ON BEING A JANITOR

April 15^th of 2013 was my last year to work for HR Block.

I disliked the corporate pressure to make us call customers to try to sell other services to them.

I tried to find work in areas where I had previous experience.

I had a couple of interviews but no success.

Just to prove to God that I was willing to do almost any kind of work, I applied for work as a janitor.

I had no experience as a janitor, but I completed an application anyway.

In response to my on-line application, I received an invitation to come to a company at a specific time.

I thought it was to be an interview.

It was not.

It was a group meeting of about 30 people to fill out paperwork for going to work.

I was the best dressed man in the room.

Pamela Raney, a black lady in her mid-thirties, sitting near me was the best dressed lady in the room (other than the HR ladies).

She thought it was to be an interview, also.

We were both “hired” on the spot with no interview. (she had experience, I did not.)

We became friends and got along well.

We ended up working in different areas at the same school, until she took another job.

I worked at the same school the whole time I was employed as a janitor – Huntsville High School.
It was conveniently located only three miles from my home.

I was employed in this position for 44 months – three years and eight months.

September 2013 to April 2016.

I worked the night shift – 3 PM to 11:30 PM Monday through Friday until February 2016.

I hated the night shift.

It disrupted my life.
It prevented me from attending the mid-week meetings of my church.

It caused me to have to eat my “dinner” at my usual “lunch” time and my “lunch” at “dinner” time.

It disrupted my sleep, because, even though I was physically tired when I got home each evening, my mind was active at 11:30 PM and it would take me an hour or two to relax enough to go to sleep.
It forced me to take my “afternoon” nap – which I was accustomed to – in the late morning, when I was usually not sleepy.

After a few months on the job, I began bending some of the rules.

While we were supposed to eat dinner at 7:00 PM – and all the other janitors did, I always ate mine at 5:00 PM – the specified break time.

But I seldom took a break, not at 7, nor at 9.

The exception to this was when we got a new team member named Mark.
I remembered him from that first big meeting when we were hired.

He had been a janitor for 15 years or so and knew a lot about it.

Though we had little in common, we became friends and he believed in taking breaks.

So every night, he would call me when he was ready to take his breaks and I would sit in his car with him and visit.

We worked the summers together as a team and accomplished more than any of the other janitors.

One reason we did so well is because we could anticipate what the other needed and not waste time.

Our communications ended when he was transferred to another school.

And when he left I stopped taking breaks again.

We are still friends on Facebook, but we have not seen each other since I quit and do not communicate much.

The evening crew had as many as eight members, as few as three (when other members were sick or laid out).
When crew members were absent, the remaining crew members had to fill in for them – do your assigned area and the area(s) of the missing crew members.

By the time I quit, I had been a janitor on the night shift longer than anyone else there.

When I first started I was assigned to clean the Auditorium building, which included the band practice room, Theater classroom, Choir practice room, six restrooms, the Auditorium lobby, main Auditorium seating area including balcony, stage, hallways and dressing rooms behind the stage.

When there was activity in the auditorium, I had to time my work so as to not interfere with the event/activity, and be able to clean up the area after the event.

These activities included band concerts, play rehearsals, play productions, choir concerts, and public meetings.

I got used to walking through and around the main auditorium in the dark, even though it was supposed to be haunted. (the aisle LEDs were always on)

I never saw or heard the ghost (supposedly a female student who was killed in a car wreck during a play rehearsal)

There were several small sounds that I had to learn to identify.

As a child, I was afraid of the dark. (partly because of a nightmare I had when I was about 2 – which I still remember in great detail)

So this was a bit of a challenge for me.

On nights when there were no activities in the auditorium (usually 3 -5 nights each week), I could rest or goof-off for an hour or so if I had finished my work.
I would occasionally take a short nap in the top row of the balcony in the dark Auditorium.

Sometimes there was something interesting to read in the theater classroom, which I would take advantage of.

When there was a play performance, which would run three to five days, I was very busy, but always finished at the normal end of my shift.

I just spent less time on my classrooms.

In the Fall of 2014 (?) my work area was re-arranged so that I had to clean several classrooms in addition to the Auditorium.

I was assigned to clean 12 Science classrooms and labs, two sets of boys and girls restrooms, a stairwell and the hallway in front of these areas, in addition to all I had been doing in the auditorium.

This new area amounted to about 20 percent of all the classrooms in the main school building.

This put an end to any leisure time in the Auditorium building.

I had two janitor closets and one cart in the Auditorium building.

This helped make cleaning easier, in that, I did not have to walk so far to get supplies or equipment – which saved time.

After I was assigned the classrooms, I had another janitors closet and cart for that area.

I learned many things about industrial cleaning from this job.

We were trained on how to clean, sweep, mop and dust.

We were provided with most of the tools and equipment needed to clean the school.

Much of it was applicable to home cleaning.

I soon found that some of those methods and tools were not always the most efficient.

We were instructed to turn in our dust mop heads once a week or so to be cleaned, and replace them with clean heads.

But I found that all “clean” mop heads are not equal.

Some were worn out and did not clean as well as newer ones.

There were three different sizes and the more-experienced janitors picked through bags of clean dust mop heads and got the best first.

This led me to eventually finding three nearly-new dust mop heads and keeping them to myself.

When my mop heads became dirty, I took them home and washed them myself, at my expense.

This allowed me to have cleaner-looking rooms and halls.

I did this for over three years.

Only a few people knew about this.

I found that for certain areas and situations, my 24 inch dust mop was too bulky and imprecise.

So, I bought a nice 12 inch nylon-bristled long-handled broom, with my own money.

It proved to be perfect for sweeping the stairs and the gymnasium bleachers, quickly and throughly.

