Latest / Privycast / Ep. 37 History of Janitors and Custodians- I Say Goodbye to Being a Janitor (for now)

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Ep. 37 History of Janitors and Custodians- I Say Goodbye to Being a Janitor (for now) · Privycast

• 0:00
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  Hair happiness starts here.
• 1:16
  I demand that you leave at once, sir, he said.
• 1:19
  You're breaking and entering.
• 1:21
  Ah, shut up, Dursley, a great prune, said the giant.
• 1:25
  He reached over the back of the sofa, jerked the gun out of Uncle Vernon's hands, bent it into a knot as easily as if it had been made of rubber, and threw it into a corner of the
• 1:35
  room.
• 1:37
  Uncle Vernon made another funny noise, like a mouse being trodden on.
• 1:40
  Anyway, Harry, said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, a very happy birthday to ya.
• 1:46
  Got some it for ya here.
• 1:48
  I might've sat on it on some point, but it'll taste all right.
• 1:52
  From inside the pocket of his black overcoat, he pulled a slightly squashed box.
• 1:57
  opened it with trembling fingers.
• 2:00
  Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing.
• 2:08
  Harry looked up at the giant.
• 2:10
  He meant to say thank you, but the words got lost on the way to his mouth and what he said instead was, who are you?
• 2:17
  The giant chuckled.
• 2:18
  True, I haven't introduced myself.
• 2:21
  Rubius Hagrid, keeper of keys and grounds at Hogwarts.
• 2:27
  He held out an enormous hand and shook Harry's whole arm.
• 2:32
  What about that T then A he said rubbing his hands together?
• 2:35
  I'd not say no to stronger if you got it in mind.
• 2:41
  Welcome back to Privy.
• 2:44
  Privy is a podcast about bathrooms that sometimes goes off the rails in a special way.
• 2:53
  And I start by reading excerpts from Harry Potter, but then again, I like Harry Potter.
• 2:59
  This is not a Harry Potter podcast.
• 3:02
  God knows there's plenty of those already know.
• 3:05
  This is Privy, as I said, a podcast about bathrooms.
• 3:09
  Recorded from a bathroom and this week recorded from a very special bathroom You can probably hear the difference in sound this week this week and our third ever on location
• 3:23
  episode of privy I'm recording from the bathroom of my employer connections 365 on paper and even right now as I'm sitting here in What back in the day used to be the women's
• 3:37
  bathroom and now it is not?
• 3:39
  identified as such.
• 3:41
  This seems like a generally bad idea and I I acknowledge that.
• 3:44
  I'll own that.
• 3:45
  But here's the thing.
• 3:47
  We're going to get into this as the show goes on and what a show we have today.
• 3:54
  And at the end of recording at the time of recording this episode I am currently employed as a custodian.
• 4:00
  In fact I just finished my custodial duties.
• 4:03
  I'm sitting on a freshly cleaned loo.
• 4:07
  I've been employed as a custodian at Connections for eight, going on nine years, almost to the day actually.
• 4:16
  I was a sophomore in college, needing some spending money, needing to pay for things after I moved to the townhouses on campus because, okay, before moving to the townhouses, we had
• 4:28
  had a, what I would like to call a minor disagreement about our placement on campus.
• 4:35
  We had applied early.
• 4:37
  ah So we would receive a good place in the dorms and things for lack of a better way to explain it shook out and it In my perspective we got hosed But we ended up in the
• 4:52
  townhouses which again one of those things where it's like on paper you're like, man you received more freedom and Had to deal with less dorm drama But we weren't ready for it.
• 5:04
  I wasn't ready for it
• 5:05
  I won't speak for my roommates, but I was not ready for it.
• 5:08
  And so down the hill, we were told that we needed to move to the townhouses.
• 5:13
  And what was interesting is our RD, our resident director, in the dorms, when we made that move, announced that he was also moving down the hill to the townhouses to be resident
• 5:29
  director there.
• 5:32
  It really did feel like the guy who knew about all our shenanigans in the dorms was moving down to the townhouse with like our dorm permanent record tucked under his arm ready to
• 5:46
  remember what we had done.
