This is how I ended up with absolutely no evening weekend plans for President's Day weekend. But enough pity-party. I did catch the action-packed ending of a Bollywood film on Saturday, but that is a whole other story.
So, I showed up for work on Saturday, a few minutes before 7:30. Working shifts at the Cannon Center is interesting, because here I've been doing the same thing as these people for a month and a half, and I've never seen them before. They're just "the other guys." Basically, working with them, everything was the same, yet everything was different.
After changing clothes and clocking in, I walked into the office, which was already occupied by two guys and a girl my age. One of the guys, wearing a blue custodial shirt, turned to me and exclaimed, in a frustrated and intimidating manner, "How many subs do I have tonight?! Who are you here for?" My shocked and frightened-out-of-my-mind pause was masked by the other man, who was wearing a host's uniform and turned out to be the student manager that night, who said something like "Woah, calm down, we start out by saying 'Hello, what's your name?' " I had gathered my wits again by the time that it was my turn to speak again. It was also funny, because people just sort of assumed that I had never done custodial work before, since I was subbing for someone. Like, the guy who was clearly upset by my presence as a sub, who was the custodial student lead for this shift, explained, in an exasperated manner, that the white cards had the jobs for the day, the daily one was double sided, which I already knew, and that they were pretty self explanatory, and that if got confused, I should ask someone who knows. Well, I figure, so long as it's not hurting anyone or anything, I'll just let you keep thinking that, and I won't burst your bubble. So I just nodded, went and signed my initials on the job I was going to do, and then left. For the record, the student lead was a cool kid; he just kind of gave me an interesting first impression.
Despite this, though, I think the first time that I realized how alternate-dimension this evening was was when I started listening to the music that was playing. When the Cannon Center closes, they crank up the music volume, which is nice, because you don't always interact with a lot of people when you're working my shift. We always listen to the radio. Well, I noticed when I was cleaning the doors to the walk-in refrigerators that Weird Al Yankovic's "Ebay" was playing over the loudspeakers, which is cool and all, but not something that you generally hear over the radio. I shook it off; not a problem. Then, like two songs later was an instrumental version of "My Heart Will Go On," and then after that was two EFY-like songs about the Restoration of the LDS Church. It was about when these songs abruptly changed to Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle" that I realized that there had been no commercials (which I am TOTALLY ok with. It's always the same five commercials, and two of them are EXTREMELY awkward), so we were probably listening to someone's iPod. This became even more evident when they played that song that always makes me think of Napoleon Dynamite because it plays as they pan away from that closing scene where Napoleon and Debbie are playing tetherball and the NON-radio edit of Taylor Swift's "Teardrops on My Guitar" both twice. The music was fine, but it definitely contributed to the alternate-reality feel of the evening.
Along with the strange music and not-so-warm welcome, all of the custodians were girls. Minus the student lead, of course. But our crew is pretty much split 50-50. And I feel like it's one of those jobs that you would picture being mostly men as opposed to mostly women. Plus, there was one girl on this shift who had subbed with us the night before, and she was like a completely different person. The night before, she had been quiet, almost a little sullen, going around, doing her job, not really saying much, hair pulled back, and her shirt a lighter blue than all of the others. This Saturday night, she was friendly, introduced me to people, her hair was down and curled, her shirt even looked a few shades darker. She was still a diligent, good worker, but I found her much more personable. I was more than happy to be proved wrong about her, and I feel like this was an especially good thing for me to learn, because I was kind of quiet, almost sullen, and didn't really interact with others much on Saturday, at least for the first half of the shift.
