Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Really? Oh. Well that's news to me. :) Must be the beer you upper-sixth lot bought 'em last year... it was you guys, wasn't it?

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

we are a rookie team this year, but our janitors pretty mch dislike us.

we were at school until midnight once.

and we almost lost our classroom to work in [we aren't allowed to use the workshop, but we get along okay]

......because of one lousy stinkin' ziptie. well, more like a few ziptie clippings littered on the floor.

and we always ask if they can unlock the workshop or storeroom for us...they get a little bit annoyed with us. well, a LOT annoyed.

easy solutions i've thought of:
-sit down with the janitors and tell them about FIRST [i doubt they know what we're doing]
-have the janitors help us get permission to the workshop!
^easy. simple. no need for les janitors.


who likes it?

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

I would definately tell them about the FIRST program, and even more so try and clean up yourselves too, take the last 10-15 minutes of the meeting and reserve it for clean up. Our janitors both know the program and enjoy helping us out usually. Check to make sure that they are scheduled to work and work around their schedule and it will make things easier. Pretty much keep open the lines of communication between your janitors and your team. Sometimes our janitors even pop into the room on their breaks to come and watch what we are doing, they are amazed at how quickly we can build a robot. It also helps that we will usually buy them dinner one night during build as a thank you for all the late nights they give to us. By dinner I mean we buy them a couple of pizzas or something, not a real big deal, but just a nice way to thank them.

Also invite them to your first event if it is local that way they can see the whole team cheering on your robot, and they can see what the program is really all about.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We usually clean up our room fairly well (there are classes in it every day, so we can't make too much of a mess) which leaves little mess, but lots of filled trash cans, for the janitors - our janitors sometimes pass through just to see what on earth we are working on so late at night! Because we need to use the school loading dock so often to move our supplies and equipment between our room and our storage area in the basement, we often interact with the janitors in some way or another. I cannot tell you how many times they have saved us from tripping the school alarms by warning us when it gets close to the 11:30 p.m. quitting time!

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

I see all our janitors wearing their TRC T-Shirts atleast once a week, 'nough said. :D

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitors are supportive turning lights on for us where necessary, opening doors for us where necessary, and even letting us use the gym for some testing. So I give my thanks to the janitors for their time and support.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

our janitors pretty much love us becuase the parents yell at us to clean up our messes and on late nights they get payed overtime just to sit there and do nothing

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitors come in and check to see how were doing, and ask questions about the game. They are hugely involved. Go them. YAY KERN.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

I would say that the janitors in our school don't really care what we do while we're working. We invite them in to see the robot all the time when they are in the main lab room, and as long as all the mess is contained to our robot work area, they really don't mind what it looks like. Besides, we clean up after ourselves... I've recently found out that I like vacuuming huge piles of stuff with an industrial strength vacuum :D

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

our janitors are awesome. they are very supportive and always seem interested in what we're working on next. we usually try to find them to have them see the next new thing and when it's done to demonstrate it. sometimes it seems that if it weren't for them, we wouldn't have a robot to compete with.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our school janitors gave us a vacuum to use, I don't see them that often but I've heard from our teacher that they're pretty supportive as long as we don't leave a huge mess - hence the vacuum.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our situation is quite interesting.
Since our team is comprised of 3 (4 including our build site) in 1 school district we are the luckyest in terms of needs. The 4th school is an "Advanced" school which many team members go to.

Anyways...

Even though we don't really need our janitors (since we already have all the keys to all the rooms), they do a lot anyhow. If we need to find something they find it. If we need them to unlock some rooms (in the case that we "Misplace" the keys) they just give us new keys or give us theirs. Their was 1 time when they brought us food. They were on break at White Castle, and White Castle messed up their orders. I guess the manager overheard them talking about our robotics team, so White Castle gave them a meals for us. They brought them but the worst part is that we just ate pizza.
So basically, u can say we're best buds with our janitors.

Tomasz Bania

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitors sometimes like us sometimes not. The school isn't all that supportive of us, so if we have to work late, we have to pay the overtime for the janitors. Oh no....they don't clean up our room or anything, they just have to be in the school if we are. They are pretty friendly if we feed them pizza, but they got pretty mad when the kids were driving the robot in the hall before the drive code was ironed out. We scraped a bit of paint. For some reason that was ok, but the skid marks were a point of contention. Anyhow, I guess we'll be spending one of our work days freshening up the hall way soon!

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

This reminds me of the night of the infamous school board meeting where team 616 had to face the facts that the self centered school board cancelled the robotics team. All of the members went to the school board meeting to let them know how much they screwed us over this year. As we were leaving one, of the janitors asked me how the meeting went and what was the conclusion. I told him the story and he actually cared more about it than the school board or our principal. It's kinda sad when the janitor cares a whole lot more than the school board or your school principal. I'm not complaining, at least we had him on our side the whole time.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our school janitors generally just go about their business as usual, working around us. We can get into the rooms we need to without their assistance. One seems to take an interest in what we are doing, because he always works the end of the school that we are in. He recently asked me how our competition went, and I had a nice discussion with him about it.