marichiko

I was a janitor once for three whole months after I got sick and my brain was still really fried (yes, believe it or not, I was once even more incoherent than I am now). I was paid a flat rate to clean a car dealership (repair bays excluded) 6 nights a week. My boss who was 6'4" and in great physical shape could do the entire thing in 5 hours. He based the pay on HIS performance. I, who could not even lift the heavy lid to the dealership's industrial sized dumpster, took 8 hours. Such is life.

The real pisser on that job was that the boss had just gotten a lucrative contract to clean a bunch of casino's about 100 miles away in Cripple Creek. He threw me and the dealership to the dogs, and I got to bear the brunt of this. The problem was that the boss wouldn't give me one of those floor buffing machines. He said he'd come down once a week with a machine and buff and polish the floors himself. Well, he didn't.

You know how car dealerships like to have those polished, shiny showroom floors? Well, the dealership's floors were clean since I swept and mopped them every night, but they did not have that "see yourself in the reflection gloss". The salesmen were p.o.ed about this, and threw pennies on the floor every night to show their displeasure. I would sweep up the pennies and leave notes on their desks thanking them for the tips and informing them that they needed to call Eric and giving them his number. I tried calling Eric myself, but all I ever got was his answering machine.

The dealership was vast. It consisted of both a new and used car salesroom in two seperate buildings. The second building was a sprawling affair with two stories to it. I'd come in at 10:00pm when the last salemen were just leaving, and if I was lucky, be out of there by 6 or 7:00am. The salesmen were pigs with a fondness for fast food, by the way. When I came in, the trash cans in each cubicle would be overflowing with smelly boxes of Kentucky Fried, half eaten, Burger King Whoppers and entire 20 oz containers of Pepsi, still 3/4 full, just thrown into the trash.

The dealership was not exactly the best part of town to be in alone at 2:00am in the morning, either. The front lots were well lit, but the lot behind the buildings sat in total darkness and the cars in it were often subject to acts of vandalism. The dealership had hired one of those rent a security guy folks, and he would doze happily away in his car while gang members sprayed the vehicles around him with graffiti.

Normally, I had Saturday night off since the dealership was closed Sundays, and I waited until Sunday evening to do my janitorial work. But one Saturday, I decided to come in that night instead because I had something I wanted to do the next day. When I arrived a little before 11:000pm (running a bit late that night), I noticed that the repair bay behind its glass windows was filled with smoke. The security guy was sound asleep in his Honda around back, as usual. I couldn't see any flames, just lots of smoke. I wondered if somehow one of the mechanics had left a car in there with its engine on. So, I opened the repair bay door to check it out. The billows of noxious fumes made me retch, and the stinging fumes made tears start to run down my cheeks. I quickly slammed the door shut and called 911. The fire department was having a busy night, and it took them a while to arrive.

When they finally got there, they threw open the main repair bay doors and billows of nasty stuff poured out. The smell made me gag all over again. Turns out someone had left a parts cleaning machine on filled with some sort of solvent and on top of that machine was a pile of oily rags. The rags had just begun to smolder into flame when the firemen arrived. They told me the entire dealership would have gone up in fire in another half hour. The firemen asked me if I was supposed to clean the repair bay and I told them that no, this was supposed to be done by the mechanics before they left each night.

The firemen forced me to go to the emergency room to be checked for smoke inhalation - literally forced me - a big husky firemen drove me down there personally. I cooled my jets there for the next 3 hours since it was a busy night and I obviously wasn't in danger of suddenly expiring on the spot. My eyes wouldn't stop tearing, though, and it was discovered that one of my contact lenses had melted onto my eye from the fumes. Needless to say, the dealership didn't get cleaned that night, and I was off work for the next three days with a patch over my injured eye, eating vicodins for the incredible pain.

The dealership was cited and fined by the fire department, and Eric fired me for not cleaning it up that night. Looking back on it all, I'd have let the place burn down. No one was in it and it was insured to the max. Frankly, I think that may have been the idea, since they were losing money - the salesmen had been complaining to me of low sales.

Janitors now have my deepest respect!