I printed out the page you sent and will be putting in the AP’s mailbox. I really hope it works. Thanks for the idea.
I’d like to preface this by saying that many custodians are hard workers and are behind the scenes cleaning up after the messes of others that no one else would want to touch. These kinds of custodians are great.
But yeah, there are some that make me grind my teeth. My shop is a very small place. I keep it pretty clean, never throw liquids, etc. in the garbage. Is it too much to ask to have my carpet vaccumed once in awhile? They do it in all the rest of the building, and I damn well know they have keys to my door b/c they can get in to empty out the garbage. I must have asked them at least 5 times to have the floors vaccumed on a regular basis. But the carpet is always grody, with mud and various other bits & pieces that people track in from outside. There is no 3-second-rule on this floor. If you drop some food, it’s gone, man, it’s gone.
So when you don’t like one aspect of your job, you should just blow it off and have your boss make someone else do it for you?
The snarky part of me says that Rubystreak should refuse to do some of her marking and dump it on the AP.
Hell the snarky part of me says she should take the bins out into some public part of the school and upturn them every afternoon. Preferably outside the custodians’ office. Maybe she could get a rota for the kids to do it?
i hate people who whine about how they don’t like their job and then try to use that to justify not doing it properly. It’s one of the few things i get irate about. For me, it’s up there with that whole ‘oh well they only get minimum wage so you can’t expect anything better’ dumbass argument. Only getting minimum wage? YES!!! That’s because a MONKEY could do that job. If they want more they have to go find a better job where they work harder or smarter. And don’t say that someone slacking off is justified because they hate their job. If you sign a contract agreeing to certain things in relation to work then you honour it. Simple as that. Stupid slacky, lying, idiot people :mad:
/irate
gosh but this whole Pit thing is very cathartic. Never done that before 
And this is not a rant at custodial staff. Janitors are teh c00l. When i was a kid our school janitor was the most popular guy in the school. Every kid, parent and teacher knew him and he went leagues beyond what he was actually paid for. From making sets for the school play to carving numbered bats for us to play rounders, from taking care of unwell children to getting involved in our classroom education. He was a real example of the way a person can make their apparently dull job truly remarkable if they choose to.
Our cleaning people don’t vaccum unless there is an obvious mess. So when the floor looks like it is ready for a cleaning (every couple of weeks), we sprinkle hole punches around. Works everytime. We refer to it as “snowing.” It works so well other people in the building have picked up on our secret and have started doing it too.
You really are sounding more and more like a perpetual victim here. Honestly, in the history of teaching, are you the first teacher on the planet who has ever needed to learn how to clean a blackboard? Gimme a break. It’s not rocket science. It’s not as though you’re having to climb 50 feet up in the air beside a freeway to clean a billboard. If it’s a job that a monkey could do (in your own words) then why, by extension, is it so beyond your intellectual capacity to do it yourself?
In short, your position regarding the duplicity on the part of the janitor is valid. Clearly however, the fact that this one incident was enough for a memo to be circulated throughout the entire school that teachers were now responsible to clean their own blackboards indicates to me that this has been source of dispute for quite some time. Your admission that you wouldn’t even know how to clean a blackboard doesn’t reflect well on you, considering your profession.
And now you’ve mentioned your sinus allergies. What’s the truth here? THe fact that it’s not your job to clean a blackboard, or that you really, really don’t want to do it?
First, zelie zelerton is the only one who said anything about a monkey.
Second, your whole point of view is apparently based on the fact that
You have so internalized the “fact” that it is the teacher’s job, not the custodial staff’s, to clean the boards that you view teachers who don’t clean their own boards as lazy slackers. So, what do the custodians do in your country? (Or do you even have them?) And how would you feel if it was one of those tasks that was the issue?
The custodians fucked up her dry-erase board and AP should see to it that she gets a new one. That’s not much to ask for. What a bunch of little bitches those custodians must be.
I stand corrected on that.
Oh hogwash. Nice try at trying to revise history but here’s a little reminder for you… the school policy has NOW CHANGED. Whether our OP author likes it or not, it’s now HER JOB regardless. Ergo, your questions are moot. She has to cop it sweet on the chin now.
Further, a teacher uses a blackboard to do their job. It’s part of their toolset. As an old saying goes, almost all of our problems in life are of our own making. It’s a fundamental function of doing one’s job as a teacher that the blackboard and the eraserboard are going to get dirty. If the OP was slamming the janitors for not cleaning the hallways… fine. Not cleaing the school yard? Fine. But the blackboard? Come on… the teacher, not the janitor, is making it messy. Get with the program folks. Some personal responsibility perhaps? Just clean the thing, if only for the sake of being able to do your job better and THEN make the janitor look like a lazy deadshit.
In my opinion, the smart thing to have done would have been simply to take the issue by the scruff of the neck - to have been pro-active, and more importantly, to have been assertive. I would have cleaned the fucking things every day (if need be) and written memo after memo, and email after email until I got my point across. Fuck waiting for a whole month at a time. I would have paid for the cleaing stuff too, and sent the School Principal an invoice. Fuck this passive, “I’m so helpless” stuff.
Further, it’s become increasingly apparent that the OP is now relying on the “poor damsel I can’t even change my flat tyre” defence. Sorry, but I have no time for people who refuse to empower themselves. The sinus allergies? The “I wouldn’t even know where to start” defence? I smell a rat. The fact that just ONE INCIDENT could change an entire school cleaning policy? Colour me skeptical.
