Custodial Care

I woke up this morning to a thunderstorm rolling through.  Worse to the south of Plainfield.  When I got on social media (Facebook), I noticed posts from former students who are now parents, indicating that the elementary school in the district where I used to teach was without power.  The students were just getting off the buses, so they were immediately taken to the middle school, just across the parking lot from the elementary, until a decision could be made about what to do with them.  Some minor parent panic ensued on FB as they worried about the safety of their children.  And then the power came back on in minutes and the kids returned to their school.  Much ado about nothing!

The rough start to the school day in Monrovia, Indiana, reminded me of all of the times that we had snags when I was still teaching, which made me think of what/who really made a difference in those situations, which made me think of custodians.  (See how my mind works?)

I taught school for 40 years, plus I had teachers for parents.  I learned very early in my career that I needed/wanted to stay on the good side of the custodial/maintenance staff because those are the people who really make things happen.  The administration--sure.  Fellow teachers--of course.  But the real heroes of getting tasks accomplished are the ones with the least authority: the custodians.  Most of the custodians--especially the women--were proud of their work.  "I take care of my teachers," they would say.  And they did.  If I needed an extra desk because I got a new student, I could wait all day for the administration to get word to a custodian...or I could catch Bill in the hall and tell him that I needed another desk.  Bill knew which room held the extra desks and would have one in my classroom in minutes.  Bam!  There!  If the heat or the air conditioning in my classroom wasn't working right, I could complain to the administration all I wanted.  He/She would put in a work order and give it to the head of maintenance, who would then schedule someone to come look at it after hours sometime.  Meanwhile, the students and I were roasting or freezing.  More often than not, I would grab a maintenance guy in the hallway and make a generalized request.  "Is there anything that can be done about this?  We aren't comfortable in here."  Invariably, he would say something like, "There's a little quirk to this unit."  He'd make an adjustment with the kids still in the room rather than wait until the end of the day, and voila!  Fixed!

The custodians looked out for me, and I looked out for them.  The surest way to get me to blow up at a student was for that student to throw trash on the floor and smart off to me when I asked him/her to pick it up.  "That's what they pay the janitors for!"  No, you moron...they pay the custodians to empty the wastebaskets, sweep the floors, and swish out the restrooms,  not pick up after spoiled brats who think it's okay to be inconsiderate.  (Okay....I didn't really say "moron" or "brats", but I did get honked off, big time.)  I usually ended with something like, "You wouldn't do that at home, so don't do it here!"  (Actually, I'm not sure that they didn't do it at home, so I felt some misplaced sympathy for the parents who would have been mortified if they had seen Johnny or Susie doing that at school.)

There are two sets of school custodians:  one on duty per building during school hours, and several on duty at night after everyone has gone home.  For years, our daytime custodian was little Sue Dodd.  Sue couldn't have been over 4' 10" tall, and she wasn't the brightest bulb in the socket, but what she lacked in height and smarts, she made up for in heart.  (When my brother died suddenly back in 2006, she gave me a little ceramic garden statue of a boy holding a frog to remember him by.)  If you needed something done right now or out of the ordinary, Sue would drop what she was doing and do it.  If a kid threw up in the classroom, here came Sue with the stuff to clean it up.  If a girl trashed a restroom by smearing unspeakable things on the wall, Sue had it cleaned up before the next passing period when the restroom would be used again.  She was just a real sweetheart.  And all I could think of when a student did something destructive to get even with a teacher or the administration was, "The only person you are hurting, beside yourself, is dear little Sue--the person who inevitably will have to clean that up."  Some of them got it.

Only once did I have what I deemed to be a problem with a custodian.  This was a night custodian, female, whom I rarely even saw.  (She was also the mother of a couple of problem kids I'd had in class.)  At the end of one school day, I noticed that some delightful child had thrown an open can or bottle of Mountain Dew at the wastebasket on the way out.  It had hit the side and splashed out all over the floor just inside the doorway.  I cleaned it up with paper towels as best I could, but since they don't issue mops and buckets to teachers, I believed that the night custodian, when she got to my room sometime that evening, would finish with the cleanup.  She didn't.  By the end of the next day, the sticky spot that was left behind had begun picking up dirt from students' shoes.  The spot became black on whitish floor tile. No mistaking the need for a wet mop!  This time, I just knew that the night custodian would take care of it, but no...   The next day, there was the dirty spot, untouched.  This went on for several days.  Finally, I was called to the principal's office.  "Do you know that there is a big dirty spot just inside your classroom door?" he asked.  Yes, I confessed, I did.  I told him what had happened and how I had tried to clean it up, hoping that the night custodian would finish the job but hadn't.  He looked a little puzzled, as I'm sure I did.  Here is what he told me:  The night custodian had reported the dirty spot to the head custodian, who then reported it to the principal, who then called me in to ask about it.  Neither of us was sure why or what the night custodian was thinking, but the principal said, "Just get Sue Dodd to clean it up."  I did, and she did.  End of story.

Was the night custodian angry that someone had spilled pop in the classroom?  Maybe.  I know I was, and if I had caught the scoundrel, he/she would have cleaned it up, plus I would have written him/her up for having pop in the classroom in the first place.  But if the custodian thought she was going to get me in trouble for something I didn't catch, she was wrong.  Even the principal shook his head over why she just didn't mop up the sticky spot and move on.  (I'd also heard that this particular custodian would read things left on the teachers' desks, etc.  Which is a no-no.)  Anyway, it was the only time in my career that I felt betrayed by a custodian.

I don't think the general public knows that when a community function goes on at school after hours, a custodian has to be on duty as a sort of property guardian.  One night, I was helping with the pre-show details of the opening performance of the school's play when a terrible hailstorm moved through.  The radio was blaring for everyone to take cover--tornadoes were around.  I scrambled to get the kids in a safe spot.  And when the storm was over, all of the cars in the parking lot had hail damage.  (One large hailstone had hit the pavement and bounced up to break one of my tail lights.)  Plus, many windows in classrooms on the south side of the school had been broken by hail.  The custodian was frantically checking on us, trying to make appropriate phone calls to report the damage and secure the school, plus sweep up rain and ice balls and broken glass.  (I have no idea when she finally got to go home that night, but I'm certain she didn't get paid enough!)

I had a custodian try to fix me up with a "nice guy" friend of hers.  I had a custodian who seemed to be sweet on me--even took me out once (only to start avoiding me in the halls when he took up with a retired teacher from the district).  I've had custodians put pencils on my desk at the end of the day--pencils that the students had dropped and not noticed--rather than throw them away because they understood how often kids borrow pencils.  I've had custodians cover for me in embarrassing moments.  (Not many, thank God!)  I've had custodians jump-start my car at the end of a cold day, clean snow from windshields, push cars out of snowed-in parking spots, carry heavy stuff out to my car, supply my classes with big trash trolleys if students were cleaning out lockers, etc.   In short, I learned that one should never look down on the janitorial staff because having them on your side is worth every kindness you can convey.

Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs said it best (and I paraphrase):  "People who do the dirty jobs do them to make life more pleasant for the rest of us."  God bless them for it!