This past Wednesday I attended the Rose Cafe on the custodial services here on West Campus. I was initially drawn to the event, since recently my roommates and I had been thinking on how gross our floor bathroom would get, and how thankful we were for our biweekly cleanings. Although we do not often see the custodian that cleans our bathroom, we all anxiously await his visits. This got us all to thinking- for a service that we rely so heavily upon, we don’t know much about the person or the organization that we have to thank for our clean facilities.

After attending the Cafe, we learned that a lot more went into our services than we expected. Custodians have to check that the soap is filled, take out the trash, check for grime in the showers, and deal with clogged drains. This is only regarding bathrooms- there is a whole other set of procedures when cleaning out rooms at the end of the semester. In addition, there is a whole set of procedures for responding to maintenance requests.

Hearing at the cafe that the custodial services were there for just that- to serve us and make us comfortable here, was actually kind of a surprise. I was so used to feeling like a little bit of a nuisance for calling in maintenance repairs. However, according to the head of the custodial services, it’s actually better to call in maintenance when you need it. If people do not, then the data will never reflect the fact that there could be, for example, a West Campus-wide problem with shower curtains. Overall, this cafe made me think of custodial services as more of a service that I could utilize, with real people behind the work that wanted to help me.