Sara Barker is a sophomore journalism major who writes "Barking Up the Wrong Tree" for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. Write to Sara at slbarker3@bsu.edu.
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It’s amazing what you can learn from listening to listen, not just to respond. In my case, the person I listened to changed my perspective on life.
He was a janitor.
I was on assignment in the Village when I came across him. He was a middle-aged man who lived not too far from campus. Pulling his Colts beanie down over his subtly graying dreadlocks, he started telling me about his jobs.
First, he said that he was working for a janitorial service that cleans the Village. Then, he compared that job to his work as a porter at a nearby apartment complex and told me how he would go from the night shift there to a manufacturing job at a factory.
I asked at how many places he was currently employed. He started counting on his left hand, then moved to his right. Five or six, he guessed.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Mohamed Zaker, a custodian at Harvard University, told about how he came to the United States from Morocco to live the American dream. When asked if everyone respects him there, Zaker could not say yes.
I witnessed that feeling secondhand when I watched the janitor in the Village clean a line of sprayed ketchup off of the windows of businesses, from the corner of the block down to the end.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, janitors made $23,440 per year on average in 2015. Median hourly pay was $11.27.
Janitors and cleaners fought for the right to unionize in New York City. In an article by the New York Times, cleaners hired by WeWork, an office space sharing company through a janitorial service, realized that they were making $10 per hour with no benefits.
The workers went on strike. WeWork refused to help their cleaners.
And then there’s me, someone who thinks she proves the stereotype of the entitled millennial wrong because I write a lot and because I worked one job at the time, for an average of six hours a week.
This made me realize that we, as college students, are not on our own as we like to think we are. In every building on campus we have janitors who can sometimes seem invisible.
The next time you see one, be sure to smile and ask them how their day is. They’re really nice. I promise.
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