• 5:48
  These three punk young ne'er do wells who were already not old enough to be in the townhouses.
• 5:56
  Now we followed him down the hill.
• 5:59
  It was fine honestly.
• 6:01
  We got into the same amount of trouble.
• 6:04
  There's plenty of good stories.
• 6:06
  The townhouses are where I found out that my friend is P.
• 6:09
  Shy.
• 6:10
  um The townhouses are also where I found out...
• 6:16
  Yeah, lots of things.
• 6:18
  um We lived in those townhouses when I got engaged to my now wife.
• 6:24
  Yeah.
• 6:25
  That is the time of life that I began working at Connections.
• 6:30
  ah not connections at the time, as a janitor.
• 6:35
  And then, but to get there, so I went in for my interview, I applied for this job, janitorial duties, it was not far from my school.
• 6:43
  And I go down there and I pull in and I come in.
• 6:45
  And when I come into the room for the interview for my custodial position, I walk in and my RDs, my resident director's wife, is there to conduct the interview.
• 6:59
  And I'm thinking, well, I should probably leave now, the jig is up.
• 7:04
  Because this lady knows too much.
• 7:06
  ah She has seen the horrors.
• 7:09
  No, ah it was surreal.
• 7:11
  But she was great and wonderful and I ended up getting the job.
• 7:16
  Cleaning.
• 7:17
  Being a janitor.
• 7:20
  I have been a janitor on and off since I was 14 or 15 years old.
• 7:25
  um I'm older than that now.
• 7:27
  It's about, it's pushing half of my life.
• 7:30
  I've been scrubbing some sort of crap off of a porcelain tank for at least about half of my life.
• 7:41
  As of the date of this episode's though, for the first time in almost 13 or 14, maybe 15 years, I will no longer be a janitor.
• 7:56
  And thinking about it now, it feels weird.
• 7:58
  ah The last time I had this type of feeling was when I graduated with my masters.
• 8:05
  And it was the first time in 17, 18 plus years that I didn't have to go to school.
• 8:15
  It's a similar feeling.
• 8:17
  And I know there are people who have been a janitor a lot longer than I have.
• 8:21
  That's not my point.
• 8:22
  My thing is this,
• 8:25
  janitorial duties is the longest job that I have ever had to date.
• 8:30
  And now, as you're listening to this, I'm done.
• 8:37
  This week on privy, we're talking about janitors.
• 8:42
  A janitor and a custodian is a person who has the care and custody of a building.
• 8:48
  We get it.
• 8:50
  It's not too difficult.
• 8:52
  They clean the building.
• 8:54
  But these terms used to mean something much more than that.
• 8:59
  Custodian, the word custodian comes from the root word of custody.
• 9:04
  Meaning that if you are a custodian of something, you...
• 9:09
  have the custody of someone or something.
• 9:12
  Something or someone is in your care, in your custody.
• 9:18
  The first time the actual full word custodian is reported to have been used was about 1700s, late 1700s, around 1780.
• 9:29
  And for a long time, this just meant like a caretaker.
• 9:34
  And it dealt very, very little with the actual cleaning and maintenance of something.
• 9:39
  You could be a custodian of a man's horse.
• 9:42
  You could be the custodian of another person, a child.
• 9:45
  You could be the custodian of a person's land or property.
• 9:50
  Or in many cases, there were custodians of buildings.
• 9:55
  Rather, the word janitor came on the scene ah in English in the early 1800s.
• 10:03
  It's related to custodian and began to delineate the actual duties
• 10:08
  between maintenance from those of custodians.
• 10:13
  The term janitor, however, comes from the Latin janus and is related to the word for arch or gate, which has this feeling of an entryway.
• 10:26
  It would have been originally used to refer to the person who stood at the gate and locked up after everyone else had finished their business.
• 10:39
  Janitors were often first to arrive and as Hagrid says that they were the keeper of Janitors would also act and serve as guards often performing their duties after hours thus
• 10:56
  making this some type of built-in security wherein the presence of the janitor was enough to ward off ne'er-do-wells.
