They are everywhere. Folded against the wall in a high school physical education building, at the outskirts of the fields of your favorite, and least favorite, sports teams. They are bleachers. They are good for sitting, drinking beer on, and functioning as a hotdog and nacho restaurant. Outside of trying to find the best spot to sit, or trying to figure out where your friends are sitting, you probably don’t interact with them that much. When you do, you only expect a few things from them: be clean, have seating, and actually exist! Nobody wants a bunch of chairs lined up on the side of the basketball court, and not everyone has enough height to see past the people in front of them. When it comes to any kind of equipment or services you use, especially on a semi-regular basis, you just expect for them to work. No one thinks about the work that has to be done when it comes to bleachers, except for the people who have to maintain them. So, without further ado, here are 5 bleacher services that every stadium and gym needs.

1. Bleacher Installation

Those seats might be there when you get there, but it isn’t magic that puts them in place. The construction of something is easy, but sometimes you just don’t build everything all in the same place, or you realize there are some new additions that you need make. Like most people, I’m not certified to install large structures designed to seat tens to hundreds of people who might want to jump and stomp in celebration. Before anything can even happen to some bleachers, you have to ensure at least make use of the most important of all services: installation. Without that, people have nowhere to sit, and the rest of the services in this article turn out to be pretty pointless.

2. Bleacher Cleaning

Cleaning services are actually something we all probably need a lot more of. However, while our homes might get cleaned on a regular basis, we can’t forget that industrial equipment does have the capacity to actually get dirty as well. Just because we don’t see the hard work going to keep those lovely seats nice and shiny doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. I can only imagine the amount of gum I’ve accidentally stepped on while attending a school football game– and that’s just the gum on the floor. It might not need to get done every day, but the game stuck beneath the seats does need to get scrapped off at some point, preferably on a pretty regular basis.

3. Bleacher Replacement

A lot of things in life break. Phones, unfortunately, are prone to breaking on a pretty regular basis, especially iPhones. But those bleachers are meant to last virtually forever, right? Well, a lot of things are designed to last for a pretty long time. That doesn’t mean that it will. I don’t know what the likelihood of something as strong as that to break is, but I am confident in the fact that humans somewhere have managed to turn steel seating into a huge mess that needs to be cleaned up. No one wants to pay for a completely brand new set of anything. That is exactly why insurance exists, and that is exactly why you will want to make sure someone is able to replace your industrial furniture at a fraction of the cost that you originally paid for it. Otherwise, is it really worth it?

4. Bleacher Maintenance

Arguably one of the most important services on here, if not the most important, because, well things need to be maintained. Relationships, cars, appearances, etc. The list goes on. Of all the services, maintenance is the one that makes a lot of things appear to be effortless. Thinking about it, quite literally everything needs to be maintained, but some things get neglected more than others because we figure those things will be just alright no matter what. Yes, that equipment might be able to last a couple of decades before something goes really wrong, but wouldn’t it be much easier if you caught something early on? This is unlikely to happen, but in the rare event that things weren’t properly set up after the initial installation, that huge hunk of metal could come undone and actually seriously injure someone. No one wants to be responsible for that, and absolutely no one wants to get involved in a lawsuit because that takes extra time and money, and it keeps the pain alive until the case is finally closed some years later. The rule is this: if something exists and you are responsible for it to any capacity, make sure that it is at least maintained on a regular basis as to discover anything that could go wrong. On the off chance that you prevent a major disaster, you will be very grateful (especially when it comes to the amount of money you’ll be saving in the long wrong).

5. Bleacher Consultation

Finally, the most dreaded of all kinds of services: consultation. I say this because whenever anyone considers services for any industry, this one is the first to be thrown out of the window. No one feels that it is necessary to talk to a bunch of people claiming to be experts about anything because “what could be so difficult?” Well, a lot of things could be difficult. However, since none of us are experts on anything, we would have absolutely no idea. They can help us save a lot of money in the long run by helping us figure out what it is that is actually needed, and then they can help us take care of all the other things we need to take care of: installation, cleaning, maintenance, and replacement. It is a cycle that completes itself without all the additional worry of decided where is the best place to go to get what you need done handled properly.