Part 6- The end?

The Decline

     So, after getting a decent rhythm going at Shilton, I began to receive notes in my box from Mr. H about how certain things weren't getting cleaned in the locker rooms and some of the teachers classrooms. All I could really say was that I would try harder and, for the most part, I did. I'm not sugarcoating my severe load of apathy for this job. One of these complaints was that the tops of the lockers weren't getting dusted correctly.

     Correctly? I didn't know there was a wrong way to dust. Whatever.

     So, I go in and take care of this and realize the reason that they don't look dusted is because the dust falls the fuck back down after I dust it. Fuck! Of course, I always got the complaints about the locker rooms directly from Mr. H, because Mr. H took it upon himself to use the weight room at Shilton before anyone else got to school. I could just imagine him wandering in, running his fingers along the top of the lockers, and swearing all the way to his personal shower. It's actually kind of funny to think about.

     As well, I kept getting notices that the back doors of the locker rooms and the gym were being left unlocked at night. I thought this was strange considering I personally checked every lock every night at the end of my shift. Part of me thought that it may be a teacher coming in behind me on accident, or someone just unlocking them by the time that Mr. H came around to find them unlocked. I have no idea.

     In addition, teachers were complaining about the quality of their class rooms cleanliness. Remember my previous rant about the teachers at Shilton being spoiled fucking rotten? Yeah, this is when said spoiling decided to slap me in the face.

     So, as you can expect, I can only get so many infractions before the district decides discipline is necessary. After 2 warnings from Mr. H, I got called into Superintendent J's office for a meeting to discuss some issues that they were having. 

     Fucking fantastic. 

     So, shaking like a leaf on the inside that following Monday, I walked into the Main District Office into a meeting where I sat down with Superintendent J, Mr. H, and LOUD and told that I was getting suspended for 'excessive infractions' for 5 days, with out pay. While this may seem like shit, I checked the contract and it was legal for the district to do it after a certain amount of warnings. Some lot of good our union did there.     Well, I took my punishment with a grain of hope, because it was 5 days off after all, and I'd still be able to pay my bills. They also decided to give me all of Thanksgiving off, since the last 2 days were paid holidays, and two days off Christmas break. Conveniently, I graduated from Sac State the first week of Christmas break at Shilton, so I had the first week and a half of Christmas break off, in the end. The last 3 days I worked, I was the only one there on campus, since the other custodians decided that a vacation all at the same time was a good idea. Whatever. I did the few chores the head custodian left me to do, then did absolutely nothing else. I slept great those few days at work.

     Now, once I got back to work, I tried to fix my work related issues in every way possible, short of staying an extra hour that it would need to get the rooms I cleaned actually clean up to Mr. H's ridiculous standards. Whenever I would adhere to the schedule as was written, if I took my break at all, I would be getting out of there at 9:45 or 9:50. Last I checked, My shift ended at 9:30. Fuck that shit. So I would skip the fine details of cleaning the rooms. Sinks, for example, were one thing I chose to only do once a week, unless they needed it beforehand. It shaved about 15 minutes off of my schedule. Plus, I chose to vacuum at the end of everything, which made things go surprisingly faster. Well, I guess my shortcuts landed me in hot water again, because according to Mr. H, shit wasn't getting done. Again. Fuck buckets. 

     So, after a couple emails and warning, I got the hint that I was pissing people off again. After trying to fix my mistakes, despite having been checked out this job for about a year, the day came when Mr. H came up to me and informed me that the district was “letting me go”. 

     Great. What an awesome Tuesday. So, instead of panicking, I just went along with my day. I finished up oddly happy with this situation, because I was so sick of fucking working there. Time to drink, I guess.

However, I made the mistake of not letting my mom know about my particular situation that night, so she had to find out second hand from my union representative the next day. Now, this may not seem like a big deal. But to my mom, who has worked her ass off at Shilton as a secretary, this was not OK. She called me at 9am, crying and pissed off that Mr. H and the entire office staff kept me getting let go a secret, despite all of them knowing, somehow. So that didn't help the situation, at all. To pile on top of this cluster fuck that was forming at work, the girl I was dating dumped me that same very night. Woo. Hoo.

     So I finished out the week there at Shilton, but here is the kicker. As I was pulling out of the parking lot of my apartment to take some recycling out before my last night at Shilton, I scraped my entire right side of my car on some lady's bumper. As I got out and looked, my entire back right door and half the passenger door were scraped and warped in with nice white paint streaks on it. And, of course, the lady I tagged had to be some 70 year old lady who looked like my grandmother, so I felt awful. So, by the end of my last shift at Shilton, I was an unemployed, single guy, with a scraped up car (that still has yet to be paid off). The following Monday helped when I had another meeting with Superintendent J to sign some paper work. He told me that I was getting paid for the rest of the week, despite not having to work, and that I would get my full paycheck at the end of February. This, coupled with my tax return, stabilized me as I began to search for a new job. Kinda.

     While things may look OK for me at this point, my mom got faced with a precarious situation at work. Mr. H would now go out of his way to avoid interacting with her in general. I'm talking stuff like going around the front main desk to walk the opposite direction my mom was walking, so he wouldn't have to scoot past her. To top it off, he decided to leave a note on my mom's desk explaining why he let me go and what I was doing. While this is aggravating enough, he saved the last two lines to not only pick apart her performance, but to say that he would never help our family outside of school again. 

     What the FUCK was that supposed to mean? And when did he ever help us outside of school? The audacity that he showed at that instant still pisses me off. Thankfully, my mom reported it to the union representative and, while Mr. H couldn't get fired, he got a talking to of some kind. I think. It's just disheartening knowing that the person who is in charge of an educational institution, and one that you have known for so long, can act like such a petty little attention whore.

     Finishing that last week though was definitely a bit of an illuminating experience as to my place in this world and, to an extent, the people in it. Aside from my mom and boss's reaction/dealings with the situation, I had few people who truly gave a shit that I was leaving, despite the relationships that I thought I had formed with them in the workplace. One guy that seemed legitimately upset was Mr. X, who found out from my mom too. As I was loading up my shit onto my cart to start cleaning, he swung by my location in the front of the gym with a rather perplexed look on his face.

     “Hey man, I heard what happened, what the hell?”, he said in a very hushed voice, like he had to hide it from prying ears.

     “Yeah, I'm getting let go. Too many complaints, I guess”, I said in a voice at the same volume.

     “Well, hey man, you can't stop the metal, you know?”, he smirked, and we both had a short laugh. I thanked him and told him I would see him around, when truthfully it would be a cold day in hell if I stepped back onto this campus after I was done. It was just nice to know that at least one of the teachers I cleaned for was upset about the situation. Overall, it was business as usual that whole week. Aside from my encounter with Mr. X, no one else said anything. Either they knew and didn't want to say anything, or they were just blissfully unaware. Most likely the second one.

     I failed to mention about the end of that week earlier, how my last night went down. It was the best semi-act of rebellion I ever enacted as my tenure as a custodian. I went about the usual cleaning of the class rooms as per usual, and was even ahead of schedule, until I got to the locker rooms. The bane of my existence here at Shilton. It dawned on me right as I walked in, that no matter what I did tonight, I did not have to answer for it the following Monday. For the first time, nobody would give a shit what I did in here. So, I gathered the trash, swept, cleaned the sinks and toilets, then did the same in the boys locker room. I didn't vacuum, I didn't mop, I didn't give two shits about it. So I brought all my shit back to the closet and, literally, threw it in there in no order. Then, after I took all my trash to the dumpster, I fucking left. At 8:30pm. Fuck schedules, fuck Shilton, fuck everything tonight, were my only thoughts. For me, this is was probably the closest I have ever come to a mental break, because I felt truly free for the first time in ages, while at work. I hopped in my car and immediately sped to Sacramento to see my friends play, during which she was proposed to by her boyfriend, in front of all of us. Thankfully, she accepted and it was great. Then, immediately from there I came back home to an apartment full of the rest of my friends, who were all celebrating my roommates 25^th birthday. It felt great to crack open that first beer and not have to worry about work for a while.

     Once the hangover wore off on Monday, I wandered into Superintendent J's office to meet up with him, which wound up just being just the 'cross the t's, dot the i's' kind of meeting, but as we wrapped up and shook hands, we had a brief aside that kinda threw me for a loop. On the subject of looking for work, Superintendent J asked:

     “So, you still in school, Stefan?”, he asked, with that plastic, shit-eating grin on his face.

     “No, actually, I graduated in December. Got my BA in Social Science.”

     “Oh, well then, you'll be fine! Haha. See ya around Stefan”, he retorted. What the hell?

     After slightly laughing and walking out, my internal monologue began again. It's real easy for someone who is making 3x a teachers salary a year to assume that my degree will bring me super success. I already had to deal with those kind of people: they are called college counselors. I don't need this shit from my boss, especially when his loser son wound up back in community college with us peons after less than a year at a 4 year. I just could not believe the amount of disconnect between Superintendent J and the real world. How can he not know that college graduates were taking minimum wage jobs just to stay afloat? Or the populace that was drowning in student loan debt? I bet he never had to sweat it out in a kitchen, over steamy dishes, or be awake at 5am and make drinks, or scrub shit from a tile floor. Come to think of it, I don't think that any of the overly air conditioned fucknuts in that whole office have ever had to bust their ass for anything less than 6 figures is the last 20 years.

    This all screamed through my head from the front door of the district office to my car, all of 50 feet. I hopped in, started the car, and exhaled as Iron Maiden poured forth from my stereo. Everything was going to be OK, though. I was no longer their peon to control, and as I turned out of that parking lot, I felt truly free.

    As a bird.

    Despite how gay that sounds.

    Whatever. 

     I'm done now.

Part 5- Here ya go.

Those Realizations. Again.

