My company has been in this building (the Wells Fargo Tower) since January of 2011. Our old building (the Millennium Tower) was pretty nice but we jumped from the 11th floor to the 36th floor...and we’re paying less.
Soon after landing here, I noticed that the building management cleans the bathrooms during the day. Three or four times a day a male janitor and a female janitor get off the service elevator pushing a cart full of supplies towards the bathroom. At my old building, the bathrooms were cleaned at night like the Elves from “The Elves and the Shoemakers.” You never saw the workers. It. Just. Got. Done.
Here, though, I see Mr. Janitor a couple times a day. Sometimes it’s going in, sometimes it’s going out, sometimes it’s just him going down the hall. And this is what I know about him: He’s older (50+), he’s probably from the Philippines or maybe Cambodia, and he doesn’t smile. Ever. Okay, maybe once he smiled...I think it was a smile...I’m not really sure.
In terms of the job he does – he does great. Our bathrooms are clean, well stocked, and ready to go. I’d like to get to know him better but there isn’t any sort of time where I can just “chat” with him. If I’m in the bathroom I’m USING the bathroom and men don’t talk in the bathroom. I’ve often thought of leaving him a thank-you card with a $10 Starbucks card or something just as thanks for a job well done. But then wonder if that’s demeaning or insulting and I don’t even know if he drinks coffee.
Since he’s nearly a complete blank, my co-worker Mary and I decided to create a back-story for him. We believe that he was probably a well known scientist or doctor in his country but an evil regime (have you heard of a pleasant regime?) forced him out of the country where he lands in America with his wife and kids. And, even though he’s a learned man, he’s stuck doing this crappy job (sometimes literally) to make ends meet. He’s bitter, angry, frustrated.
I think this came clear to me one day when I was in the bathroom using the facilities. Our building uses sensor urinals to flush. Sometimes they work...sometimes they don’t. For whatever reason.
As I’m sitting there, I hear him come in with his cart. And then, after a few clean-ups, I hear the first urinal flush. Moments later, the second urinal flushes and moments after that, the third urinal flushes. It is at this point that I realize that part of his job is to stand in front of each urinal to test their flushing ability. If this guy works 20 floors of this building that means he stands in front of 60 urinals a day to test if the sensors are working and flushing properly.
Mr. Cambodian Doctor interacts with potentially 60 toilets on a daily basis. I don’t think I’d smile a lot, either.
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