Member-only story
I Heard the Elderly Janitor Yell, “Shit!”
In the late 2000s, a janitor would clean the bathrooms at a dorm building every weekday morning at a college somewhere in western Massachusetts.
He always cheerfully greeted students even when they left the bathrooms a huge mess.
Quite often, I heard the elderly janitor yell, ‘Shit!’ when he entered one of the bathrooms, pulling a trash barrel and his cleaning supplies in with him. He would yell out that expletive after happily saying ‘Hello!’ to students.
There were times when a bathroom stall was locked due to it needing extra cleaning because of feces spread around its walls, or the entire bathroom would be closed altogether.
Right after mopping the floors and scrubbing the toilets sparkling clean, students would come to the bathroom immediately and, very shortly, there was urine on some toilet seats, waste left unflushed, sheets or bits of toilet paper and paper towels on the floor and wet toilet paper balls that stuck to the ceiling after being thrown there.
I saw that same janitor every weekday for all four years when I was in college.
I don’t know how he could smile widely and say, ‘Good morning!’ to the students when they were the ones who made his days awful.