     Another thing that continually caused me some degree of anxiety at Shilton: people. In addition to seeing my old teachers and reliving past memories, as I outlined already, there always seemed to be kids and parents. EVERYWHERE. ALWAYS. To help the situation, my shift started at 3, but school didn't get out until 3:15. So the office was invariably full to the brim with office aides, pissed off parents, and teachers. Usually, I would just hide in the staff room and read, but some days there would be a random meeting there or the kids involved with student government would be putting shit together. The latter activity would always be a whirling dervish of hormones, cut paper, and stupid fucking jokes. I felt like I couldn't sit in there and read anyway without two things happening: all the kids in there thinking I'm some sort of creeper, or getting sent into a blind rage over the stupid crap they would talk about.

     Some of the most asinine things I have ever heard uttered from another human being came from these stupid fucking kids. Here's a few:

• “Oh my god, I cannot believe how stupid this Blackberry is! I wish my dad had bought me an iPhone.” (The girl was 11, by the way).
• Girl: “I was up so late doing homework. I had to keep moving around with my laptop to get a better connection to our wireless, because my bedroom was too far away from the router.”
  Guy: “Why did you need the internet?”
  Girl: “Because I had Facebook and Twitter on. Plus my Pandora [Internet Radio] couldn't keep streaming.”
  Guy: “Oh man, I HATE that!” (These kids had to be 13 at the oldest).
• “My dad won't let me call her! He says 12 is way too young to have a girlfriend. I can't believe this. I can't wait to move out when I'm older.”

      I mean, I'm sure that there are people out there that make these kids look like Archimedes, but sweet Jesus! How can these thought process form to begin with? Even in the hormone riddled brains of junior high students? It was even worse when I walked out onto campus and over heard some of the conversations on my way to get my slave tools trash cans and shit. There are three that stick out in my mind:

• (Boy to another boy) You're gonna go hang out with Trevor? He only has an Xbox360 so, like, what are you guys gonna do? Its not like you can watch Blu-Rays on it!
• (Girl is eating a popsicle and talking to a friend) Ugh! Why did our teacher have to give us strawberry popsicles! He knows I don't like them. I told him in our last essay! (Just...I don't...but....WHAT?!).

And the coups de grace:

• (2 girls sitting down talking)

     Girl 1: Its OK, hun. I'm sure he'll call you. He just might be busy.

     Girl 2: Its the rule! You give a guy a blowjob he is supposed to call you back! Stupid

               high school guys...

     I overheard that last one while I was carrying a couple boxes for a teacher, and nearly dropped them right then and there. A blowjob? This girl had to be 13, at the oldest. Maybe. Call me old-fashioned, but the only girls I knew who did that kind of shit in junior high wound up as parents one year after graduating high school, if they graduated at all. 

Now I know, kids have probably been doing this stuff at this age since the dawn of fucking time, but that mentality is just striking. Give a blowie = call back. Yeah, sure. Who wrote this rule, if there are rules at all? Is there a blowjob based economy that I, sadly, don't know about? Is the head of the BJ bureaucracy a presidential appointee? The other part that was also a little jarring was the fact that she was doing this shit with high school guys. Was he a freshman or a senior? Was it just him, or him and his buddies? Does this potentially secure her status in high school, when (or if) she gets there?

     Aw, who am I kidding. This kind of behavior shouldn't be striking to me at all. Seriously, kids these days (my generation included) are increasingly able to access porn and other sex based media so easily through the internet, that it's laughable, really. In a way, its now a formative part of growing up. It used to be stashing porno mags under your sheets and squinting through the static covered cable channels in your parents bedroom. Now its remembering to clear out your search history after each secretive wanking session (or, if you're a Google Chrome user, Ctrl+Shift+N is you're friend). Girls are just as guilty as guys are, believe it or not. Growing up with 2 younger sisters in the house, there were always cut out pictures of shirtless dudes on their windows and walls from magazines, not to mention several nights of them asking me to leave the back door unlocked for them, so they could go party. Either way, girls at that age are just as pervy as guys are, its just that when they get excited, the end result won't involve your mom being able to crack your blanket in half like a piece of peanut brittle.

     Regardless, my attitude toward this little girl's statement remains the same. What in the flying chocolate Christ is she doing, and why in the colossal fuck is she talking about it in public loud enough for a probably-creepy-looking janitor to overhear it? All I can say is, I hope she knows what condoms and STDs are, before she screws up big time. Otherwise, I'll simply look for her on MTV's next season of Teen Moms or whatever other reality bullshit they throw at me next. Not that I watch those, of course...

     I think the true exposition of the complete lack of sanity that the modern junior high schooler had, was easily shown whenever they would have dances at Shilton. God, those were the longest nights of my time at Shilton. What they do is, they seal off the area in front of the gym and multipurpose room/cafeteria/torture chamber with gates, and play brutally loud top 40 shit in the cafeteria to throngs of overly sugared and caffeinated 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders. 

     Now, the part that really rustled my jimmies was that I had to clean rooms that were included in the dance function. One example was the drama room, which was used by all the shithead leadership kids to store their backpacks. You ever try getting the garbage in a room filled with 50 backpacks and 12 idiotic teenagers? Yeah, not happening. Thankfully, the teacher was sympathetic to my plight and adopted a 'fuck it' mindset to it. The other thing that would happen was when the dance would actually kick off, and I still had to clean the girls' locker room. I would have to go around the back side of the gym, and get to the locker room that way, and when I entered, the dance area shared a wall with the locker room, so I had the noise of all the music and kids voices resonating through the locker room, casting an anxiety inducing din across the whole of the area. My ultimate fear was always having some kid open the door, even though it was locked, and come running in with 12 kids in tow while I'm cleaning. I hate being the heavy, plus I just want to get done quickly as soon as I get in there. It didn't happen the first year I was there, but when it did the second year, it was a disaster.

     It was just any other dance night. I was in the locker room, hating myself and wishing the school would burn down, when I hear the door to the gym, not the dance area, open. I walk around the corner, and see two chatty girls walk in.

     “Hey girls, you can't be in here, I am cleaning,” I say in as commanding of a tone I could muster.

      Both girls give me the deer in the headlights look and don't say anything for a split second, before one snaps out of it and mutters, “Well, can I just get something out of my locker? Its right here...", as she points 2 feet to her right.

     “OK, that's fine, but make it quick”. Then, I wander away to finish whatever I was doing. They pack up and leave, and as I hear the door open, the noise from outside got louder. 

     Oh shit. They opened the door facing the dance. RED ALERT!

     Already mentally prepared for this scenario, I speed over to the door just in time to see 12 more girls wander in in a frenzied line. I bark out 'Stop!' a little too forcefully,and was greeted by 12 horrified faces, all of which looked like they had their make-up guns set to “whore”. None of them said a word, though. I just point and say,

     “Out! I'm cleaning, and this place is closed!”, and they all filed out just fine. As I closed the door behind them and make sure its locked, I hear a frantic voice yell,

     “Don't close the lockers! Wait!”. And this girl proceeds to bang and kick the door with a fury I didn't even think was possible from a 12 year old. Soon, she started throwing herself bodily against the door like a member of the walking dead, yelling something about an iPod, before I heard a teacher come by and tell her to stop. I decided I just wanted to get the hell out at that point, so I speed cleaned the locker room, and called it good. The rest of my shift was spent wondering why a kid would think that it is OK to yell and scream and bang on the door like she was getting chased by a rhino in heat, just to get her fucking iPod?

It was instances like this one that made dance nights the worst days in the history of forever. Bill, you know that guy from Georgia I mentioned before, took advantage of something I always overlooked: the recyclables left over in the garbage cans outside. 

     Sweet Jesus, those recyclables. 

     I learned early on that it was a decent amount of extra cash in your pocket to pick them out of trash and such, but I only did that for whatever I could find in my rooms. I easily got an extra $40 in my wallet every month, just on my rooms alone. I always felt weird about sifting through trash, in front of people. Bill did not give a fuck. And good for him because, last I checked, he was able to start saving for a trip to Las Vegas.    To be honest, with the amount of soda those shitfaces drank, he probably had enough to do that and buy a few hookers. And to think that I took over some of his work, so he could get those trashes instead of me.

      Clever mother fucker.  

      But to be honest, the only person I think that deserved the extra money was Bill. He was willing to deal with it, so he could fucking have them.

      Dance based anger aside, it was kinda hard walking around campus during the day and looking at kids walking around and being able to easily identify where they were going to be in about 3 years in high school. I felt like Cypher from The Matrix, you know? Just walking around and pointing out kids going: Jock, Cheerleader, Alcoholic, Honor Student, Angst, etc. It was odd just looking at these kids and seeing their doppelgangers in my head from my high school days, and hoping to someone that they don't go the obvious route that played out in my head.

     I have had many booze fueled rants about my generation, about how we are the so-called “middle children of history” (Sorry, Fight Club. I hope Chuck Palahniuk doesn't sue me.) and so on. But this opinion changed once I started here at Shilton. These are kids who probably barely remember 9/11 or have never had to deal with anybody they went to school with and partied with going off to Iraq and Afghanistan and coming back in shambles or not at all. 

     They will, hopefully, never know what its like to sweat for their job in a recession. Or maybe they will, but I am no soothsayer. These kids are a generation brought up differently than mine, and maybe that just scares me. 

     Or they all suck, I don't know.

     The point is, these kids are the ones standing on the cusp of history affecting their future, versus my generation having it affect their day to day lives. With what I have gathered just on this school alone, they are even more poorly equipped to handle it than my spoiled rotten generation. They will gladly tumble off into oblivion while still giving a shit about the Kardashians. These new “middle children” are very, very, screwed.

While all these deep and frustration fueled thoughts were whizzing through my head, I caught a glimpse of the theory that naivety is hereditary by maneuvering through the parking lot as part of my nightly rounds

     Basically, I would start off by getting my cart ready, drop it off in front of my first classroom, and then walk back to the front to bring in the cones that outlined where not to park and where the buses were supposed to go. I also had to take the flags down out front.

