Thank you so much for going so detailed! That is so much good information and brainstorming. I washed it with soap - it still stays, I doesn’t go away or even reduce a bit.
Spray - possible. My cleaning people come over once every two weeks and clean windows and blinds as well. This vent happens to be right above a window.
I also run a humidifier in the room at night. No other room has this much gunk on it. Only my room does. So that could be one more contributing factor.
The substance is not oily. It is not powdery either. It seems like almost etched into the plastic - this may support your spraying theory: someone cleaned something nearby with sprays that could damage acrylic surfaces.
That was a good investigation! Awesome person you are!
Once we go higher up, it’s mostly intuition based a d not at all based on data - is what I’ve come to understand. So whatever the higher ups feel is what gets done. And they won’t take any hit because they already have all the savings they may need. They will switch jobs before things come crashing down. All they want to show is a slight uptick in sales or revenue to take credit.
But corporations have achieved very difficult things in a very short span that cost very many billions like - pivoted to AI which was very difficult until ChatGPT became popular.