A Custodian
J.N. Dahal
America
I hope you know many things about America — like its economic, social, political and cultural realities. But I am sure there is one thing you have no idea about. This write-up features ordinary workers and their struggles. It includes those trivial things people seldom talk about. In that case, how could anyone have any idea about them? People seldom articulate their true emotions in honest words.
I remember a day, about a decade ago, when we moved about with I.O.M bags hung from our shoulders. We were imparted, a training in an office in Damak, Nepal. As informed in the training, we the refugee, who were prepared to move to the US, could take up one of the three types of jobs: entry-level lob, skilled job and professional job. On the basis of this classification, I admit that the job I presently hold is an entry-level job.
Presently, I work at a huge warehouse owned by the post-office. It is so big that the number of employees working here, in all three shifts taken together, is about a thousand. It is in fact a big place.
Because the warehouse belongs to the post office, it receives electricity bills, gas bills, water bills and such other bills by mail. It also receives magazines and some rectangular parcels containing certain documents. Some clerks process mails in machines like DIOSS and DBCS. Mail Handlers lift packages from the ‘dumping sites’ of containers placed inside ‘APPS’ with the help of machines, and feed them on the running conveyer belts. Yet others workers load and unload containers of mails and packages from the trucks with the help of forklifts while mechanics change the batteries of the forklifts and prime movers. All these are parts of entry-level jobs. Of all these jobs, the columnist does Work as custodian mopping, sweeping, and cleaning the floor. To put the same thing in different words, two things are in motion at a post-office warehouse: the mails and the workers.
Mails come from different companies loaded in hampers and EPC’s. Trays of mail often have paper labels pasted on them. They mention where the mails are to be delivered and the due dates. There are many mails that are bound with rubber bands or plastic straps, and the pile of trash at the warehouse come from such papers, rubber bands and straps. Because there are mails, there is trash here. There is trash, and so, the columnist has his job here.
In the post-office jargon, a person who collects the trash, mops the floor and does the cleaning work is called a ‘custodian’. That is exactly what I am, and I am in passionate love with this job of mopping, and pick up trash — an entry-level job. I have immense respect for the job. Anyone taking up this job is required to attend a formal, sixteen-hour ‘custodian training course’ in which the trainee is taught which chemical is to be used for cleaning and where. I am a trained custodian.
The functional walkie-talkie tucked in my heap is in channel two. The mechanic and the control room are in constant two-way conversation. As for me, I am ready with a pair of gloves in my hands. There is a mask around my mouth. When I am ready with all the protective equipment, I have no fear in launching the cleaning job. Nor do I have any shame lifting the trash and dumping it in the trash compactor.
“Shame?”
The warehouse has white colleagues working here. It also has black employees. They work and make certain dollars every hour. Also are a few Asian friends who clean the floor. What is wrong in doing this? Why be ashamed? Why have any kind of aversion for work?
The nurses deal with their patients’ blood and urine every day. The doctors and the surgeons wipe various organs of their patients without any aversion or distaste. If needed, they also scissor and operate those organs. Identical is the task of a house-keeper. To use the post-office jargon, the cleaning work a ‘custodian’ takes up is similar.
What will be the condition of a house if no one cleans it? How dirty will the rooms, the kitchen and the bathroom become? And what kind of germs and organisms can breed there? What will happen of our health then? Have you ever thought of this?
In my initial days, the post-office had called for custodians for an ad-hoc appointment. I approached its testing center, expecting to get the job of a floor cleaner. I faced two examinations, 478 and Custodian Course 196, and qualified both. Following this, I had to qualify through an interview the hiring manager would take.
In the past, the post-office recruited only veterans of the army and navy to the posts of custodians. I have heard people saying that the post-office made such calls, intending to recruit the disabled veterans. With time, it also opened the custodians’ job for the civilians. I realized all these things after coming to work here.
The post office paid 13 dollars 25 cents per hour to a custodian around the year 2015 when I applied. Six years later, when I have become a permanent employee, I am paid 25 dollars per hour. This earning helps me keep my family going quite smoothly.
“By the time you have read this much of my write-up, you, my reader, have perhaps forgotten the issue of shame. You have also forgotten aversion perhaps. May I ask you if you have ever changed a kid’s diaper? Have you ever touched your genitals after using the lavatories? Don’t you feel pooh-poohed at such moments? I think you do, but it subsides after washing yourself, doesn’t it? I am sure you will say it does.
Tasks like clearing a trash can, mopping the floor or sweeping it with a broom are easy jobs. So someone, who intends to hold the job of a custodian need not bear the feeling of aversion for the job.
The post-office imparts training as and when required. It teaches the custodians how to strip the tiles on the floor, apply wax on them, power-wash the tiles with patterns if they are dirty, and kill the insects that may be lying hidden in the fissures. Someone entrusted with the job of floor cleaning is also trained for other works. The skills thus learnt are extremely useful in other day-to-day affairs as well.
Being a custodian also means cleaning the lavatories if required. It’s also cleaning the floor where people have spitted. It also means walking to the sideways outside to sprinkle salt when it is snowing. Being a custodian means mopping the floor too.
There also are a few additional things one should note. Being a custodian also means feigning to be a stranger. The office supervisor does not spy on this ordinary employee. The manager does not usually inspect the pace of his work. The work is assigned on trust, and is left alone on trust.
I have come to befriend a number of people here while doing the job of a custodian. Colleagues stationed at different department share their daily experiences. They mention about their Halloween costumes, or talk about minor things they have shared with their partners or lovers. They talk about Christmas gifts for the kids, mention their sentiments, and take up other issues. Listening to these American colleagues’ conversation, scanning the gestures of their bodies and appreciating the emotions that spill over their faces while giving continuity to work are immensely interesting. This very job comes in quite handy as it informs us about the American scenario, people’s conduct and the ground reality.
No one cares when I move, mopping the floor of the office lobby and advance to the hall. As for myself, the job supplies many facts including the new post-master’s name. One can instantly recognize the M.D.O just transferred here and the new District Manager of the post office.
In the course of our work, we also know many things about the conducts of our colleagues, their thoughts, and their viewpoint. At times, some friends who are busy processing mails in the machines pay squinted looks at the custodian. Their faces exhibit disapproval, and their gestures often change.
“I make twenty-five dollars an hour.”
Startled by this unexpected information, their faces acquire yet other forms. Their eyes remain widely open. Before long, their looks and the gestures of negligence transpire into thin air.
In the past six years, I have seen many people retire and go home, completing their 20 to 30 years’ tenures as custodians. A few even got promoted to the posts of the supervisors while others became mechanics. Therefore, mopping the floor is also stepping on a stair to progress. You can hardly surmise how high you can go, starting humbly as a house keeper.
Mopping the floor means doing a labor’s job. The labor is himself the citizen of a certain country. He is also the resident of a state or a city. Mopping the floor and contributing to the development of a nation by paying taxes is not a joke. I also pay tax as an ordinary citizen does. I pay three taxes — city, state and federal — merely by mopping the floor.
In sum, let me iterate this much: you cannot imagine an airport left uncleansed by a custodian, a hotel not kept by a housekeeper, a flight cabin not cleaned by the air hostess and a warehouse not tidied by a custodian.
Be informed: people who do not love the floor will not make any remarkable progress in their lives. Not loving the floor means staying apathetic to the sentiments of the general working class. It is like being unable to touch the heart of the humankind.
Trans: Mahesh Paudyal