     Doing these two things, I got very brief interactions with the parents of these little fuckwits. Dear god, I have never met a more out of touch group of people. I made me feel bad for their kids. Almost. I would be loading up the stack of cones onto the dolly, and parents would drive by and ask me the most ludicrous questions, almost as if they had never been to the school before. Even though their kid went here. Prepare yourself for another head ache inducing list of the best/worst things they ever asked me, in a convenient list form. Here ya go:

• While I'm standing in front of the quad, with the 35 foot tall gym in the back ground. “Excuse me, where is the gym?”. I got this one about once a week, without fail. I would just point, and get an embarrassed “Oh” as a response.
• At night. After the sun has gone down. “Pardon me, but is the office open? I need to photocopy something.” In her defense though, she may have been...well...no she was just an idiot.
• While wearing a Rage Against The Machine shirt at work, picking up cones again, a parent drove by in his red Mercedes and yelled out the window, “Faggot!” as he sped out of the parking lot with his kid in tow. He got both middle fingers on the way out of the parking lot, which I was sure he saw and was gonna report me. He didn't.
• While I was taking the flags down, I dropped the American and California State flags on the ground while fiddling with the third California Distinguished School flag they had tacked on. 2 seconds had passed before I hear a lifted Ford F-350 blaring his horn like its on fire. Guy leans out the window, “Hey! Pick that up, boy!”. Then he spit out the chew he had in his lip into a can he was holding. All I could do was laugh, pick them both up in a ball and walked in. I don't get paid enough to care about a flag that I would gladly burn.

      These were just the snippets that I caught from Shilton's parents, since I was working nights. Thankfully, I never had to deal with them in any amount like the teachers or office staff did, but I got treated in a different, yet equally draining and insulting fashion. I was treated as help. When I had to get through groups of parents on my route, they couldn't be bothered to even make eye contact with me, let alone listen when I would have to belt out “Excuse Me!” at the top of my lungs when I had to get into rooms that they were standing in front of. I was just a potted plant to them, until they needed something. Then I was a god-send. I was constantly interrupted by some parent or kid needing to get into a classroom to get something for their kid, which didn't usually work, since kids in middle school don't keep anything in their desks. I just wanted so badly to just say: “Oh your little Parker needs his book out of his class? Nope! Go fuck yourself”, then spray them with disinfectant. 

      Class warfare aside, I always felt that every parent had their own individual superiority complex as soon as they stepped onto Shilton's campus. They were all better than you, and they knew it. They didn't have to say anything, you could just read it on their smug little faces. And god forbid you do anything wrong in front of them, because they know how to do your job, trust me. That loud mouthed redneck had every right to yell at me, because I was not doing my job right. I'm getting paid with his tax dollars, so I deserve it. Psh, I hope he chokes on that wad of shit in his mouth. Or gets mouth cancer. Or both!

     Another thing I began to realize, was the extreme idiocy of some of the teachers at Shilton, versus the one I had the pleasure of interacting with at Strapford or Rockhill (No sarcasm. Seriously.). Well, idiocy is the wrong word. I think the proper word would be spoiled fucking rotten. Yes that's one word.

     Grammatical errors aside, Shilton had the group of teachers that were used to an ungodly amount comfort. Granted, comfort in your job is important, but sweet zombie fucking shit this was bad. Some of the teachers that I had to clean for just assumed that, since I used a vacuum and had jingly keys attached to my hip, I could work miracles with their cluster fucked classrooms. It wasn't so much the mess they left behind, it was the way they had their classrooms set up. It was like running a labyrinth, minus the minotaur in the middle, with a loud, screaming dead weight in front of you trying to get under each and individual desk to clean it, because little Queen of the Teacher Federation saw some pencil shavings under a desk that is in securely in the middle of 7 other desks. I mean, this thing is so wedged in there, I don't even think the kid could fit in there with a zip line harness and half a stick of butter. This was the routine for about 15 out of my 24 rooms that I wound up cleaning at Shilton. 4 of the others weren't technically rooms, since they were the locker rooms, band room, and drama room. These were at least open enough that vacuuming them was easy enough, but I had to do stupid benign shit like dusting, moving chairs, mopping linoleum, and blah fucking blah, all on alternating schedules. Honestly, they could have given me a cleaning schedule based on the rotation of Venus to Jupiter and I would not have been surprised. And still some of the teachers would have bought a fucking star map so they could show me what I was doing wrong. As for the locker rooms, refer back to my previous rant about how gross they were. Despite being so far into this story, my opinion hasn't changed.

     The most spoiled rotten fucker on the entire campus was the principal, Mr. H. He is still the only principal that Shilton has ever had, since it opened in 1994. This has garnered him respect as a man and an administrator. Now, to completely contradict that first sentence, I will gladly say that he had made Shilton the successful school that it was, and treated many of his employees fairly and rewarded them at every turn whenever they deserved it. He also works his ass off making sure that Shilton is in tip top shape and, with the combination of these two traits, has become a golden boy in the school district. He can do no wrong. This has bestowed upon him an ego that makes Mount Everest look like Dolly Parton's tits.

     Wait, maybe that's not the best comparison. That's not fair to Mount Everest.

     Anyway, this led him to rule over the rest of his employees like a dictator. His every whim was to be met as fast and as accurately as possible. Every day before school, Mr. H would work out in the locker room, work up a sweat, and then come into the locker room and use the shower that was built into the P.E. Teachers office. I was supposed to clean this shower, which he used for personal use, every night. 

     Really? I didn't know I was a fucking maid. They actually get benefits. I felt even worse for Helen because, in the summer time, she got the prestigious job of washing the shower curtain that he got to use. Yeesh, what the fuck? If I wanted this, I would have gotten a job at a fucking sauna, that way I am guaranteed that the old guys there aren't complete shitheads.

     He would also not hesitate to flood your in-box with emails either explaining what you did wrong and what he needed done in addition to your usual crap that you had to do. This was one of the major catalysts of our declining boss-worker relationship, because I chose to forget my log in info for my email way back when I started. 

     I'm a fucking janitor, why the fuck would I need an email? When I'm on the computer, I would rather build up the grip in my right hand (if you know what I mean), than think about work when I am not getting paid to. Well, apparently Mr. H had sent me every bit of warning via email, when I wasn't checking it ever. As you can imagine, this did not go over well, and led to quite a few notes in my office box, and even a few calls over the intercom to come to the front office to talk about what tape residue I left on a desk by accident or who's ass I didn't metaphorically kiss. And to bring it around full circle, at the end of the summer he would buy us all a 12 pack of beer of our choice. I just thought it was funny to think about. Yes, thank you for this 12 pack of beer. This should cover about 1 hour of work that we put in under the nice hot sun weed eating, stripping floors, deep cleaning carpets and classrooms, and scouring toilets in preparation for students to fuck them all up again. Aren't you such a great boss?

     Wait, no.

     Go fuck yourself. I can buy my own damn beer. You know what you can do? Not make me clean your shower/personal whack off station again. That would be a good thing to do.

     The funny thing is, though, and it seems fitting in regard to my joyous time at Shilton, was that the teachers that I liked when I went there and that were the coolest to talk to, I never saw at all during my shift. One of them was a science teacher, Mr. F, who was the quirkiest dude you will ever meet. When I had him as my 8^th grade science teacher while I was at Shilton, he introduced me to Magic The Gathering, a sorcery and creature based card game. Think Pokemon meets D&D, before Pokemon was even a thing. This, by and large, was the beginning of my embrace of my inner nerd-dom, and helped start the crack of the mold of “teenage douchebag Stefan”.

     Anyway, heart felt paragraph aside, Mr. F was the shit. First and foremost. Being about 5'8”, he was a mildly soft spoken man, but was always dressed in jeans, button-up t-shirt, and converse. On certain days, as the school year would wind down, he'd longboard around campus just for kicks when the kids were gone. The main trick to his coolness was simply talking to him. If you had any little thing in common with him, then he would just go with it. I once spent an hour and change just BS-ing with him about Magic and video games and the sad state of college costs. He would even talk to Helen about gardening and the composition of soil. It's just like, dude either you are really smart, or you read nothing but encyclopedias and tech manuals. 

     Well, now that I think about it, that 2^nd one wouldn't be that surprising.

     Another dude that was definitely another one of my favorites was Mr. X. Oddly, despite the fact I cleaned his room, he never once complained, but I never actually saw him in his room. I always ran into him in places randomly, like the gym at 9pm. Despite his wanderings, the conversations we have had surpass any potential oddness factor. He was huge metal head and music fan and so was I. We would batter back and forth about so many bands, and just get odd looks from passers by of all ages. I kinda felt bad for the guy, though, because he got his room stuck way out in the boonies of the campus and still had to coach sports nearly every day. The kicker was, too, that he played guitar and ran guitar club at Shilton, which started at 8am (very not metal), so he had a half-stack and 2 guitars in his room at any given time. The one day I did see him in his room, he caught me eyeing the guitars in the corner and told me I could play them whenever I wanted. So, after wasting time talking to Mr. F, I would usually take 5 and wail on the ESP he had in his room. Makes Mondays that much more tolerable, trust me.

     The third and final super cool teacher at Shilton actually has a bit of a good and bad reputation attached to him. Mr. K was the wood shop teacher, and was actually well known in the local area for his Woodshop Rocks program, where he showed kids at school how to build guitars/basses. Something like 300 guitars have been cranked out by the classes alone, and he has hand made guitars for people like James Hetfield, Ronnie Montrose (RIP), and the bass player for Sublime. I'm too lazy to look up his name. Anyway, it made for excellent press for Shilton and helped solidify his credibility as a teacher. I always got to check out the guitars he was building and chat with him about guitars and so on and so forth. He was a really cool dude, in general, and was loved across the board by his students for his super lax way of classroom instruction and ability to throw candy and chips their way very often.

     The bad part of his reputation actually stems back to when I was a student. He got a reputation as a dirty old man type. There was always a rumor that he was caught staring at 8^th grade girls' asses and so on and so forth. But, to tell ya the truth, I heard his wife was a serious ball-buster at a fairly constant rate and was, predictably, the principal of another junior high school. I'm not condoning this type of behavior, but if I had his wife, I'd probably be a serial killer, so good on him for not ramming an axe into her skull. Now if the other problem could go away, we would be in business.