• 11:05
  And lest you hear the term janitor
• 11:10
  and think that it is lower, less consequential work, I want to say this.
• 11:15
  Janus is the Roman deity who is said to guard the gates of heaven.
• 11:21
  And when the term began to be used, there were these sacred undertones almost, as if janitors were these little janices of the things that they cared for and they kept guard
• 11:32
  over and that they kept the lock and key of.
• 11:36
  Janitors were trusted.
• 11:39
  often irreplaceable because they had to know what made the thing they were keeping watch over tick and I want to say real quick I'm not saying I'm replaceable I know that they
• 11:51
  will hire somebody else and someone else will come in and take out the trash I know that I'm saying back then the position of janitor was it was is indispensable you needed
• 12:03
  someone you could trust because you're gonna hand the keys over to this person
• 12:07
  and you're saying, I want you to keep it secret and keep it safe.
• 12:11
  Be the keeper of the keys.
• 12:14
  And you might hear that and you might go, well, like what happened?
• 12:17
  So the origin of janitor comes in the 1500s.
• 12:22
  Janitor was actually used to denote an usher in a school.
• 12:26
  And these ushers would help kids find their seat.
• 12:30
  That's what an usher does.
• 12:32
  But they would also offer a level of support in behavior in the classroom.
• 12:37
  and cleaning throughout the day.
• 12:39
  You see where we're starting to get there.
• 12:41
  The 1600s saw the word janitor return to the idea of a doorkeeper, an attendant, and held that position as a doorkeeper or attendant likely until the late 1800s, early 1900s.
• 12:59
  And the reason why isn't great.
• 13:02
  The reason why janitor and that this term didn't shift
• 13:07
  until the late 1800s and early 1900s was because until that time in history, we didn't want to name that position because in times past in our country and in others here in
• 13:23
  America and in other countries, janitorial cleaning, the removal of waste was done by slaves.
• 13:33
  And there was this thought that you don't need to give them a job title for it.
• 13:38
  And so it wasn't until slavery was abolished in the United States and cleaning needed to be done by either hired hands or one's own self that the idea of a cleaner was created.
• 13:52
  Now, janitor is synonymous with cleaner or one who cleans.
• 14:00
  But the janitor usually still has access to everything.
• 14:05
  I had a conversation tonight about having to turn in my key.
• 14:10
  It opens everything.
• 14:12
  I can get into any door.
• 14:15
  And it's kind of neat.
• 14:17
  You don't need to, but like knowing you can is kind of cool.
• 14:24
  I have to turn that key in.
• 14:25
  Janitors have access to everything.
• 14:29
  And so in some ways, they are still the keeper of keys.
• 14:35
  And for those of you who hear me keep saying and referring back to Hagrid and his words about being the keeper of keys, and they wanna say, let me put my Harry Potter friggin'
• 14:50
  glasses on for a second.
• 14:52
  so I can argue with this guy on his pockets.
• 14:55
  Applied.
• 14:55
  uh Filch was the janitor at Hogwarts, yes.
• 15:00
  But here's the thing, he wasn't our language today.
• 15:04
  We would think of Filch as the janitor because he does the cleaning inside.
• 15:07
  But many of the duties that Hagrid performs were janitorial.
• 15:12
  He was the keeper of the keys.
• 15:14
  He could open all the stuff.
• 15:16
  And I like Hagrid.
• 15:18
  He's better than the other guy.
• 15:21
  Argue with me about that so y'all can just Hagrid is the keeper of keys as janitors are and were.
• 15:30
  I have loved and think being a janitor is great.
• 15:36
  I genuinely enjoy it when people ask me like, well, how could you possibly enjoy scrubbing turds and putting up with all this stuff?
• 15:44
  You know, I talked to some of these young adult folks working on job stuff.
• 15:49
  And I'd say, dude, go apply to be a janitor.
• 15:51
  they kind of, sometimes they scoff.
• 15:53
  Here's what I'm gonna say.
