Janitoritis

In a post awhile back, I believe I commented on "closing up shop" at the office. I had this routine, starting at 5:30 on the dot, which involved a lap around the office and a visit to the candy dish on one of our paralegals' desks (who, not so coincidentally enough, left the office each day at 5:30, leaving me to stuff my face in peace). The candy dish, while important, was not the only reason for temporarily leaving my desk. The most important reason was to leave my office unmanned so that the cleaning people could empty my trash without interruption (this was really more for me than them, though. I couldn't stand the thought of them cleaning my mess while I lazily sat there surfing the web until traffic died down).

Things got really bad, though, when I had to clean my office for the big move to Texas. I discovered that when you're in an office space for 5 years or so, you acquire an awful lot of crap. I purged a good 75% of my files to make room for the new inhabitant. And you know what that means, don't you? A lot of trash and recycling. For a good week straight, my recycling bin would be overflowing every night. I even became a "Trash Fairy" of sorts. Once my own bin was full, I'd sneak around and load up other people's recycling bins with my junk. Poor Denise by the printer suffered the worst of it. I don't think the cleaning people ever saw so much recycling coming from her. One of our conference rooms also saw a fair share. I'm sure the cleaning guy (who, by the way, is a very nice man - a little heavy handed on the cologne, but nice nonetheless) was a little like, "WTF? There's never recycling to empty in here!" (keep in mind, these are really more subtitles - I'm sure he would have thought these things in Spanish, his native tongue)).

One evening, wanting to escape the trash rounds, I headed down the elevators at 5:30 for a little walk around the block outside. One of our other secretaries, Jen, happened to be catching the elevators too - on her way home from work. As we swished through the revolving door outside, she asked if I was going to get a snack (she knew I worked past 6:00 every night). I had to admit, "Nope. I'm actually hiding from the cleaning people. I just left a lot of stuff in my recycling bin." She was shaking, she was laughing so hard. She then reported me to my boss, Wendy, who gave me an extra hard time about it when I pulled the same stunt the next day. I think she even shouted, "Chicken!" when the cleaning people came by my office and I was nowhere to be found.

Well, even though I've left the office in D.C., my cleaning person phobia is far from over. As it turns out, Shawn and I are staying at an Extended Stay in San Antonio for four months. One of the advantages of the Extended Stay, as opposed to a short-term apartment lease, is that we have cleaning service. Hooray, right? Not necessarily. Now, instead of my 5:30 routine, I am uprooted in the middle of the day, trying to find something to occupy myself for an hour or more so that I can allow them to change our sheets and towels and empty our garbage without me in their way. I had to tell Wendy all about it yesterday, because I knew she'd find it amusing.

Her response: "I think there should be a name for your condition . . ."

Janitoritis.