     Its funny, though, that after all this stuff that Shilton puts out in terms of superiority and reputation that I have rambled about over the course of these few pages, the school itself from a infrastructure and construction point of view is actually a pile of crap. Many of its issues stem back from its hasty construction back in 1994. It was supposed to be open at the beginning of the 1993-94 school year, but construction was behind so it opened in January of 1994, to the chagrin of some socially beleaguered children. As you can imagine, some corners probably had to be cut in order to get shit finished on time. I didn't think that there was much wrong, until I talked to one of the science teachers one time and it somehow came up. One thing they decided to rush was the installation of the emergency showers in the science rooms. While they were all installed functionally, the drains were installed...well...funny. The drains sit on a 1-2” high lip at the bottom of a slight decline that, in theory, leads to the drain for runoff. Well, since it sits ABOVE the floor level, the rooms would have to be covered in about 2-3” of water before they would even begin to work. How in creation is that logical, or even safe? They have gotten lucky though, and have never had to test that theory.

     In addition to these silly foibles, Shilton is also the only middle school without access to cable. You know why? The pipes they installed to run cables through were about 1/2” to small, so the connection for cable TV was left out altogether. Why not just put in the right pipes in the first place? What the hell was the district paying these guys, just so they can screw up? How much does incompetence cost?

     Speaking of incompetence, remember my rant about how much superintendents make earlier in this little pamphlet of anger? That money could also be well spent on another thing at Shilton: new fucking carpets. Every summer, we were required to deep clean the carpets of every carpeted room on campus that had one. Even the little place mats they have at the entrance had to get deep scrubbed using a carpet scrubber similar to the ones that you would rent at the front of supermarkets, if that is still a thing. Well, of course, at Strapford they always got us the carpet scrubber that was in tip top shape and it worked just fine. The one that Shilton had, though.

     Holy chocolate fuck.

     This thing had to be from the Mesozoic Era and handled like a Edsel with a flat tire. It worked and everything, don't get me wrong, but it was always needing new wheels, new handles, new something every god damn time it was used. The shit it would manage to suck up was nothing short of horrifying on a basic human level. Imagine a years worth of foot traffic dirt, coupled with existing stains from the late 90s that are slowly coming out over time. I swear my own shit looked, and sometimes smelled, better than the sludge that came out of the carpets at Shilton. Even after grinding this steam-powered scrub machine along the carpet, there are still stains, smudges, and dark spots that litter the floor. Its almost as if Jackson Pollock became an interior designer. Despite these carpets being in this kind of condition, the district has no intention of replacing them, since that would probably divert from the superintendents inability to pay for his kid to go to school and flunk out. Again.

     I also found that maintaining the grounds was particularly rewarding during the summer. Despite all my fucking whining/ranting, I did enjoy slapping the leaf blower on and blowing down the campus. It gave you a sense of accomplishment in the end. But, getting to the landscaping tools you needed was always a bitch. The blower and weed-eaters were located in a side closet in the multipurpose room/cafeteria that had an electric control box in it, the like of which was the main power source for certain parts of the school. So, with it running all day, the temperature in that room remained a balmy 90 degrees, year round. That's great in the winter, but when you walk into that room when its 104 degrees outside, its like getting slapped in the face with burnt toast while Pele kicks you in the nuts. It is just an instant piss-off factor that I have yet to match. Just another prime construction error on the part of the district. Why the fuck does that thing need to be INDOORS?! It also didn't help that Kris kept the extra weed eater twine up in the main office, about a football field in length away. This led to plenty of walking and plenty of chafed thighs. Yummy, I know.

"Book" - Part 4. Its a short one.

Return To The Gauntlet

     As the summer of 2011 wound down and the 2011-2012 school year started, my labor was still split between Shilton and Strapford as per usual. At Shilton, I was still covering Portables A-F at 2 hours a day during the school year. As the school year began, things began to change. It was about a month into the school year I was at Strapford, doing my thing, when a substitute, Mark, poked his head in the room I was cleaning.

     “Hey Stefan, hows it goin'?”, he uttered in his cigarette thickened voice. Mark looked to be about 158, but I think he had to be 55 or 60 at most.

     “Good man, what's up?”.

      I always had a thing with this dude, since he mostly functioned as LOUD'S stool pigeon. If he was ever substituting for a janitor that I worked with, he would poke his head in and let him know what I was doing...or not doing.

     “Nothin'. Has anyone told you about your schedule change?”.

     “Huh?! Oh great, what now?”, I blurted out, pretty much without thinking.

     “Yeah, I heard they are switching you to 6 hours at Shilton only, starting Monday.”

      What. The. Fuck.

     “Really? I haven't heard jack shit about that, who said?”. At this point my frustration was blatantly obvious. I liked my diminished school year responsibilities, I didn't need more.

     “Well, yeah that's what I heard, just saying”. Then he casually turned around, and walked away, leaving me standing there pulling my jaw back up off of the floor. They were putting me at Shilton for my entire schedule? The same junior high that I attended, way back in 2000-2002? 

     Great. 

      It was already bad enough that I had 2 hours there as it was, so now I get to deal with kids running around, polluting the air with teen-aged dipshittery, and unconsciously dragging bad memories to the forefront of my brain. I mean, I already spent two years in that nightmare, and 2 hours was plenty enough time to be there again.

     Shit.

     After stewing in my broth of irritability, I called up both LOUD and the Head of Personnel, Superintendent J. Eventually, one of them got back to me and confirmed that I will be taking over the route Sean was doing, and he will take my spot at Strapford. Well, the one good thing about finding this out was that I wasn't the only one who was pissed off about the transition. Vlaz, the Ukrainian night guy at Strapford (for those who are just joining us), was pissed. Vlaz and I were pretty tight, and our mutual dislike of Seth and our jobs made us comrades.

     Communism joke aside, I also worked with the guy for just shy of 4 years. He kept on railing about how it was discrimination, since both Sean and Seth were black. It was rather revealing, because it showed that good old-fashioned racism is capable of crossing oceans. But, at the same time, Vlaz isn't one to dwell on that as the only reason to be angry. As conceded as it sounds, I think he just was a little bit afraid of change, and having to get to know a new person that was already friends with Seth. Regardless of any fits thrown by either Vlaz or myself, I drug myself into Shilton at 3pm that first day and was confronted by Kris and Mr. H and given my new route for the night.

     I took one look at it and nearly shit my pants. First off, they had me covering the entirety of the portable area, plus the student union class rooms, so 13 rooms total. Easy right? Nope. The portables were moved further out on the blacktop away from the school due to construction of a new 6^th grade wing. So, on top of these rooms being out in Timbuktu, the student union classrooms, 2 in total, were tile floor and needed to be mopped. Again, no big deal, except I had to go around the construction, away from the portables to get to them. You guys seriously expect me to haul a full cart and mop bucket clear the shit out there everyday, over gravel and torn up asphalt to sweep and mop these 2 rooms? Get real. So, I made a mental note to figure that out later.

     As I scanned further, I saw I also had to clean a set of 7 new classrooms, the likes of which had to be trashed daily, and mopped and vacuumed once every 3 days. Meh, that's pretty easy peasy. But the kicker was the last bit of the night. 

     I got to clean both locker rooms now.

     Oh fuck. Great.

     Its no big deal, really. 

     It's only toilets that get clogged by kids daily, with an ever expanding assortment of items and excretions.

     It's only about 500 square feet of floor space to clean, and more dust and trash than Amy Winehouse's vagina. Speaking of which, I also got to empty the tampon holders in the girls locker room. Even though I grew up with three menstruating women in my house, you still never get used to it.

     After staring at this for a while, Mr. H decided to launch into a speech about how some of the teachers were upset by this transition and that he expected me to work as hard as usual...blah blah blah. But, since I have had a perennial fear of Mr. H, ever since I was a student at Shilton, I just nodded and told him I'd do my best. So off into the night I set, wondering, “How the fuck am I gonna pull this off without giving myself a fucking hernia?”.

     So that first night, as I'm plugging away, through the portables, and onto the classrooms, I walk into the band room to clean it, according to the schedule, and I get hit with what I can only describe as a flashback. I look at the chairs they have set up in the band room and remembered my days in the Shilton band as a short, fat, trumpet player in 7^th grade. 

     Oh god, the ridicule I got just from other band members is enough to piss me off as I write about it. No matter how hard I practiced, I never seemed to get it when it came time to play the fucking songs in class. Mr. Villem, the teacher then, did his best to embarrass anybody who screwed up in his class, but it always seemed to be me. I got shit thrown at me, yelled at by other band members, laughed at, you name it. It nearly killed music for me.

     Well, once the horrific slide show of memories passed from walking in the room, I just gathered up the trash, and walked out. As I wandered to the next room I thought:

     “Is this going to happen in every room?! I don't get paid enough to relive psychological trauma everyday for 6 hours a day.”

     Thankfully, this same kind of thing didn't happen for the next classrooms that I had to clean, but the real kicker came once I got started on the locker rooms. The first one I had to do was the girls locker room. That was a kick in the dick right there, because I was thrown in there by three 8^th graders when I was in 7^th grade, and horrendously embarrassed in the process. As a result, I have this paralyzing fear of walking in on someone of the opposite sex in the bathroom, but here I am walking into the girl's locker room, with all my janitorial shit behind me. Dragging all this shit just screamed, “HEY LOOK AT ME! I'M NEW! I SHOULD BE WEARING A HELMET! HURRDUURRR!”.

     God, the spine shaking awkwardness was seeping back in full force. I opened the door, and called out a 'Hello?!' to see if it was empty. Thankfully, it was. Once I get all my shit inside, I go to turn on the radio in the locker room in the coach's office, which I have to clean as part of the deal. But as I go to open the door, I am looking into the faces of about 200 old pictures of former students that the female P.E. teachers have been collecting over the years. And they are all staring and smiling at me. 

