring that all products get passed off to quality control for inspection. 

Many people in the cleaning industry will go their whole careers without understanding all that goes into mixing the products they use. Mixing is a very careful balance. If one ingredient is off by even a little bit, the pH of the product could be completely changed, the efficacy and even the toxicity of a product could be drastically changed, too. 

Ernie is excellent at his job, which is part of the reason we’ve had him for so long. Ernie has to be consistently accurate and careful when he’s mixing products for us. That had never been as important as it was this year, as we ramped up our production efforts to meet global demand for cleaning products during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We all stepped up to the plate and worked a lot of overtime to make sure everything went through during the pandemic,” says Ernie. “Making these products and knowing that they are saving lives means so much. When I see Charlotte Products labels in hospitals and schools, I realize I am part of a greater good and it really helps me feel pride in what I do.”

Ernie credits his coworkers and the family business atmosphere at Charlotte for allowing him to stick with us for so long. Between interviewing for this feature and having a role in our recent inside look at manufacturing video, Ernie’s been pushed outside his comfort zone by our marketing team lately. He’s used to working carefully and quietly on the mixing floor. But we’re so grateful for all he does, and think he deserves a whole lot of credit for helping us all create healthier, safer places for the world. Congratulations, Ernie on 25 years of a job well done we are so thankful you are on our team!