#janitor lore

You are The Janitor, and you are very good at cleaning.

Morning is a strange time for you. You don’t really… sleep, not all of you, so it feels less like the beginning of a day, and more the beginning of a routine obstacle course. It’s easier to clean at night, where most employees are asleep. You generally can find any messes without problem, though sometimes you’re called in for something big. It doesn’t happen too often - only if it’s something that needs to be cleaned immediately, most of the time. It doesn’t bother you that you usually have to intuit where you need to be. You are very good at finding your way around.

Things feel quieter during the night. During the day there’s always some kind of buzz, and it’s most obvious during the morning. Employees arriving, or moving from sleeping quarters to their offices. There’s a hush at night that day never seems to replicate, even when the nearest voice is far, far away. You can always hear the humming, tapping, whistling that indicates someone working, a machine turning on, typing, the list goes on. It used to frustrate you, but now you tune it out, a casual background dissonance that makes the day feel lively. Like you aren’t alone. Not like you’re really alone at night. But that isn’t important.

The mornings often have a surplus of trash - breakfast seems to be one of the most popular meals of the day to you. You’ve never been one for traditional mealtimes, but you usually catch a quick snack while everyone else eats. You’re very aware of the messes and stains possible here - people seem… less coordinated in the morning, you think. You hover around the edges of break rooms, slip through corridors, and pass by doors as the rest of OSHA chatters, sipping coffee or complaining about the early morning. You don’t join in. You speak more now than you did when you were younger, but that doesn’t mean you go out of your way to seek conversation. The words always seem to scratch your throat.

You usually focus on the less populated areas during the day. Abandoned rooms, areas in need of sterilization, quiet corners where work can’t be done. You make sure not to disturb anyone - you would hate for your work to be disrupted, so you make sure not to disturb others. On the off chance you’re required to clean an occupied room, you make sure to stay quiet, stay disinteresting. You rarely get noticed, these days. You’ve heard things when people thought they were alone. It rarely catches your interest. You’ve heard a lot of things. (You’ve seen a lot of things too.)

You have areas you like or dislike cleaning. You’re not the biggest fan of areas that require detailed work in large quantities. After all, other people hardly bother with sanitizing sharp objects they don’t interact with often. You’ve seen every kind of stain known to OSHA, you think. At least, until someone finds a new one. You find yourself looking forwards to the challenge sometimes, other times despairing that it may take up longer than you can spare to fix. Regardless, you’re able to keep things in a fairly pristine state. You often wonder if anyone notices.

Lunch time always seems to roll around earlier than you expect. You usually choose to duck into the empty offices around this time. Someone has always left a crumpled up ball of paper in the corner of a cubicle, or thrown away a pen or two, or overflowed the trash cans and other waste receptacles with things that may or may not belong in there. You aren’t a fan of sorting out the recyclables and non-recyclables, but you’re hardly going to neglect that task, either. Part of you wonders what the difference is, really. The rest of you stuffs that thought down violently.

It feels like you’re always finding a broken window right after the lunch rush these days. Never the same one either. It’s starting to annoy you. Don’t the people here know that broken glass is dangerous? You’ve never found something that could have broken the window either. At least sometimes the windows break outwards. You’re The Janitor, not The Groundskeeper. You only deal with inside the buildings. This is good, as the buildings are very large. Regardless, You fill your trash bags with glass dutifully, making sure everything is clean before marking it and moving on. You’ll replace the panes and bars later. It’s too hard to get them through from storage during the day.

Sometimes, as the day slips into afternoon, and afternoon to evening, you find something… unusual. Of course, evening isn’t the only time you find these things, but it’s one of the most common times while the sun is up. You’re never fond of unusual things. They usually make so much mess, far more than usual, scores more than what you enjoy cleaning. They rarely stay in one spot too. You’d say they were afraid of you, if a mess could feel. (Part of you thinks they can. You don’t entertain this thought. It gets in the way). You make sure the area is pristine before you leave. After all, nobody likes an unusual mess.

The time when everyone begins to leave, or at least stop working, is melancholy for you. You find the night calming, but there’s a charm to the day that the night can’t replicate. There’s a sort of loneliness that falls around you as you watch people move through the halls, leaving you alone to continue your cleaning. Of course, not everyone stops working as the sun sets, but the darker it gets, the more an unbreakable silence seems to fall over the halls. You can still hear things, if you listen, but these things are often distracting. Unnecessary. Quite frequently, they aren’t your business, either. You're not the type to gossip. You’re not the type to eavesdrop. And yet… you think you may know more dirty little secrets than you want to.

(You know a lot more than you want to.)

Once night has settled, you make your rounds. You rarely have to change them, but there are requests occasionally. You don’t think you’ve ever been asked to clean the vents, though. You asked, once, why that was. You didn’t ask again. (There’s no part of you that liked the answer.) You don’t question the requests these days. So what if you don’t clean the vents? It won’t affect you if the air quality drops, and if it does affect anyone… well, you’ll just have more of a mess to clean up.

You’ve seen other people in the halls at night. They’re the ones who notice you the most. Rarely are you approached. The few times you have been were brief. You do not like to be disturbed while cleaning. There are no exceptions to that rule - save for the nice little electronic communications you’ve set up recently. You’ve made your dislike of interruptions very clear. It isn’t your fault if someone finds out the consequences of pushing you. If they needed your attention, they could simply message you. Even before, you had a little pager, telling you what was necessary to clean and what to avoid. It’s only been upgraded a few times. The phone you use now was a gift, a reward for a good work ethic you believe.

You don’t idle on the job. Not at night, nor during the day. If you idle, you think. If you think, you remember. You’ve seen plenty of pleasant things, yes, but you’ve seen things that you doubt anyone would call pleasant. You’ve seen OSHA violations. You’ve seen accidents. You’ve seen… unusual things. You don’t want to remember them.

(Sometimes you remember when you first came here.

Those times, you go looking for unusual messes.

You want to forget.)

Occasionally, after a hard night’s work, you’ll let yourself watch the sunrise. It has a magical quality that you can’t really replicate. You can’t feel the warmth through the thick glass of the windows, but sometimes you catch it while replacing a pane. It’s calming. Nobody’s ever caught you doing this. You think, maybe, it would be nice to watch with someone, someday. Perhaps if you receive an intern of your own. You doubt you will. You are very good at your job. You don’t need an intern. You haven’t needed anyone for a long time. All you need is your broom, and your work. You’re off again before anyone arrives, checking the bins for the last time.

You are The Janitor.