     Creepy. 

     Even worse, I went to school with some of these girls, and get immediately hit with memories in 7^th and 8^th grade of them laughing at me while their friends either got a joke in at my expense, or something embarrassing happened to me.

     Trying to banish these thoughts, I turn on the radio and just get to work emptying the nightmare creations from the little white trash boxes, then turn to the dusting of the lockers and cleaning of sinks and toilets. This proceeds to clog my nose and make my eyes run with all the shit that flew into my face. Sneezing like a man possessed, I then swept the huge floor space of trash, vacuumed the floor mats, then mopped everything in sight. The entire process is supposed to take 50 minutes, but I somehow got it done in 35 and moved onto the boys locker room.

     You think the flashbacks in the girls locker room was rough? I got hit with it again in the boys in full force. I walked in with all my shit again, and opened the coaches office and had the faces of old sport teams, filled with guys that made my life extremely difficult. 

    I mean, my last name is Adcock for Christ's sake. What insults do you think these jock ass hats came up with? Both years were terrible in P.E.

     I could walk through that locker room and point to the spots where I got in fights, was pantsed, yelled at, pushed, shirt whipped, etc. God, and the teachers weren't much help either. I have a vivid memory of going up to one of the teachers in P.E., Mr. Narmon, and telling him about a guy who was calling me names in 7^th grade all day that day, and you know what he said?

     “Stefan, try and have a little thicker skin, man.” Then he just walked away. 

      I mean, who the fuck says that to a kid who is being made fun of on a daily basis. And this was just one of the countless instances of shit taking I got to deal with at Shilton, which led to quite a few issues later down the road.

     So now, 10 years later, I get to clean this fuckhead's office? Wow, what a shitty turn of events. So, I do the exact same thing as the girls locker room, except for some reason this one took me and hour to do, and I still had to take all the trash I left outside to the dumpster. As I walk around and gather up all the trash from the day, I am just thinking:

     “Just do this, since you still have bills to pay while you are still in school. Just graduate, man, and you can get the hell out of this nightmare job.” With the slam shut of the dumpsters, I throw the garbage cart back where it belongs and drag myself to my car. As I was working, I figured that my workload had suddenly tripled on me overall. As a direct result, I felt 3 times as tired and I drove home like a zombie, thinking: One day down, only 170-something left to go.  

"Book" - Part 3. This may get political.

The Shit I Seen

      You know that scene in “The Breakfast Club”, when the janitor comes into the library and Bender asks him "How does one become a purveyor of the custodial arts"? Then, Carl utters the line “I am the eyes and ears of this institution, my friends”? Yeah, that's pretty much how I felt the entire time I was working as a custodian for the district. Granted, I didn't root around in peoples lockers, and I never snooped around looking into permanent records. But, I did manage to gain some perspective into not only what kind of kids public schools, in my area at least, have to deal with, but what other shady practices the school district....well...practices.

     Everyone knows that kids have natural ability to be rambunctious little shits with the potential strength of a crack addled woolly mammoth. 

     It's just science. 

     I got a disheartening realization of this one day at Strapford when I noticed Mrs. B was absent for the day. At first, I simply chalked it up to a combination of either a random spasm of sickness or a desire for a three day weekend, since it was Friday after all. When I got back on Monday, I saw she was back and looking rather surly. Turned out she had to go to the doctor Friday, because she was scratched on Thursday by a student who was having a freak out of some kind. The kid's nails were so dirty, they gave her an infection and she spent most of the weekend taking antibiotics and rubbing ointment on her arms.

      Two things went through my head: the first was what the fuck kind of kid flips out and scratches his teacher? I mean, sure the kid could have ADHD or a mental disorder of some kind, but this kid did not. He just had a rough day, flipped out, and tagged this poor teacher. I'm sorry, but I would much rather shovel shit onto more shit than to deal with that kind of shit. Oy.

     The second thought was one of revulsion: how could a kid's hands be that dirty to begin with? Think to yourself, when was the last time someone scratched you and it got infected? Never? SEE! Because normal people are taught to wash your fucking hands throughout the day. It seems like this kid was never told that particular piece of advice. Were his parents just that careless? Was it just the result of a 5^th grader going about his day? Was it Mrs. B's immune system just not holding up its end of the bargain? Well, some would think that last one was the reason, since teachers get the blame for all sorts of shit. I think its just a simple case of a dirty kid not knowing he is dirty. Whatever. Still fucked up.

     Speaking of getting blamed for shit and fucked up stuff, I got to witness a fantastic fiasco of teacher-parent interactions along those same lines, but with no scratching and stubborn infections...I think. Anyway, I walked in one day to do my usual cleaning at Strapford and was confronted with a mildly frustrated looking Vlaz.

     He pulled me aside and said, “Stefan, I'll clean this room today”.

    “Uh, okay, why is that?”, I wondered.

     Vlaz only responded with a few mildly stressed “eh's” and hand gestures before Andrea, the Principal of Strapford at the time, came walking around the corner and into Mrs. Q's classroom without a word. So, getting the hint, I decided to take care of my other rooms instead. No big deal, right? Well, an hour and a half later, I had nearly finished all my tasks at Strapford and was just about to barge in there and clean around the people inside, when Vlaz and Andrea walk out accompanying a mom, dad, and their daughter.   Shortly there after, Mrs. Q rounded the corner with her stuff and headed home. 

     After I cleaned said room, I found Vlaz again and politely demanded (if that's a thing) to know what that was all about. He told me that the parents that were in there were mad at Mrs. Q for how a situation was being handled with their daughters behavior and grades. So, as a precaution against the parents freaking out, Andrea had Vlaz come in as a precaution, in case things got out of hand.

     Essentially, they wanted Vlaz in there as a de facto bouncer in case he should have to kick some ass. All I could think was, has this happened before? What kind of losers did the staff here have to deal with on a regular basis to warrant using custodians as security guards? I shrugged it off as a precautionary practice, used by Andrea to make a tense situation easier, but I got a bit of a wake up call about 2 days later. I walked in to clean Mrs. Q's room as per usual, when who was there? The same fucking people. As I walked in, I just snuck around them to get the trashes, but mom took it upon herself to say hello. I looked up and got a good look at this "happy" little family.

     Mom had a red-cheeked, pock marked face, complete with ratty, semi-blond hair that I think was last washed when Ike Turner still had a career. Complementing these were a luxurious choice of faded jeans, dirty sneakers, and generic Wal-Mart t-shirt. To enunciate her appearance, she spoke in a very loud voice, with slight nasal overtones, and laughed way too much about nothing for no reason. 

     Dad was even worse. 

     Being about 5'8”, he had a gut about the size of a dump truck, and was about as good looking. Complete with vacant expression, camo hat, jeans, ratty work boots, and a t-shirt with that stupid Achmed the Dead Terrorist's picture on it screaming "Silence, I keel you!". It was funny once, but on this guy it was more pathetic than anything else. The daughter of these two America's Next Top Model contestants was content to just sit in the back with a pissed off look on her face waiting for her mom and dad to shut the hell up.

As I stifled my displeasure of meeting these three, I smiled back and continued to do my job. After 20 minutes, they finally left to do a trash run.  When I came back, I found Mrs. Q rubbing her temples looking worn out beyond her years.

      “Another batch of winners, huh?,” I asked, wandering back in the room.

      “Yeah I know”, Mrs. Q sighed, “Son of a bitch”. God, it always freaked me out a little to hear teachers swear, even as an adult and one of their fellow staff members. It was here, in this very instant, that I got the inspiration for what you are reading, dear reader. I mean, when was the last time you heard of anyone getting called away from their assigned job to act as security for a co-worker? Or a co-worker getting an infection from a confrontation with another customer/associate/person? 

     As well, it felt like I had seen what teachers had to go through, but I felt like I was only getting the small snapshot of the picture. After about another 8 months or so, when the new school year began, I had just started taking a California politics class at Sac State. My professor continually railed on the tragic state of California education and how terribly ineffective it was. It was sitting in there I learned that California still was using No Child Left Behind, despite being the most populous state in the country. Also, that California schools are paid for by a hacked together series of propositions and initiatives passed by our anemic state government. But more on that later.

      I would always sit there in class and daydream about what the teachers I clean for would have to say if I were to ask them about the system. Oh man, those would be good. Over the course of the next few days, I slowly gathered my concentration and courage to go over and ask Mrs. Q if she would be willing to provide me with said information. After sweating it out through a particularly hot day of shoveling dirt-based misery, I wandered over to Mrs. Q's room. After a little casual banter, I asked her if she could provide me with some insight as to the trials and tribulations of teachers/the district itself. Funnily enough, it totally looked like I was coming on to her in the process. I had learned from the excellent Liam Neeson movie, “Kinsey”, that if you want honest answers out of people, you should put the subject at ease, so they offer relaxed information. So, with this in mind I asked her if she wanted to meet and discuss this stuff over food and stuff. Well, she Googled this place, and it came up as a bar instead. So we went to Starbucks. Whatever. All I hoped was that she didn't get an "oh-god-this-janitor-ten-years-younger-than-me-is-hitting-on-me" kind of feeling about the whole situation..

