Noah Bylon
In the summer break between junior and senior years of highschool, I was finally convinced by my parents to get a job. I did not have a driver’s license and had no real want for the money (and it certainly wasn’t bound to be a whole lot anyway), but I tried still and applied to the usual avenues of employment for an unskilled and young employee: fast food, grocery stocking, and cashiering. None of these fine businesses ever got back to me, an embarrassment which I would only consider to be a blessing much later. And so, I had to cast my net wider. I was a Boy Scout, and the location where my Troop met was a lodge tailored to the elderly. It was an old, musty building run by older, mustier people, and they needed someone to give their janitor a hand. A very cheap someone. I was paid seven dollars an hour, which was probably a decent wage in the minds of my employers who were trapped in the 1960’s.
I worked the chilly days through the last gasps of Winter, past the wet and humid Spring, into the dry heat of Summer, and, for a very short time, the beginnings of Fall. I remember vividly the sentiment that began to grow in me near the end. It was one of loneliness.
The end of the season, the end of the job, the upcoming end of high school… these all mixed together to produce a somber, reflective tone within me that became an unavoidable weight during many of those early mornings when my shift ended and the Sun was just getting its footing in the sky. I would be sitting on the sad set of chairs at the foyer of the building, their springs long flattened and the cushions turned to dust, earbuds in, listening to whatever music I had the ability to get with the quickly fading phone data (of course the building didn’t have wifi), while I was utterly alone. And I don’t mean alone as in no one I wanted to talk to, I mean alone as in there was actually no one left. All my coworkers were gone, I was a deputy with no sheriff, an assistant to a ghost. I was the last keeper in the order of disgraced part time lodge janitors, the only one to have survived long enough to quit before being terminated, and I had to continue that work diligently by myself. Even though the age gap had prevented any real meaningful conversation between me and my former coworkers, I found that the pointless small talk I couldn’t wait to be free from was actually a whole lot better than nothing at all.
They had never been my type of people, but that’s not to say I didn’t find them incredibly interesting. The first full time janitor, who taught me how to mop and to set up the tables and how not to make the ice machine angry, was Henry. He was a roofer by trade, or at least until a pallet of shingles fell on him. He was lucky to survive and only come away with a limp. He was very no nonsense, and brought up whatever he was thinking about to me, be it beer, women, or the gripes he had with the owner. A foreshadowing of his downfall, he told me that if I ever wanted something from the bar, I could take it. I never did. He had to go on leave to undergo some more leg surgery, and during this the owner found out that Henry had been stealing, so, needless to say, he never came back.
His replacement was the father of a lodge member, Gary. A pretty typical stubborn old man with all the worst traits, and none of the good ones. For example, he had a savior complex when it came to minor repairs, and even the smallest loose screw would prompt him to unleash the full wrath of a mechanic’s tool belt. This my boss found annoying, and they often got into shouting matches over it, especially when he almost sliced my boss with a razor trying to cut some paper. I had the feeling he wasn’t going to last long, and one day, he didn’t show up. My boss was grim, not telling me the details but making sure I had one thing straight, Gary was gone. Gary had tried to teach me many pearls of elderly advice, and most of them were how to be racist, so needless to say I wasn’t very upset he was gone, even if it meant more work for me.
Lastly, but certainly not least noteworthy, was Prisoner Bob. He was tall and the most active of the janitors, actually being more of a help than a hindrance, and beyond the jockyish talk he spewed, he was a fine enough person to work with. He was also, as his nickname implies, a former member of the correctional system, having a countless number of DUI’s. Not too long ago, he had gotten into a bad motorcycle crash and he needed spinal reconstruction. Unfortunately just after this, he was again driving under the influence. So, he was allowed to fully recover and undertake any additional surgeries he needed to before his next trial. He decided to make some money during this lull by working as a janitor, and since his girlfriend was a bartender, he could get a ride (though they broke up during his stay, and yet she still drove him). His doctor had told him not to use his back, but that didn’t stop him, and every time he picked up something heavy, it made my own back twist in empathic agony. Thankfully, he was fired before he either collapsed paralyzed or had to go back to court, as my boss walked in on him smoking marijuana in the bathroom.
And so, I was alone. No replacement was being found for Bob, and my leave was only a week or so away. I was in the twilight days of my first job ever, and overall, I was grateful to have had the experience, and while the skills of cleaning tables and mopping up sticky beer spills are not exactly desirable, they are handy to know. My silent boss, whom I must have only said a word or two the whole time I was employed under him, gave me a generous leaving bonus, and only then I realized he had really appreciated my help, despite his sour outwardness. Maybe the quality of the other janitors skewed his perception, but I guess I shouldn’t worry about it, because in the end, I’m happy to have had a once in a lifetime experience that I’ll remember long into the future.