I started working as a janitor two weeks ago. I clean bathrooms, hallways, and classrooms - from top to bottom. On a daily average, I take on 25 toilets, 10 urinals, 15 sinks, 10 floors, 2 carpets, 4 classrooms, 10 trashcans, 10 mirrors, and 2 glass doors. Most of this work is simple manual labor - brooms, mops, dusters, spray, paper towels, and so forth. And I love it. There is a very nice feeling that comes with making something clean, and having done it with my own two hands.

About a year ago, three separate things triggered a long reflection upon human work, particularly in the use of machines. I read Pope Benedict’s encyclical Spe Salvi, I stumbled across some readings in my wife’s course (Dominion and Techne, by Dr. Schindler of the JP II Institute), and I took a course on the Theology of the Body. Put together, I started to question whether machines really made life better, or more precisely - whether it was possible to do genuinly human work through the operation of machines. In short, I found my answer to be ‘no’ - human work ought to be manual and skilled, using non-automated tools.

So the second I come to this conclusion, God sends me a job that fits the bill. And though I only have two weeks on the job, I thought I’d do some reflection on it, because parts of the job do require machinery - elevators, vacuums, chemical dispensers, electronic timekeeping, and of course, electric lights and heating.

The best part of the job is when I’m either mopping or sweeping. The swish-swish of the mop, to the left, to the right, gives me an immense satisfaction, especially as I feel the gritty-sluggishness of the initial dirt make way to a smooth-polish feeling. I can feel the resistance give way through the handle of the mop. I have also learned how to turn the mop at exactly the right time and exactly the right angle, so as to brush up against the walls perfectly - like an olympic swimmer kick-turning at the end of the lane in a race. I can also flip the mop to the other side with one nifty little flick of the wrist. If I’m doing a good length of floor, my thoughts eventually cease, and I become totally absorbed with the swish-swish of the mop. Othertimes, I might daydream a little, or pray a little, but the thoughts usually settle down after some time into a sort of zen-nothingness. Before I know it, the work is done. The same process repeats with the broom and dustpan - sweep, sweep, in goes the dirt, walk a few steps (”there’s a speck of dirt!”), sweep, sweep, in it goes, and repeat. I find that my eyes are becoming sharper at finding the little pieces of dust - none is safe from my roving dustpan and broom.

This stands in sharp contrast to my vacuuming. I use the vacuum when I’m told - otherwise I use the broom and dustpan. I noticed today, that although the vacuum cleans fast, it doesn’t clean very well. It misses corners that my broom easily fits into. It misses the little pieces of dirt that need that extra two or three swaps. It misses the little metal staples that are stuck in the floor (which I can now spot and pluck between my fingers in about 1/2 a second). It is also very loud. I cannot take a vaccum into the office areas, but I can take my broom. Moreover, the cord always gets in the way. And I’m always searching for places to plug it in. And then, as it happened last week, a light goes on, it stops sucking, and you open it up and realize that the person put in the bag wrong - ruining the vacuum. In short, the broom wins hands down over the vacuum - but only if you have the time to do the job manually. If you have to clean ten classrooms, and there’s only one of you, the vacuum gets the job done.

But that leads me to the most distressing part of this reflection - not that the manual labor is inherently skill-building, and worthy of human effort, but that if I truly look deeply at my job, I realize that it should not exist. I exist to clean things that should probably be cleaned by those using the bathrooms, the classrooms, the hallways, the offices. My job only exists because no one has figured out how to make a machine that can climb stairs, fill mop buckets, and mop floors, while picking up trash and throwing it in dumpsters. These are tasks that have been deemed unworthy of human work. And yet someone has to do it, right? So who does it?

I am the only white male working there that I’ve met, out of at least thirty workers. Almost all of them are African-American, about half men, half women. My employer gives good benefits, and the wages are decent - about $10 and a half an hour. Yet it surely isn’t enough money to raise a family and save money, let alone buy a house. Why is it that only minorities work this sort of job? Self-segregation? A matter of it being an inner-city sort of position? To get back to my original thought - this is a sort of job that isn’t deemed as intrinsically valuable, but only valuable in a utilitarian sense. If machines could be created to do the job, humanity would buy the machines and be glad that no human ever had to do such tedious work again. And yet, because such machines do not exist, we have the working classes. In this case, the working class is almost completely made up of minorities.

There is something deeply ironic to me about this - that the upper class spend their time in front of computers, papers, books, and presentations, while the lower classes spend their time doing manual labor. The upper class think they are getting the good deal - more pay, less manual labor, and more ‘meaningful’ work. And yet, having just come off years of such work, I can honestly say that I find more meaning in the manual labor than in all that intellectual ‘work’, mostly done through computer interfaces.

I have to say that I enjoyed mopping the floors today more than I enjoyed writing this little reflection, and I think it may have made more of a difference - not only in other people’s lives, but my own.

Someone asked me how long I was going to work at this job. I don’t know. It doesn’t pay enough to raise a family, I’ll say that. My wife would have to get a job, and then we wouldn’t be raising our family - someone else would. But I think I’m being taught some valuable lessons, and being given some very intriguing opportunities through the benefits my employer gives. One thing is for sure - tomorrow, I hope to avoid vacuums at all cost.