(my head custodian borrowed it one evening for a couple of minutes and liked it so well, he wanted one also. I don’t think he ever got one, however)

I also stopped using the school-provided chemicals in certain applications.

And I found that using the prescribed amounts caused a buildup of soap residue in certain areas, so I used half-strength or less mop solutions in my areas and had better results.

In contravention of instructions, I started using bleach in all of my restrooms, diluted to the extent that it did not give off a strong oder.

I wanted just enough to evoke a subconscious recognition of a “clean” smell.

Wet mopping was a learned skill.

Something I had very little experience doing.

I learned that, for my areas, there were three kinds of mop saturation needed.

“Dry” mop, throughly rung out for dusting (after sweeping) for fast drying.

“Damp” mop, for normal mopping or for spills – wet enough to dilute dried liquid spills.

“Wet” mop, for bathrooms, where the mop is only slightly rung out, and the tile floor is throughly soaked and left to air-dry overnight.

Most of the grey-brown buildup around bathroom hardware was from old soap accumulation.

I brought in an old toothbrush and cleaned the chrome fixtures in all of my bathrooms.

All of my restrooms looked the best in the school.

Most of the other janitors just did what they were told and did not seem to care what the results were.

As a result, my areas always looked better than theirs.
I found out accidentally that the teachers loved my work.

After I took an evening off, they told me that they cold tell that I was gone because their rooms were not cleaned up to the standard they were used to.

And, honestly, I spent less time in my classrooms than most of the other janitors.

But I looked after the details in my rooms.
If a teacher sees just a single tiny scrap of paper on the floor when she first walks into her room in the morning, can cause her to wonder if her room was completely cleaned.

So, the last thing I did when I left each room was to pause at the door and look at the room one last time to see if I had missed anything.

I found that most spills in the school are sugar-water (sodas, juice, etc.) and can be cleaned up with just water.

I found that the diluted ammonia-based window cleaner worked on mirrors and windows as well as desks and walls

Often, while working, a song would go through my head and it gave me an urge to listen to some music.

Finally, in February 2015 I bought a pocket music player.

Most of the other janitors listened to music on their phones.

My phone was an old flip-phone and did not have enough memory or a headphone jack to play any music.

Most of my music collection is not MP3.

I bought one of the best music players there is, which had a premium DAC to handle the lossless encoding of my music.

I had just transferred all of my home music collection onto my computer (5000 songs!) so it was not difficult to build some playlists to take to work.

Usually, I would listen to my music after my dinner break.

In February 2016 I was offered a day shift position, which I accepted.

Then I worked from 6:30 AM to 3 PM.

I worked alone and usually unsupervised.

My assigned work areas changed completely.

I was to pick up trash from the entire school parking lots before school.

Then, during the day, clean the baseball team locker room, offices and restroom, the tennis court restrooms, the softball team dressing room and restrooms, the boys and girls soccer teams locker/dressing rooms and restrooms, and the football team locker rooms, offices, gym and restrooms.

In addition, I was to pick up trash from the entire campus.

I traveled around the campus outside, driving a little ATV, with all of my cleaning supplies loaded on the back bed.

Bad weather was not an excuse for not doing my assigned tasks, so I had to dress for rain, and cold.

When I started working day shift, I stopped listening to my music player.

During my time as a janitor we went through four Head Custodians –

Wanda (Sep 2013 – Jan 2014), an older black lady, she taught me a lot about how to do the job.

Kelly (Jan 2014 - Aug 2015), a white lady with physical and mental problems, not a very good supervisor.

James (Aug 2015 – Aug 2016), a dear older black man, I loved him and we got along well.

Vincent (Aug 2015 – Jun 2016 ?), a good Christian black man, whom I liked a lot.

I tried to warn/advise Vincent about the difficulties of working at that school when he first started.

He listened and handled things as he thought best.

Just before I left this job, he told me that everything I had warned him about had turned out just like I had told him.
I felt validated but felt sorry for Vincent.

He was a nice guy and I hated to see him suffer from some bad decisions.

And then there was Ellie.

Ellie started working at our school in the Fall of 2015.

She was a quiet older black lady with eyes that did not point the same direction.

As I sometimes do, I immediately felt sorry for her.

I imagined all the teasing and cruel comments from other children she must have had to endure as she was growing up.

I felt the urge to be extra kind to her.

She was assigned to work in another part of the school so I only saw her during our daily team meetings for a few minutes.

I was soon able to win her trust and we sat together during our team meetings.

It was apparent that she appreciated my kindness to her.

She was a very sweet lady.

When I quit the job I made a special effort to give her a goodbye hug.

Most of the other janitors were black.

And most of them were less educated and used some crude language when talking with each other.

This was my biggest problem with being around this type of people.

This type of language is very offensive to me.

While three of the four Head Custodians were black, I did not have any problems working with them.

The biggest laugh I ever got out of my co-workers was near the end of my time working night shift.

Two of them asked me, in a kidding way, about the special attention I was showing to Ellie.

All I said was, “Well, me and Mrs. Jones…...”

This response resulted in loud, table pounding laughter from my co-workers – the exact response I was hoping for.

It was a calculated statement, based on what little I know about black American culture.

And I was correct in my assumption that they would understand the implication from my statement.

Of course, the implication was not true.

I was not having an affair with Ellie, just being kind and friendly to her.

It has been almost two years since I quit my janitor job.

Strangely, once in a while I catch myself missing it.

Occasionally, I will look at my clock in the evening and remember what part of my assigned areas I would have been cleaning.

In spite of the unpleasant work hours, I found some satisfaction in making things clean, rolling my little cart around the big, quiet, empty school by myself.