     Anyway, after I sped through work to get off early enough to talk to Mrs. Q, we sat down in the creepily familiar Starbucks lobby and just had a simple chat. Turns out Mrs. Q was a Communication's major at Sac State. I would celebrate about Hornet pride and alma mater and blah, blah, blah, but I don't give a shit. After getting the familiarity out of the way, I just went straight for the important questions, which I will present to you in very convenient list form, since everybody loves lists (bear in mind, these answers are what I got from my hastily scribbled interview notes, and are paraphrases, rather than direct quotes):

• How much did the teaching credential cost?
  • About $10,000, plus the cost of tuition going through the program.
• How long did you student teach, and what was the process to get certified from there?
  • In California, there is a 15 week student teaching portion, during which you build up a portfolio displaying your ability as a teacher. Then from there, you take the CSET (California Subject Examinations for Teachers) and the PACT (Performance Assessment for California Teachers) tests, and then you are a credentialed teacher.
• Where do you stand on the fact that California still uses No Child Left Behind?
  • By 2014, the state wants 100% of its test score goal met, regardless of impairment. This doesn't work.
• How well do you think that the standards in California help prep kids for suture grades?
  • The standards themselves work, but the needs of students need to met better. Lots of ELD (English Language Development), mainstreamed RSP (Resource Specialist Program, pertaining to kids with learning disabilities), and lots of kids with behavior issues. The needs of these groups need to be increasingly met.
• What were some of the things that were particularly jarring at first? Both job-wise and socially?
  • Realizing that you can't help all the kids that you come across, and that hit pretty hard. As well, I started at Warding Elementary, so that was pretty rough at first (for more information on why Warding was this way, stay tuned. I'll explain.)
• What's the hardest part about your job as a whole?
  • The bullshit. I have to sit on committees that take up my time. As well, the District office had a habit of giving teachers extra jobs on top of being a teacher. I was given the job of ELD coordinator at Strapford. This used to be a District office job, but rather than have someone at the office do it, they chose to pick teachers at school sites and just pay them an extra $1000 stipend. In the process, they increased the workload we had to already. As well, this also contributed to the huge amount of paperwork they had us doing already.
• What do you think could be done to fix things in the district?
  • One thing that could help could be to trim down the salaries of the superintendents. Each one makes about $134,000 a year after taxes. That's enough for three teachers annual salary. As well, California could benefit to model their system after Finland's system. In Finland's system, each classroom has 3 teachers per class. These three teachers all have, at least, a master's degree in any relevant subject. This has brought them a lot of success in the process, and it costs them about the same as California, in terms of expense to the state.

     Well, after this little rendezvous, I was a little flabbergasted as to what I heard. Some of what she said was pretty illuminating. The main one was the fact that California had decided to keep with No Child Left Behind for that long, instead of switching to Obama's Race To The Top strategy for educating kids. I was part of the first generation they tested the methodology of NCLB on in order to get more money via test scores. In high school, I can vividly remember taking the STAR test my freshman through junior years and wondering why the fuck I was taking a test I wasn't getting graded for. Or why were the administrators making such a big deal about raising the test scores for the school? It was because of this asinine act. It was also the reason they upped the standards on the AP tests in high school, which compounded the test prep stress for students and teachers. I knew a couple people who got out of high school as Adderal riddled messes because of those fucking tests. And to simply think that the state was going to stick with it until 2014 made me slightly nauseous. That meant that there is going to be a whole new generation behind me that will get to experience the bullshit associated with these tests that really mean nothing academically, but everything in regards to money.

     It seems that money was definitely the root of all evil in this interview because all the problems that came up where centered around money. Like the cost of superintendents salaries'. How the fuck can people lay off teachers and keep on multiple people at $134,000 a year, even sleep at night. Here's and idea: cut one of these people and give their salary to new teachers or, at the very least, one new teacher and more aides to help the ELD and RSP programs which, according to what I gathered from Mrs. Q, are not working to their maximum potential. Why does a superintendent get to sit comfy in his air conditioned office, while regular teachers get to deal with kids who are struggling to adapt to mainstream schooling in overcrowded classrooms. Even when these kids do go get specialized help, who are they getting it from? A few overworked and underpaid ELD and RSP instructors and an aide, if they're lucky. I also never really bothered to think about the amount of kids with behavioral problems that they probably have to deal with. They obviously aren't ELD or RSP, and I never actually met a school psychologist on any of the campuses that I worked on; so who were the unlucky souls who got to deal with these kids, who were often prone to random acts of violence? The teachers. They got the lovely choice of taking time away from other kids to tend to the issues of one other kid, or they just sent them to the office for, more often than not, ineffective discipline by the administration of the school.

     I also mentioned earlier that I would come back and explain the significance of Warding School in the conversation between Mrs. Q and I. You see, I went to Warding School as a child and have many fond memories of that place. Too bad sarcasm doesn't translate well in text form. You see, Warding School has a bit of a bad reputation in the school district for multiple reasons. One reason was due to its student body. The surrounding area near Warding was middle class suburbs for a couple of blocks, but as soon as you crossed over about 5 or 6 blocks you ran into a street called Riverside Avenue. This is the dividing line in Roseville between the good and bad side of the tracks, to borrow the comparison. Its one of those streets that was useful at one point, but now its just crammed to the gills with shitty Mexican food shops and used car dealerships. As you cross Riverside, you venture into what my mother referred to as the “trees and 123's” area of Roseville. She always painted this area as the bad part of Roseville, and as soon as I took one step in this area, I would get a bullet to the head. As I grew up, I learned this wasn't the case at all.

     Instead of being the Watts of Roseville, it's really just an area that is uncomfortably close to the train tracks that tends to attract people with shit income due to the cheap housing prices. In addition, a majority of the people that come to live in this area are immigrants, so the cheap housing is another incentive for them to settle here. People see this area full of low income housing and foreign people milling about in the street and out come the stereotypes. This area is also underlined by another source of low-income housing on Riverside, known as HomeStart. Now, when I was going to Warding, HomeStart was almost a four letter word among some of us kids. Mostly because all the kids we knew who came from there were dirty, underfed, psychotic little shitstains on the face of history. At least that is what our 9 year old minds conjured up anyway. That previous statement is not directly reflective of HomeStart in anyway.

     Damage control aside, these two areas around Riverside made for a student body at Warding that was extremely destitute. So who was responsible for getting them school supplies and lunch on a daily basis? The school itself. Warding was a school that had the largest amount of kids on the free lunch program, when I was there. Well, as time passed, nothing changed. They still have some of the longest lunch lines in the entire school district, a predicament that costs the district tens of thousands of dollars per school year. And that's just Warding by itself. In addition to lunches, many of the teachers at Warding had to take it upon themselves to get their students some of the basic school supplies, since their families couldn't afford it most of the time.

     Another reason Warding has a bad rap among the other schools is due to two words: test scores. For multiple years, Warding has been under district review due to to its poor performance on evaluating tests like the STAR tests, which I so brilliantly outlined in the previous paragraphs. Warding continually comes up on the bottom rung of the school district, and has almost developed a revolving door for new and inexperienced teachers. This, coupled with the fact that many kids at the school can't even afford to bring their own lunches and pencils, combined to make the perfect storm to make Warding a never ending vortex of failure in the eyes of the district. So, you mention Warding near any teacher in the district, they cringe a little. It's sad, really, that it has garnered such a reputation, since so many great people come out of that school. But, in a state where NCLB is the governing mentality of teaching, the greatness coming out is only eclipsed by its associated failures. Eloquence. Check it.

     Egomania aside, the interview with Mrs. Q that sparked this rant opened my eyes further to the idea that there are other schools having as difficult a time as Warding, if not worse. The next day, upon returning to work at Strapford for another day of mindless slogging and shit-cleaning, I took a look around at the same kind of things that were giving Warding a bad rap: surrounding housing, potential income of parents, etc. I quickly noticed that Strapford had many of the same things working against it that Warding did. The surrounding area that fed into it had many low income families, English language learners, and many kids on the free lunch program as well; but for two years in a row, Strapford consistently scored among the highest on the STAR tests. So, what was the deal?

     The first thing I noticed is that the parents in the surrounding area seemed to give more of a shit about their kids education than the parents at Warding did. Or, failing that, they were just incredibly assertive. The PTC (Parent Teacher Committee...or Council...I don't remember) was EVERYWHERE at Strapford. If they weren't peddling their Strapford t-shirts and sweatshirts to other stressed out parents, they were running some school event like drill sergeants, or obsessively checking in on their child's progress in class. I have never met a gang of moms who scared the living shit out of me as much as they did. If this is any indication of parental involvement at Strapford, then these kids had a hell of a support base. The principal that was in charge at Strapford during their incredible years of testing achievement was a former teacher herself, who also was the recipient of multiple teacher of the year awards. I would like to think that, since she had many years as a teacher under her belt, she knew what teachers needed/were capable of in order to succeed at these increasingly annoying tests.

     I knew Warding's principal from second hand experience, as well. My mom got a job there, when I was in 7^th grade, in the office and got to meet the principal first hand. In an effort to not get sued, I won't say her name, but the two things that stuck out was that she was an excellent disciplinarian, but a rotten administrator. Another thing that happened when this new principal came to Warding, was that a legion of very experienced teachers decided to jump ship in order to avoid dealing with this new principal. While this can happen at any school, it hurt Warding the most because it took away hundreds of years of combined teaching experience. So, probably to save face, they hired a legion of new teachers. Teachers that, usually, had very little prior experience in the field. So what Warding became was a revolving door for new teachers, which led to incongruities in teaching methods, which led to the overall decrease in Warding's performance. So, about 8 years of this kind of shit happening over and over again, the district finally sent over someone who had a clue as to how to fix the problem. In contrast to both of these schools, I was gonna see the other side of the fence soon enough.

(Please, by all means, discuss)

"Book"- Part 2.

Characters

     At Rockhill, since they had me only clean the kindergarten, I really got to know the kindergarten teachers. Talk about the nicest human beings on the face of the earth, these four ladies were the most patient, and at ease people at the entire school. Mrs. A was the oldest one of the group. Despite this fact she was still nice enough, but I could tell she had had it with kindergarten. Later, she was moved to fourth grade and I never really got around to seeing her again. I hope she wound up OK in fourth grade.

     The other three were interesting though. Mrs. S (later Mrs. N) was the sweetest woman ever. She would bring in baked goods randomly and just leave them in the middle office. And they were always delicious. A prime example was, 1 week into working there she brought in a fully baked cake and left it in the middle office, with a note on it saying “Stefan, help yourself”. That moment truly reinforced the fact that I had an amazing gig here. As I continued to work there, I began to learn more about Mrs. N life a little more. She was working as a teacher, often staying after school an extra two hours, she was raising 3 boys, one of which had started high school recently. That also doesn't include the metric tons of work that I saw her lug out to her car to take home and grade or fix or whatever. Some days, I could easily notice the bags under her eyes.

