Janitor: Them's Fightin' Words

One of the wonderful things about being a "janitor" is the respect you get from other people. I personally don't consider myself a janitor, I view myself as a Floor Care Professional. Janitor is a very broad term. Floor Care Professional is an exact term for a very specialized field of the cleaning industry. Anyhow, back to the original statement. Of course, it was a sarcastic statement, because people, well, some people, don't view you as an expert of anything, thus they give you about as much respect as the guy living out in the dumpster in the alley. What brings all this on is an account of ours that we have been doing for more than 5 years got themselves a brand new building. They had been in a retched dump up until moving into the new building. For the 5 years we cleaned the other dump, the people in charge, both from local management and corporate management, have been impressed with how we have been able to make a dirty, gross, dump, into a presentable place to do business. To my way of thinking, we have proved our worth and shown that we know what we are doing. But, with a new building comes new expectations. From the day we started the construction cleanup in the new building, our ability to handle such a "large undertaking" has been called into question. You see, the new building is around 30,000 square feet. Yet, no matter how much we would remind them that we did a construction cleanup that was 200,000 square feet, they would still think we were over our head. I guess I shouldn't really say "they", it was more or less one person that was worried. The guy we answer to, who is basically the Maintenance Manager (and a moron) was the main person giving us grief. The guy is a jack of all trades and master of none. He will tell us things we need to be doing that make no sense whatsoever. For example, the flooring they put in is similar to what you would find in a Target, which is called VCT, only it's made to look like planks of wood. But you are supposed to care for it exactly like you would VCT, but, the doofus tells us that it is a "no maintenance" flooring. All we have to do is sweep it and mop it, scrubbing it occasionally. I request the specifications from the manufacturer, and tells me the exact opposite, sweep, mop, buff after applying a minimum of 3 coats of finish. So, the guy is kind of like that scene in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective where Jim Carrey comes into the police station and starts "talking out of his butt" to his buddy. Yep, the guy has no clue, so he just talks out of his butt, and lately he has been doing it a lot. I have a theory on why he's been such a pain lately. In the old building, the place was so incredibly dilapidated that the expectations for him were very low. Most of the time if you came in to talk to him about something, you would enter his office and he would be watching television. Yet, you would look around and see about a dozen things the guy could be doing. Now, in the new building, he too has new expectations. Only, with him, ironically, he is the one that is over his head. In the old place, when he did do something, it was usually done in a very poor fashion. (What I really want to say is, Half-@$$ed, but I won't. (By the way, that's not really a link to anything.)) Now, he can't do things that way, and he is freaking out. I think he knows his job is on the line.

I guess my point to all this is that, being in the janitorial industry is a pretty humbling experience. He have to take orders from people that think they are smarter than you, and eat crow on a daily basis. Maybe that's why most "janitors" have a big-ol'-belly. At any rate, if you have an opportunity, give a cleaning person a hug today. They will probably be really scared at first, and may cut you with their retractable razor blade, but when you explain your reason for the hug, they just might not slap you with that Sexual Harassment lawsuit. Won't that be nice!