• 15:55
  First of all, for me, it's been free therapy.
• 15:58
  You toss the headphones in and you just kind of focus on something else for a few hours while you clean.
• 16:08
  It's routine.
• 16:10
  It's job security.
• 16:11
  You will always have somebody's crap to clean up and remove.
• 16:19
  Generally it pays well.
• 16:20
  It's a labor position.
• 16:23
  Being a janitor is really, really good.
• 16:27
  And I have loved it and I have enjoyed it for over half my life now.
• 16:33
  I gotta also say that if I could keep doing it I would, but because...
• 16:43
  Different life circumstances have caused me to not be able to continue being a janitor right now.
• 16:49
  And I say right now because I would have no qualms with going back to being a janitor again one day.
• 16:56
  Many of the people that I hold in very high respect are janitors.
• 17:01
  They're hard workers.
• 17:03
  They don't get enough thanks.
• 17:06
  So, thank you, janitors.
• 17:12
  I have loved and really have enjoyed being a janitor.
• 17:18
  And one of the reasons why is because being a janitor comes with no shortage of stories to be told about the things you see while janitizing.
• 17:32
  A new word I just invented.
• 17:36
  And this brings us to a very special Risky Business episode segment of Hunter's Anecdotes to Keep You afloats.
• 17:57
  This Hunter's Anecdotes is called The Big Toilet Reverso.
• 18:02
  So, one of the things is I rarely, rarely take time off for work.
• 18:11
  you know, you've heard the idea of Murphy's Law.
• 18:14
  When the bad thing can happen, it will happen.
• 18:18
  Or whatever bad can happen will happen.
• 18:20
  So I took recently, not too long ago, I took a weekend or two off.
• 18:25
  from my janitorial duties.
• 18:29
  And I returned to my janitorial duties after a couple days off and I met with a question from my like highest up supervisor in our building that you can go, which was, so did you
• 18:46
  hear about the bathroom?
• 18:47
  Now, I'm just gonna tell you real quick.
• 18:50
  The last thing a janitor really ever wants to hear before they've really begun their day is,
• 18:55
  so did you hear about the bathroom?
• 18:56
  Because the next thing that comes out of the mouth of that person is never good.
• 19:02
  It's never, it's perfectly clean.
• 19:04
  In fact, somebody already cleaned it for you.
• 19:06
  The next thing out of their mouth is not, the bathroom is functioning perfectly and nothing is wrong.
• 19:12
  There's always something wrong that follows the statement, so did you hear about the bathroom?
• 19:20
  Of course, I replied, no, I haven't heard about the bathroom.
• 19:25
  And so this is where ah things went south.
• 19:30
  And I want to say things did not go south because I took days off.
• 19:35
  I'm not that important.
• 19:37
  It's just a coincidence that things went south when I took time off.
• 19:43
  Again, of course it would.
• 19:46
  But I'm actually kind of thankful we're going to get to that.
• 19:48
  uh
• 19:49
  Did you hear what happened in the bathroom?
• 19:51
  No?
• 19:51
  Okay.
• 19:52
  So what happened?
• 19:53
  Well, and then we get the story.
• 19:55
  And essentially what happened is one of our young men used the restroom, know, dropped it too, big sploosh, and he hit the flusher, everybody's best friend, the flusher, and it
• 20:10
  didn't go down.
• 20:11
  And you know, he tried what people try to do, they tried to plunge it, and they plunge, plunge, plunge, flush, didn't go down.
• 20:19
  And we got a clog.
• 20:20
  Big city clog.
• 20:22
  He tells the people like, there's big city clog.
• 20:26
  it doesn't like, yeah.
• 20:28
  Another homie goes, goes to bathroom, hits the flush, comes back up.
• 20:32
  Now we're getting some hands on deck.
• 20:34
  It's starting to get plunge, plunge, plunge, plunge.
• 20:37
  Not going down.
• 20:38
  It's not going down.
• 20:40
  So they strap the like, out of order, do not use sign on it.
• 20:45
  Which is usually the universal term for, let's wait for the janitor and the uh maintenance guy to come in for the assist here.