So Rubystreak? It doesn’t matter what you think of me… or my posts. It doesn’t even matter if you feel enraged. Welcome to the real world where people sometimes have to do things on the job that they don’t like. The policy has changed and you better learn real quick how to start cleaning your blackboard yourself.
Are you seriously arguing that the janitors should clean only the stuff they themselves make dirty? :dubious:
Nope, I’m saying that in any profession, if you want a job done right, fucking do it yourself - even if it’s someone else’s job to do it - and THEN kick up all hell about it. It really isn’t that hard to comprehend is it? I dunno, maybe it’s just the Australian way. Fucking get the job done and then sort out the whining later. Winners are grinners, losers can please 'emselves and all that.
I use dry erase boards on a daily basis. Try this. get a can of scrubbing bubbles I use the aerosol myself. spray on and wipe off using either paper towels or a cloth towel, turning or changing often until the surface is clean.
then follow up with a spray of Pledge wipe the wax all around, let dry and buff. It may not totally fix the white board, but it will probably restore some usefullness to it. Good Luck, and your janitors are a bunch of :wally s
Amen, this is rule 1 in all jobs. Heck I thought everyone knew: Janitors and secretaries are the most important people to have like you. Bosses day? Screw that. Secretaries day is a solemn and profound occasion. I would get better gifts for the department secretaries in college than some of my friends because the have helped me out more than anyone else when I was in college. When they like you everything is possible and everything will get taken care of… often before you hear about it.
When I was in Grade 8 (age 13), the custodian never seemed to realize that, yes, 13 year old girls do in fact use the ‘sanitary napkin’ disposal.
After working up the courage for a few days to talk to her about it, I finally did - which was embarrassing enough, but another teacher saw me talking to the custodian and kept on poking her nose into it even when we both said what we were talking about was nothing. Hello, keep your nose in your own business. I don’t need to advertise to the whole damn school that I’d like the dirty pads thrown out!
Oh give me a fucking break. The custodians don’t have the power to change school policy. It was an arbitrary hand down b/c they can’t manage to do all the cleaning they’re supposed to do and they’re tired of being forced to do their jobs. Several other faculty members have been pissed off at their inability to do the most basic of their tasks, not just me.
I use a laptop too. If that gets fucked up, the school fixes it. If my whiteboard gets messed up, the school should fix it. If something gets dirty, the custodians should clean it. Seems pretty elementary to me.
Are you saying it’s my fault that those fuckers ruined my whiteboard? And lied about it?
I don’t see why. The cafeteria ladies don’t have to wash the tables or the floors in there. I don’t have to wash the desks if the kids dirty them. Or the floor. Or the walls. Why the chalk board? It’s messy, it requires equipment that I don’t have, and it makes me ill. It was NEVER my job before, either.
So I should take money out of my own pocket to buy supplies to clean the board, since the janitors won’t give them to me? BULLSHIT. You have no idea how much of my own money and free time I already shell out. I am not going to buy shit to clean the blackboard. I dirty the board TEACHING OTHER PEOPLE’S KIDS TO READ AND WRITE. I’m so irresponsible. Who are you, anyway, to accuse ME of lacking personal responsibility, when the very people you are defending RUINED MY BOARDS and then LIED TO MY BOSS ABOUT IT.
Maybe you need an English teacher. Did you read my OP? My main issue is that they ruined my white board. I was proactive-- I wrote a note to the head custodian to ask to have my blackboard cleaned because at that point it WASN’T MY JOB to do it. They ruined the whiteboard, so now that blackboard that they refuse to wash gets twice as dirty twice as fast and so do the erasers. I have neither the time, the equipment, nor the wherewithal to clean that stuff every day.
Ah. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t send the principal an invoice for shit, esp. if you don’t have tenure.
Mind if I color you stupid instead? They changed the policy b/c they have a history of not doing their job and ruining people’s whiteboards and they’re unwilling to take responsibililty for any of it. It’s not my job to clean the school. It’s just not. Sorry.
I don’t think of you at all, or your posts. Except this one, which makes me think you’re a total tool who has a reading comprehension problem and a chip on your shoulder.
Nope. Not doing it. They will do it or it won’t get done. You can scoff at my sinus allergies, but you don’t know me and are just being skeptical because this is the Pit and someone always has to be a dick. Next time I get a bloody nose, I’ll remember that it’s just me being a victim. :wally
Rubystreak, please do keep us updated on your valiant battle not to have to clean your blackboard, which despite your protestations is now part of your job. Your principles are what really matter here.
Good luck with those nosebleeds. That must be incredibly embarrassing for a grownup.
Yeah well, I broke down and washed it today. It was gross and annoying, but it got done. Also, if I haven’t made it clear to you, it’s still up in the air whose job it is. The head custodian doesn’t set district policy.
Your compassion is overwhelmed. What a prince you are.
I was so overwhelmed that I said “overwhelmed” rather than overwhelming. How you make me the bad guy in this story is beyond me. I’m just trying to teach the kids, ya know? I didn’t know housekeeping was part of the job.
Maybe you should get a statement from your doctor that cleaning the blackboards gives you a bloody nose and see if you can get an exemption. Good luck, and I don’t think you’ve been unreasonable here.
So, how’s that crack habit working out for you?