Janitorial Traces: Part Two

It's no secret that I spent many years (most of high school through college) employed as a Janitor at a local public radio station. There are countless tales that could be told (someday I will commit to writing down the events leading to my complimenting the pants of Kris Kristofferson or the time I caught a certain Woebegoner gettin' a lil' sweetness outside the basement elevator) and it was these many years and experiences that have often drawn me into conversations with the janitors I run into wherever I may be employed at and so on.

Kindred Spirits...in a manner of speaking.

*kaff*

Anyhoo, today I headed out back behind the college I'm employed at (heater break) and immediately noted the school's Janitor scrubbing away at the blacktop with a mop and some cleaning fluid. Curiosity got the better of me (I'd never seen anyone ever slopping a mop around on tar before...spraying shit down with a hose, sure...but a mop?!?) and I had to engage this gentleman in conversation in order to appease the pondering going round and round in my grey matter. As it turns out, some employees had been frying burgers up on a grill there for some odd student appreciation day activity at some point and, now that the weather is warming up, the frozen grease was thawing and being tracked through the school and, obviously, staining/discoloring the carpeting throughout the building.

Or so the Janitor suspected.

We had a good laugh about this and I thought I'd share a tale of my own from my days of Janitoring.

It goes like this:

One night, ages ago, I was heading to the Men's Room on the Fourth Floor (the one frequented by the male On-Air Staff, Reporters, Engineers, Studio Guests, and--heh--the occasional Janitor) to do the nightly mopping. Upon flinging the door open to the only stall in there, I was greeted by a lovely, not-so-steamy log of shit...

With a footprint in it.

And a smattering of footsteps leading away from it.

Someone SOMEHOW had managed to shit on the floor less than two feet away from the toilet bowl and--seeemingly unknowingly as best as I could guess--trodded 'pon it on their escape from the Head.

Fucking amazing.

A wet mop ain't going to get all that shit up...it was ground into the cracks between the floor tiles.

Naturally, this was a fantastic and odiferous fifteen minutes of my life.

End of tale.

Back to the present.

The Janitor I related this tale to had a great laugh at this (as did I NOW many many years later) and, as luck (?) would have it, had his own POO story to share.

And it tops mine by a long shot.

This fellow had been employed for many years at a downtown Saint Paul bank building. One afternoon, during business hours, he discovered that somehow SOMEWAY someone had defecated on one of the bank's escalators.

And the escalator was still running.

Thus, the shit was smeared (and ground into the escalator stair grooves) all the way around it's circular metallic path.

The remedy?

He stood at the bottom of the escalator with a mop and slop bucket, perfectly stationary, holding the mop over the bottom of the escalator's path and let the motion of it moisten and, hopefully, cleanse, the pulverised and ground in smeary mess from it's parts. He swore (in more ways than one you'd suspect) he had to stand there for an hour before he got it all off...give or take the random doodle kernels and nuggets that, more than likely, had dropped into the escalator's inner workings.

Yep.

That beats the hell out of my Deuce Droppin' tale.

We parted with the acknowledgement that mopping grease off blacktop beat the shit (heh) out of either of our Crap Removal Exercises.

And so it goes (or So some folk go...you bastards)

T