Pointing, by the way, is not polite.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, food, health, humor, life, theatre
I’ve become a little too close to the janitor, at the college.
And it’s not that I mind, not one bit; it’s how we’ve become close that I find amusing and uncomfortable.
It involves Miller Light.
Sort of.
Before I go any further, I want you to be plainly aware that this is not about an academic caste system.
And I have a previous story to prove it.
Though I rarely tell this story from my Disney Days, prior to having the high-class job of character entertainment and the allure of being an Attractions Host at Disney Studios, I will come clean and tell you that the first job I was offered, through the Walt Disney College Program, or the CP, was that of Custodian.
I well remember the interview.
“Hi, my name is Kris, and I like people. If I’m hired to work at Disney, I want to be around people.”
“Ok, Kris. That’s easy enough, then. Your job will be Janitorial Host.”
Placing the word “host” at the end of it, however, didn’t make it any better. Also, people using the bathroom were not the sort of people I had in mind.
I still took the job, because I was eager to leave Mississippi. I was just past nineteen. A week into the actual position, where I was not only seeing what I had to do but smelling it as well, was enough for me. I marched right up to Christine at the Backstage Employment Office, she was the CP Coordinator, and told her that to be “quite honest, the magic had been ruined for me.”
I simply wanted to go home.
I also lied and told her that I wasn’t going to get any college credit at all if I didn’t do something that was, in some small way at least, theatre-related.
This was apparently the absolute-perfect-thing-to-say because the next thing I knew, I was ushered through Disney’s “fun job doors,” where I found myself in a new, cool and hip, cross-utilization program learning how to be both an Attractions Host at the Great Movie Ride (I won an award in this position, by the way) and in Guest Relations, both of which led to my brief tenure as a candidate for those Disney characters in the 5’9” height range: Pluto, Eeyore, Tigger, et al.
The magic had been restored.
However, for a solid week beforehand, it had been a torturous, hellish keg of cherry-scented chemicals, urinal cookies, and scrub brushes.
So, believe me, I have full respect for janitors.
I also understand their dire need to satisfy their curiosity; surely your Mama’s told you to be careful with what you throw out, right? U.L. certainly has, and for good reason.
A reason which is responsible for how I came to know on a first-name-sometimes-I-might-give-you-an-on-the-spot-nickname basis with the janitor at the college, where I work.
She’s taken to calling me “Red,” lately, due to the unfortunate dye-job from a few weeks back. I call her Georgia, because I don’t know why. I guess I thought that was her name, originally, and it’s stuck.
Georgia and I met last semester. She has an erratic, irregular work schedule. I have often come to work to find her in my office, at 8:00 in the morning, sweeping my carpet. I don’t think she has a vacuum? Or, perhaps, it is too loud and so she chooses not to use it.
I have sensitive ears myself. When I listen, at all. Whatever the reason, she only has a broom.
Other times, I’ve been typing away like mad trying to figure out the various ends and outs of the paperwork side of my job and she’s just let herself in (she has a master key, of course) and busied herself either with trying to get to my trash can (snuggly squeezed under my middle desk) or draped herself over one of my many chairs to eat Ruffles.
It was annoying, at first. Now, I’ve merely gotten used to it.
But here’s how we met: Miller Light.
When I started working here at what will soon become my former job, I would stop on my way in, nearly every day, at the Scooba Junction, for Red Bull. Because it’s legal. And it gives me energy. I’d say it gives me wings, as that’s how the commercial goes, but if it ever did, they were always clipped…like, after about twenty minutes.
So, I’d have to buy more than one can, sugar-free, of course, just to get through the top half of my day. I easily went through ten or eleven, if not more, a week.
I’m guessing here, but I’m going to say that at Scooba Junction they have only one price-gun, I’m assuming that’s what you call it (you know that dispenser they use to place the sticker price on each item?), and apparently that one price-gun comes from Miller Light because all the Red Bulls I’ve ever bought, as well as the Cheez-Its and Chips Ahoy, have all been emblazoned with stickers that are labeled “Miller Light.”
I’d noticed it a hundred times, myself. But, thought nothing of it.
They place these stickers over the pull tab, so in order to open the drink, you have to remove the sticker.
Stickers that I then discarded in the trash, either by dropping them in or sticking them to the side of the plastic garbage bag.
Again, thinking nothing of it.
By my third week here, Georgia had become overly concerned.
She met me outside my office door, one afternoon, and asked me in a polite way if she could talk to me about something.
I said, Sure.
She stepped into the office and pointed at my heavily stickered garbage can. (Pointing, by the way, is not polite. That’s Disney 101).
I felt as if this were a test of some sort and that, even though it appeared to have an obvious answer, I was going to fail it.
“Yes?” I remember saying.
“You really drink that much?”
Assuming she meant Red Bull, I said, “I do. Honey, I need it.”
She was dumbstruck. It dawned on me then; she wasn’t looking at the empty cans. She was looking at the stickers.
God only knows what would have happened had I not had a Red Bull sitting on my desk that I’d not opened yet. It was my only proof. She might have turned me in.
Either that, or she was wanting to go twosies on a six-pack.
We have a good laugh about it, these days. It’s a good, funny, strangely comforting memory to have.
As a matter of fact, we were laughing about it just now.
Because she was drinking coffee, sitting on the steps outside my office, when I got to work this morning.
…if only it had been a Red Bull, this would have all tied together.
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