my life as a janitor
There's something about janitorial work that tends to bring a person down. I've worked as a janitor during several periods of my life and the jobs I held always either created depression or enhanced it. When you work at night in a building after everyone else has gone for the day you begin to feel alienated from society. It's like you're not even good enough to be allowed to work during daylight hours (not to mention you're cleaning up after people who are privileged enough to work 9-5). I felt like a giant insect most of the time, shunned by mankind and forced to root through their garbage in the dark after they had left.
I can recall my first custodial gig like it was yesterday. In fact, though, it was many years ago when I was an innocent 14-year-old starting my first job. I probably should have taken it as a sign that my first paying job was as a janitor and called it quits on ever trying to advance past that (ironically my first job after graduating college was cleaning offices, too, so apparently I had come full circle).
The job was simple and only required about one hour of work per week. The building I cleaned was a repair facility for Caterpillar construction vehicles. Half of the building was the warehouse/garage and the other half housed two floors of offices. I wasn't responsible for cleaning the garage but I would occasionally wander through it, inspecting the various pornographic calendars hanging on the walls.
Usually everyone was gone by the time I got there at 5 pm on Fridays. I would let myself in with the key and then had to turn off the alarm system. Sometimes I had problems turning off the alarm and would set it off. Then I would get frantic because the police showed up.
I held the job off and on for four years during which time I acquired another building. This company sold some crappy line of kitchenware and would go out of business soon after I quit. It was a large building consisting of offices and a warehouse. I worked with someone else who did all the vacuuming and bathroom cleaning. My job was to push one of those garbage bins on wheels through the offices and empty all the trash. I also did the dusting and mopping as well as cleaning the entire warehouse office.
This job was different because I worked from 3-6 pm, so people were still working when I was there. Most of them simply ignored the meek young janitor boy who emptied their trash every day. I developed a bit of a crush on one girl who was a salesperson. I would try to talk to her but she traveled often and so I didn't see her much.
Working there placed me in a weird frame of mind because I was alone, yet surrounded by people. I began to understand why all the janitors I noticed in schools and offices looked so broken down. They truly held one of the lowest jobs in the spectrum. No matter how crappy your job is, there's always someone coming in at night to clean up after you. Now I was that person. It wasn't a comforting thought.
After finishing the offices, I headed over to the warehouse. I've rarely encountered such filth as I found in that warehouse in all the buildings I've cleaned since then (except for the Central PA Waste Management Headquarters, but I'll leave that story for another time). The warehouse office wasn't big but it made up for it by being 50 times dirtier than the rest of the building.
The bathroom was used by all the warehouse workers and they tracked mud all over the industrial gray tile. The toilet defied description; all I can say is that I had to use a plunger on several occasions. That bathroom had to have been one of the most desolate, sickening places I've ever been in. High-ceilinged, with a single dim bulb hanging from above, filthy tile walls, it was a scene right out of my nightmares.
Within the warehouse office, there was a kitchen/dining area utilized by all the illegal Mexicans who worked there. Every night when I turned on the lights the roaches scattered away from their feast of half-eaten food littering the floor and tables. I mused about what these people's houses looked like on the inside.
Obviously I wanted to get out of that place as quickly as possible. Since there was no mop sink in the warehouse, I never changed the water in my bucket. Well, eventually the guy in charge started complaining that the floor was streaked when he came in. Personally, I didn't see the point in cleaning the floor that well since the employees inevitably tracked mud onto it as they came in to work. But I think this guy had some kind of personal problem with me. A large man, wide across the chest, with curly gray hair, he had one milky pale blue eye that didn't move at all. The few times I saw him he fixed that eye on me and ranted about the floor.
The guy finally got the best of me. After he complained repeatedly to my boss (who happened to be my best friend's dad), I got fed up and quit. It was fun to antagonize him for a while but it became wearisome. And it wasn't just the guy's complaints that got to me. The whole job frustrated me to no end. It caused my feelings of alienation to be exaggerated. I started the job in the winter and the weather was depressing, as was the pathetic Christmas garb draping the offices. It was time for me to retire from the custodial profession. Little did I know that I'd be back again, mopping floors and dumping trash in another five years. And I would be college-educated, no less!