     One of the other ones was a bit of a quirk of nature. Mrs. C was a 20 year veteran of the school system, yet she had the appearance of a woman just barely in her 30's. C was also a mother of two, and had no problem telling you about how annoying they were. She had a son in 7^th grade who, according to her, seemed to do no wrong. He came around a few times to the classroom, while I was cleaning, and seemed to convey nothing but disdain for his mom. He always seemed to be put out by the fact his mom couldn't hear him from across the room. Whatever. Her 11^th/12^th grade daughter was equally a brat, except somehow she deserved her own car, bought and paid for. God, that one girl drug so much drama through those classrooms, it wasn't even funny. I remember one rainy day, Mrs. C got a phone call from her daughter.    After overhearing several terse questions over the phone, I figured out that her daughter had gotten into a car accident. A minor little fender bender, no big freaking whoop. But holy shit, when that girl showed up, you would have thought she killed somebody. She was all tears and terror, and just a mess. Even growing up with my mom and 2 sisters for the better part of my life, this girl took the cake on drama. The funny thing is though, I had to leave the building when she showed up because, despite my best efforts, I just started laughing. Not just a giggle, like inconsolable, gut wrenching, Caddyshack-watching laughter. I don't know why, even to this day. I think it was just the thought of this chick be-bopping along in her car, then TINK! hits a car and starts just losing her shit. Its making me laugh just writing about it, but whatever. What was I talking about beforehand? Oh yeah...

     The fourth and final member of this kindergarten menagerie was Mrs. L, who was without a doubt the kindest one of the four. She was the one who always managed to get me a gift for my birthday, Christmas and the end of the year. Because of her I got a ton of free movies, so that's always great...except for when I saw Dragonball: Evolution...that's just unforgivable. Mrs. L will always be my favorite teacher that I ever got to work for. She was so nice, that I got suspicious that she may have been a serial killer. It's hard to believe that confined within the tiny walls of Rockhill's kindergarten building, lay such a great group of people.

     Strapford was another story though. Take everything that I just described from Rockhill, and turn it upside down, stab it with a fork, and fuck its mother. The 4 rooms I cleaned were populated with some of the most frustrated and bossy people ever. The first teacher, Mrs. B, was a 5^th grade teacher who always seemed to be irked at something. If it wasn't her children, it was her students. If it wasn't her students, it was her hypochondriac-style headaches, or her colleagues, etc. It got to the point where I would just walk in, say hello, then go about my duties. Thankfully though, she wasn't too picky about her room, so sometimes I got to skip cleaning stuff because she was gonna move stuff around, which was nearly every other month. Ever heard of Feng Shui, lady?

     The other two were basically the same thing, except one was a lady, Mrs. G, who talked rather loudly to herself while she was working...that took some getting used to. The other was a guy, Mr. D, who was a coast guardsman turned teacher, so his room HAD to be spotless. If it wasn't he'd tell the night custodian, who would then let me know and lecture me on how to do my job. Being the new guy still, I just kinda shrugged it off and said I would fix the issue. Despite this, Mr. D always was very nice to me whenever I was working in his room while he was in there as well. I never got a snide remark from him and, as I wised up to the fact that Mr. D just wanted his room to look nice, we were able to hammer out what was always needed to keep his room this way. Once this equilibrium was reached, everything was much easier and less complainey (it's a word, shut up).

     The 4^th room I would clean seemed to have a revolving door of teachers coming in and out of it over the course of my time at Strapford. When I first started, the first guy that was in this room was a really cool younger guy, Mr. W. The reason he gets the “cooler younger guy” title was that in addition to being a bass player in his off time, he had a poster of Che Guevara hanging up in his classroom above the kids desks. I like to think he had that poster up as a symbol to teach the kids to stand up for what you believe in, and to not get involved with Fidel Castro.

    Anyway, he was only in there for one year. Don't really know why he left so soon, but that's the nature of the education game, I guess. The next teacher, Ms. Q, was equally super. For one thing she was about 6'1” tall and had bright blonde, curly hair. I'm sorry, but I have a thing for ladies who are taller than me. Unlike other tall chicks though, she was actually a decent human being. Ms. Q had traveled to multiple countries over the course of her life and spoke fluent Spanish, despite being a blonde-haired white chick. I saw pictures of her volunteering/teaching in places like the Dominican Republic, surrounded by happy children. Despite this, I thought me and her were gonna have issues at first. The first day she was around while I was cleaning, I was rockin' one of my several Rush t-shirts (the Signals Tour t-shirt. Boom.). I'm just sweeping crap out from under her desks, when she pipes up with:

    “So, you're a Rush fan?”

     “Oh, yeah totally. I've been in love with them since I was 14.”

     “Oh, that's neat. My ex-husband was a huge Rush fan, also”, she said with a slight tone of disdain in her voice.

     Insert record scratch and stopping action here.

     “Oh...uh...bummer”. Bummer? Smooth one, asshole.

     “Haha it's OK, I won't hold it against you”.

     “Oh, well that's good”, I said as smoothly as I could, and continued sweeping.

     From then on, me and her were cool.

     As time went on, me and her were pretty cool with each other. Every time I would mention something like school or anything related to non-work life, she would always seem to have some sort of helpful advice or tidbit to add. She was astonished to hear that I had never been on an airplane at the age of 20, and would always egg me on to travel when I was done with school. I was taken aback whenever she would do this. I mean, I was just the dude who cleaned her classroom, in essence a total stranger. If she could give out such self-esteem boosting tidbits to a dude like me, and actually have them stick; then that, to me, spoke volumes on her teaching/influencing abilities as a person.

     Sadly, all great things must come to an end. After what was nearly 2 years, she moved rooms at Strapford and I never got to really see her as much as I would have liked. But I still managed to see her around campus. She even gave me a hand in writing this beautiful masterpiece you hold in your hands, but more on that later.

     The new guy that I got assigned to clean in her stead was a guy from another school named Mr. M. Mr. M was a very nice guy. He was a, relatively, new teacher out of the University of Nevada at Reno. He was pretty neat, despite playing Dave Matthews Band on his computer every time I was cleaning his room. One thing I did notice about his room, was that it was comparatively bare, in terms of school related decorations. All the other teachers had enough multi-colored crap on the walls to make Liberace stand up in his grave, but Mr M just kept it relatively simple. I never really asked him why he chose this kind of classroom layout, but I would like to think that he was more focused on the actual education of his students. I gathered this hypothesis because I never once heard a person mention kids having a hard time with anything in his class. I think it may just be me being a naive, idealistic child, but I think it makes sense.

     The other half of my responsibilities laid with the pre-school at Strapford. I had the rest of my cleaning over in the 4 rooms and bathrooms that made up the pre-school area. These were put in after my first year at Strapford. They were a blessing, at first, because they upped my total hours to 6 hours, which just had dollar signs flashing bright in my eyes. However, I would soon come to hate everything about these hell holes they called class rooms. The district went balls to the wall to get this thing finished on time, so during the first few weeks of the year, people were still coming by to put in plants, put in thresholds, doorstops, and even a skylight that was left unfinished. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they couldn't even get the door jam done correctly.

     Over the course of the first week of school, I got to meet all of the preschool teachers and their aides, and it seemed odd to me that for every one teacher, there were about 5 aides. All in all, there were about 20 people working out of these four rooms over the course of the day, and they all had one thing in common: they were all the most uptight individuals I have ever met. Holy Dickfarting Shit. Apparently watching after 15 screaming 4 year olds for 6 hours a day can wear on a woman. In reality, I just chose to not really give a shit about any of the teachers and aides that went in and out of there, mostly because I usually did my other rooms at Strapford first, then did the pre-school. By the time I was there cleaning, they were all gone. It didn't really bother me too much because, no matter what I did, those rooms would get annihilated.

     Why so dirty? I would ask my self, sans-Joker impression. Well, you see, America, these classrooms were geared toward kids with special needs. Everything from speech issues to autism, and downs syndrome to cerebral palsy was handled here. While it is important that these kids get their fair share of the education pie, holy crap did they leave a mess. One shining example was the need for diaper containers in every bathroom. While I always hated clearing out these trash cans at the end of the day, I couldn't help but feel pity for the poor people who had to change these kids. And it was scary, too, because they would have charts in some rooms that cataloged the color, shape, and consistency of said messy diapers in order to monitor these kids health. Why the actual fuck were people giving school employees this nasty job? Shouldn't there be medical aides handling this kind of crap, no pun intended? Whatever. They didn't pay me to think too hard, thankfully.

     As well, these kids would all have snacks during the day, which would be invariably stomped into powder on the floor and carpet by the end of the day. You ever try to get a crushed goldfish cracker out of semi-shag carpet? No, you don't. Ever. I also had a sneaking suspicion that some of the kids were just part wood-chipper.

     Another thing that drove me absolutely insane was the tools they used to educate these kids. I learned that some kids with autism and other disabilities have sensory issues. Meaning, their bodies were not as well adjusted to certain types of textures and sensations in general. So, to counter act these issues, the school had set up little stations that had basins filled with things like dry rice, beans, foam, toys, and sand. On the one hand, these were tools necessary to the enrichment of kids' development. On the other hand, you were giving 4 year old's rice, beans, and sand to play with. Did they ever actually think about anything they were doing here?! Most of it usually wound up on the tile floor for me to sweep, or the carpet for me to try and get out with a vacuum. Those beans, man. They were an ulcer waiting to happen. You'd see one on the carpet, vacuum over it, then it would explode into fragments for you to vacuum over again. An hour later, you would have half the carpet cleaned. Couldn't they have given these kids something less fine to ruin my life with? I don't care if I sound like a walking complaint at this point, but it drove me insane. So, in the end, fuck pre-school and everything it stood for.