• 20:55
  That's okay.
• 20:56
  That's literally what they pay some of those people for.
• 21:00
  But that sign goes on.
• 21:02
  And then a worker comes in later in the evening and there is a wet floor.
• 21:09
  Now, wet floor is never ever good when you come to bathroom situations.
• 21:14
  And so it's red alert figuring it out.
• 21:16
  And at some point in this, the toilet septic decided to go reverse-o because it started to regurgitate the septic waste, poo, was, paper towel, toilet paper, all that stuff is
• 21:39
  coming back up in reverse up.
• 21:41
  out of the toilet and into this bathroom and into this lobby.
• 21:45
  God only knows how long it pumped this human matter into this bathroom, but it was some time.
• 21:53
  Because, and as evidence will show, y'all know where to keep your eyes, this joker slung
• 22:04
  just shotgun splattered human waste butt foul all over the walls, just the seat just topped off this toilet with the most sludge bomb, nasty sicko brown you've ever seen in
• 22:20
  your life.
• 22:21
  It looks like a lake of human waste in this bathroom.
• 22:26
  And so I am told that and of course,
• 22:31
  every good potty enthusiast and I would argue good janitor does the first thing I want to do is go look at this thing.
• 22:38
  I go over there and our maintenance guy shout out to our maintenance guy here Kevin.
• 22:45
  The dude is an absolute hero he's a gem and he is one of the most creative people I've met.
• 22:54
  But the dude had the unfortunate task of cleaning up this
• 23:00
  Dookie Lake with his shop vac and boots and he's just, he is just a hero for that.
• 23:07
  Yeah.
• 23:08
  And so by the end of it, the Semtic emptied back into the bathroom, just sploosh city, the rest of the building, mean, plenty of damage.
• 23:16
  It was wild.
• 23:18
  And I gotta tell you, it stank something crazy.
• 23:20
  We're multiple weeks removed from this incident and even today they still have the door propped to deal with the smell.
• 23:29
  It is a wild wild rank stank.
• 23:34
  And I would never ever have gotten to see what now is the worst case and the worst looking backed up toilet I have ever seen in my life if it wasn't for this janitorial job.
• 23:49
  and as wild and weird as it is to say, of that.
• 23:55
  I'm eternally grateful.
• 24:02
  This has been another episode of Privy.
• 24:06
  Thank you so much for joining us.
• 24:09
  We've loved having you.
• 24:10
  As always, follow us on social media, at privycast.
• 24:15
  If you wanna see what I'm doing, I'm at owl at seven.
• 24:17
  I'm just being an idiot on the internet over here.
• 24:20
  Send us an email, send us a word.
• 24:22
  We'd love to read those.
• 24:25
  privycast at gmail.com.
• 24:28
  And if you want to this week, post a picture, post a tag.
• 24:32
  Take a picture of your favorite janitor.
• 24:34
  We're gonna try to get some love for janitors going around this week.
• 24:39
  Hashtag I love my janitor.
• 24:45
  Let's get that going.
• 24:46
  Leave us a rating or review.
• 24:47
  The five star option is our preferred and we will try to read some of those reviews on the show.
• 24:52
  Those help other people find the show.
• 24:56
  Hear me yak about Harry Potter and bathrooms.
• 25:00
  As always, we'd love to thank Kevin MacLeod for the use of Bar Room Ballet as our intro and outro music.
• 25:08
  You can find Kevin's music at incompetech.org.
• 25:12
  His music is licensed under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0.
• 25:17
  Thanks, Kevin.
• 25:19
  We'd also like to thank Pottington Bear for all the colors in the world as the Hunter's Anecdotes intro and outro music.
• 25:27
  And for Alsos as the intro background music this week.
• 25:33
  You can find Pottington Bear's music at pottingtombare.com.
• 25:38
  Thanks, Pottington.
• 25:40
  This has been another episode of Privy.
• 25:43
  Thank you for listening and now, as always, from my former employer's bathroom, don't forget to flush.
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  That's outdated thinking.
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