While my fingers fumbled over the keyboard one lonely evening in The Peak office last week, an unexpected visitor stumbled through the door. I’d never seen him in my life — a small, frail, elderly man with his head down, eyes to the floor.
He had a key to our office; this fragile stranger, whom I barely noticed until I heard him grunt as he finally managed to wiggle his key free from the door. The Filipino man teetered slightly as he turned to survey the office as if for the first time. He squinted at me for a mere second before reaching back through the doorway to drag in his reluctant companion: a mop.
And then he began to work, sloshing his mop into a small bucket before plastering it to the floor. That was that. There was no greeting from either of us; no “hello.” In fact, this elderly man, adorned in his rusty-blue uniform and cap, barely seemed to notice me.
I racked my brains for the last time I’d actually acknowledged a custodian, and quite honestly these memories were hazy.
“Hello there!” I stated rather loudly. The man did not reply; his thin arms continued to swing back and forth. I tried again, “Hi there, sir!” Still nothing. I stood from my chair, walked the few steps, and planted myself in front of him. “Excuse me, sir!” The man continued to mop, his moustache twitching, his eyes rooted to the floor. Maybe his state of hearing isn’t the best, I considered.
I leaned forward slightly and waved my hands (not unkindly) in the man’s vision. He jumped back, completely startled, the mop slipped a little. “Oh, hello! Yes?” he stuttered through a slight Filipino accent, a combination of shock and confusion on his face. After declining my attempts to help him clean a few things around the office, a conversation then ensued, though it seemed at first as if this custodian had seen a ghost.
That evening I learned about the life of a janitor. Our conversation wasn’t at length, though by the end the man seemed delighted to have been able to relay these aspects of his life. He then whistled for the 40 minutes it took to clean the rest of the office, pausing intermittently to hobble through the door and cheerfully ask me questions about my life.
After my first memorable encounter with a custodian, I must say that a custodial job does not seem like an easy one. Janitors must engage in rigourous shift-work at odd hours, subject themselves to some incredibly unsanitary environments, and have little to no contact with anybody, all for a much smaller salary than one might assume. This is all done with the intent to keep ‘the rest of us’ healthy and happy in our squeaky clean surroundings.
Unfortunately, while custodians work diligently, much of their work goes unacknowledged, especially at SFU. While brandishing their bright-yellow gloves, they sweep and mop away, unseen amongst countless students and staff, all of whom go about their daily lives without saying so much as a “thank you.” Our subconscious disrespect for janitorial work has these employees isolated in a mental bubble of Rubbermaids and sanitation chemicals — silent, eyes averted, phantoms to their social surroundings.
After all, very few members of the public will actively acknowledge the important work that they do, so they might as well get used to it. Right? What an unfortunate situation we’ve landed ourselves in.
My new custodial acquaintance announced that he’d given our office sink-space an extra scrub. I thanked him before he shuffled away with his mop, grinning as he locked the door behind him.