Brothers (and Sisters) In Mops

     Despite dealing with this zany gaggle of teachers, my fellow janitors were even more quirky and awesome. Despite saying “Brothers and Sisters”, I personally think they didn't give 3 flying fucks about me, but I needed to write something down. Anyway, the other night custodian that I got to work with at Rockhill was actually a woman. You would be surprised how many people don't expect women to do my job, but there are a fair amount of female custodians in the Roseville City School District.

     The night custodian of Rockhill was a first generation immigrant from, I'm assuming, Mexico named Consuela. Consuela was very nice, and would always have something nice to say, no matter how shitty the current situation was. Not to mention, she aged like fine wine. Randomly, we were just shootin' the shit when the subject of age came up. She guessed my age pretty well, I mean within about 2 years. When I guessed how old she was, it was actually pretty comical. I threw out about 42 or 43 years old and she laughed in my face. Turns out she was into her 50s and had a few grandkids. I mean aside from a few gray hairs, she aged magnificently. I still, to this day, have no idea why this intrigued me so damn much.

     The day custodian, was another story completely. I mentioned him briefly in the beginning, but his name was Aaron. Aaron was a pretty cool guy, I must admit. He regaled me with stories of growing up in SoCal and getting to see the local punk scene flourish. I mean bands like Rage Against The Machine, Tool, Alice In Chains, Reel Big Fish, and a lot more, he got to see WAY before they were popular. In addition, he had a thing for modding out Volkswagen Beetles and Vans and turning them into dune buggies. This aside, he always seemed to be at odds with either Consuela or the principal at Rockhill. It was always Aaron this, Aaron that, blah, blah, blah. Eventually, the constant butting heads between him and his compatriots got to him and he resigned, about 2 years into me working at Rockhill.

     When I was working for the district for about 2 or 3 months, I was given my extra hour of work at Greene and got to meet Leon, who was the night guy there. He was pretty much one of the most chill guys there, but good LORD was he a redneck! I'm talking a lifted Ford F-350, with chrome head lights, huge rims, mudflaps, the whole nine yards. On top of that he always wore a camo-print hunting hat, and had an obvious wad of chew in his lip when he was on breaks. Regardless of his “redneck” status, he was probably the nicest custodian I ever got to work with, He was just super chill, yet right to the point. If you fucked up, he'd tell you, but nicely. And being a boy who responds to positive criticism better than drill sergeant-esque yelling, I actually learned a thing or two about custodializing from this guy.

     Anyway, when I was eventually sent to the Devil's Pulpit that was Strapford, I got to meet Mr. Vlazhukya Kruftov. Vlazhukya, or Vlaz as he preferred to be called, was a Ukrainian immigrant who had been living in the U.S. since 2001. When he was in the Ukraine, he was a soldier in the Red Army during the ending days of the USSR. He was sent to Afghanistan in the first invasion and was probably shot at with American weapons, and now he works in our country. Poor guy.

     I never really asked what he did, but I have built up a version of Vlaz that included him riding on top of a Russian tank, behind a .50 caliber machine gun, shooting people while screaming racist epithets in Russian/Ukrainian. Oh, and everything he shoots explodes. Kinda like any movie with Mr T in it, or directed by Michael Bay.

     Vlaz proved to be the best thing that happened to me as a school wage slave. If I ever fucked up and a teacher complained, which was often, they would tell Vlaz and he would tell me. This way, a majority of the complaints never seemed to reach my bosses and their bosses. As well, exercising his Eastern European might, Vlaz was pretty good at letting you know he was watching your ass, and you should feel guilty for it. As a product of a female-dominated household, of course I felt guilty.

     The reason I think that Vlaz took such good care of me was the fact that we both harbored a lot of animosity towards the daytime and lead custodian: Seth. Seth was a retired auto mechanic from Mississippi, who, I presume, thought that retirement wasn't too much fun. So he decided to be a custodian. 

     Wait, what?

     Don't get me wrong, it's not like Seth was overtly mean or rude, like in the FUCK YOU STEFAN kind of way, he was just REALLY hard to work with. Aside from the fact he had an accent that made him talk like Boomhauer from King of The Hill, he moved and thought at a speed that was about half of mine. You'd ask him a question, and you'd get a response about 3 seconds later that took him about a minute to articulate. It's hard to find this frustrating as you read it, but trust me, when the smoothness of your day depends on getting instructions from Seth, this feels like an eternity. Now I know how The Flash feels talking to regular people.

     The thing is, though, I couldn't really rage at Seth without making waves. For one thing, he was the president of the CSEA (the California School Employees Association), the union that represented everyone in the school district who wasn't a teacher or administrator. Holding this position created a lot of odd, for lack of a better term, situations at work. I used to come in early sometimes, and would find Seth sitting in the middle of the custodial room, on the computer he moved in there, doing Union work. While this is admirable and necessary, it's hard not to get mad when, during the summer, you and your fellow co-worker(s) are working your ass off cleaning rooms, and Seth is sitting down on the phone and computer for 2 hours. This also bred a very 'my way or the highway' mentality in Seth because, you see, since he's the president of the Union, everything he did was how it was supposed to be. So, naturally, you had to do the same, and if you didn't you were a complete dipshit.

      To add, to the further contradictions of the man, he considered himself a christian, but any mention of anything gay-related, oh boy. One such instance was when Seth, Vlaz, and I were kickin' back on lunch break, when the conversation switched to dating for some reason. Vlaz cracked a joke that, essentially, was that I should hook one of my sisters up with one of his sons. I said, “Well, Vlaz, sorry but one has a boyfriend and the other bats for the other team.”

     “Aww nah, really?” blurted out Seth. “Like, she's gay?”

     “Yeah, Seth, she's a lesbian”, I retorted. 

     “Man, that's too bad.”, said Seth, with a vaguely insulted tone in his voice. Now, this isn't a direct quote, but it's pretty much how the conversation went. Needless to say, I didn't ever bring up dating at work again. In retrospect, I should have stood up to his bigoted statement, but at the time I just wanted the day to be over with and didn't feel like getting into it with Seth over his beliefs. It's funny, as I type this I realized that I dealt with Seth, and my job in general the way Peter Gibbons did in “Office Space”: just do enough to not get yelled at, and everything else would work out okay. The only difference was that you can't really embezzle money from a school. I hope that didn't ruin the movie for anybody.

     So, once this was established as the team of people I would be working with for a majority of my time at work, I settled into the routine of night work during the school year, and day work during the summer (I'll explain that later). Well, one day in the summer of 2010, while sweating balls on the blacktop, doing some shitty task as usual, Marshall from maintenance came to campus and found me. When he did, he let me know, that instead of using 2 hours of my shift at Rockhill, I will be moved to Shilton Middle School for that time instead.

     For those of you who don't know, Shilton was my old junior high school, and is laced with bitter memories of ridicule, fear, and anger. Plus the fact that my mom works in the front office, and has a propensity to call me 'honey' or 'bub' in front of total strangers. It's hard to maintain a stoic face when that shit happens in front of both adults and students. But she's my mom, and I have bills to pay, so I digress.

That following Monday, I show up to Shilton at about 9am to do my day work, and run into Kris, the day shift guy, to figure out what he wanted me to do.

     “Hey, Kris, Dave sent me here today, and I assume for the rest of the year. So, what needs to be done for my 2 hours today?”

     “Oh, well, we need to take all the door stops of the doors of each classroom, you mind doing that today?”.

     Really. 

     No big deal.
     I'll just walk around to the 50 doors that are on the campus and remove the doorstops. With a screwdriver, because apparently the school doesn't have a fucking screw-gun. Or at least I was just too awkward in my new surroundings to ask for one. So, I get to work doing that, and in the process, manage to piss off a few teachers. Apparently, the school district got in trouble during the school year for not being 100% up to code according to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). This was brought to light when a kid's wheelchair got caught on the flip-down style doorstops the district was using, and fell down. But, here's the kicker, the kid was in a wheelchair because of a broken leg, not because he was permanently disabled. I can understand why a review was necessary and it probably did bring to light flaws in the school that could have been hazardous, but maybe his parent should have chalked it up to him being clumsy and not used to the fucking wheelchair over the environment being hazardous. What the fuck ever. Fast forward a couple of months, and every school in the district had its toilet paper and paper towel holders moved down lower, or replaced with new ergonomic ones, and their doorstops removed.

     However, what the shitheads in the district office failed to face was the fact that teachers treasured the ability to easily prop open their door, so who got to catch the inevitable, exasperated 'WHAT?!' from the pissed off teachers? Me. It was a strangely symbolic moment in my time with the district, because already on day 1 at Shilton, I was catching shit from teachers. This theme would run with me the rest of the time I was there.

     Despite that flaw, the other night workers were great people. The main night time custodian, Helen, was one of the nicest, hard working people I have met. She was a lady of about her mid-40s who commuted from South Sacramento to Shilton 5 days a week, while at the same time her husband worked days for the district as a gardener. She was another super chill, but no bullshit type. I mean, God forbid you didn't put the scraper that she loaned you back on the right shelf. Heads would roll! But hey, I'd get annoyed at me too for the same reason. Helen also would constantly bring in baked goods and other assorted food stuffs for the staff to eat, but knowing my cavernous gut, I usually got the lions share. Working with Helen was like working with Betty White, if Betty White wasn't 200 years old.

     The other night guy that I got to work with was a dude from Georgia named Bill. This guy was pretty sweet. Every time I got a minute to just sit around and bullshit with the guy, he always had an interesting story to tell, usually involving drinking something with Jager, or whacky misgiving with his brother in Las Vegas or some place in the South I have never heard of. As well, the guy was a total metal head, and loved to sing out loud while cleaning with his headphones in the dead of night. It was real funny walking past the cafeteria and hearing a guy in the bathroom yell, “AND YOU'RE CROWNED KING NOTHIIIIING!!!”. I'd be lying if it didn't make me jump about 5 feet in the air the first time I heard that happen.  

(Part 3 cometh soon)