It was also really interesting, because aside from her and this woman that I've seen working in the kitchens, there was no one there that I recognized. I was in the same place, but in a completely different setting, if that makes any sense. None of the people that I'd come to associate with the Cannon Center were there, and it made me a little bit sad, and more than a little bit contemplative. This was actually brought further to my attention when I saw one kid, who worked in the Expo kitchen, who looked like a different, highly more anxious version of my friend who works in the Expo kitchen during my shift. Admittedly, this probably is not that odd, because everyone wears the same uniform. Still. I kept looking for a doppelganger for the cute guy that works the cash register during my shift, who I have made it my personal goal to get to smile once a day, which is harder than it may sound, because he really doesn't smile. Just smiling as I passed him used to work, but if the results continue this trend, I may actually have to talk to him to get him to smile (**GASP**).
Also, apparently they don't sweep or mop the multipurpose room on this other shift. I'm more than a little confused about this situation, so I need to talk to one of my superiors about this. When we first got there, someone said in passing that he thought that it might be someone else's job to do it, or that they had taken care of it, but now we might have to, or something? But I think we've always taken care of it since then, and I'm 95% sure that it says on the job list that we're supposed to clean this. But, there I am, sweeping the multipurpose room, and the student lead (this is my second interaction with him) comes by and says "We don't actually have to clean out here," to which I responded "Really? I think it says on the sheet..." He gave me a confused look, then proceeded to tell me that they apparently scrub this floor on Tuesdays, and don't give it another thought for the rest of the week. I then revealed my position as a member of the MWF custodial crew, and told him that we normally clean it, but then said, in respect for his authority as student lead and as resident TTHS shift member, that I would just clean up what I had swept, and go off and do another job. We got out like 30 minutes faster than we normally do on MWF, so maybe this is something we should look into.
I went and helped someone move tables and stuff in the dining hall, which seems simple enough, but was actually super different from how we normally do it. EVERYTHING that is on the floor that we mop gets moved to the carpet. Not just moved out, swept under, and then moved back. I don't know. We normally get everything done, but we don't go through the effort to get two people to lift up the booth tables and move them 20 feet out of the way. I don't know. But, perhaps partially because I didn't know to do this, the girl that I was working with also assumed that I had never done this job before, instead of three nights every week since the beginning of the semester. I never pretended like I wasn't a custodial worker, but I didn't say otherwise when she insinuated that I wasn't. She was cute and friendly, and we had some nice conversations while moving tables. She was also great to work with, and was very good at delegating jobs and making sure that everything was getting done.
After moving all of the tables to the obscure reaches of the Cannon Center, it was time to mop. Mopping. It's normal, it's natural, it comes easy. No real technique needed, right? Wrong, apparently. The student lead caught me just before I went out to start mopping and made sure that I knew what box mopping was. Had I been student lead, and I had heard that someone was a worker on the other custodial crew, I feel like I would have assumed that they knew how to do things and would therefore leave them alone, which leads me to question if he actually remembered that I knew what I was doing, or at least thought that I did. I suppose it's a good thing that he told me, though, because I'd never heard of this thing before. Apparently, you mop one section one direction, and then mop over it again in a different direction? It's supposed to keep the floor from looking streaky. ...ok. So basically, you're mopping the whole floor twice. Ok. He came over a time or two while I was mopping to monitor my progress and make sure that I was box mopping correctly. He seemed satisfied with my work each time. I was still suspicious, however, since I had never heard of this "box mopping" technique before, so I naturally busied my mind coming up with a number of plots in which this was a great conspiracy for this guy to show that his crew was better than ours, evidenced by the fact that we were such slow moppers. I always stood loyally by Spencer and the MWF crew in each of these situations. But, honestly, I think this is a much better idea to prevent streaks on the floor, rather than Spencer's idea, which basically entails using no water at all, which is annoying, because you can hardly tell that it's wet, so what's the point? Plus, I don't see how it reduces streaks. However, I think that we have some stronger points than this crew, such as changing dirty mop water...
I'm still not quite sure what to make of this experience. It was just kinda weird, because I was doing the exact same thing that I would normally be doing, but I was completely different people, which made it a completely different experience. I don't know. Not sure how to close. What a weird world... :)
No comments:
Post a Comment