How supportive is your school janitor?
 

how supportive is your schools janitor? i keep getting little tid bits from the janitors like when do you get home and one day you will just walk in here with out one of us here or even notified.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Well our school has lots of janitors because of its size. Some of them are supportive, while others hate us because we are always having them unlock rooms we need access too. The janitors that support us are interested in the robot, and as long as we give them a little food, they are happy. The few janitors that dont like us just stay away, and that it all the best for us (most of the time)

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitors have been great to us for the most part. Like recently, we were walkin through the school saturday around 6:30 PM and the entire school was pitch black and we were trying to get into the cafeteria to let our robot run around and such and a janitor saw us. We figured "aw man we're busted" but he was like "hey, you need the lights on or some tables moved?" It was very cool of him.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitorial staff is fantastic! While we are expected to clean up after ourselves in the shop (which seems like the only polite way to do things, you make the mess, obviously you clean it up!) but they are always willing to help us out by opening doors and being there to help out with other things. Let's hear it for the janitors!

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Cyber Blue has been incredibly lucky to have so many great janitors. We get along with them great and have have a good relationship with them. They have always been very supportive of us and help us out occasionaly if we ask a favor. A lot of times they come down to our room just to see how things are going and talk to us.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our school janitors are wonderful. They are friendly, and always willing to help out.

But the number one reason why I like our school janitors is this: they have donated a heated space for our robotics team to work every build season for the past 3 years!! They gave up part of their garage, where they store their machinery and other things, for our use, out of the goodness of their hearts.

If it werent for our school's custodial staff, we would be in the unheated attic of the same garage, that only has one electrical outlet, and is home to the largest dead population of flies (and living population of spiders). I think that flies from around the world migrate there, for the purpose of falling down dead, and grossing me out.:eek:

Thanks goodness for our wonderful custodial staff!

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

FIRST is all about working with others. Our custodians support us 100%, and they ask us to respect their work, as they respect ours. They also know that if they need something fixed, or lock their keys in a classroom, having us around is useful to them. Of course, they can be a bit rough in the evening when we are working in a computer room they are trying to clean, and they aren't used to having anyone around - who wouldn't be? Respect, give it, and you will get it. Now our security people, well, let's not go there.....

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

they don't like us very much. because we are usually there late and we make some big messes, which we clean up but every time they peek into the class room we are making some sort of mess. or we run out of rolls of paper towels or room in the trash cans.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

lol that sounds like where we DO work... we've been given the old woodshop (which noone ever uses anymore). It's the coldest, dustiest corner of the universe (or at least the school). It's cool that your janitors gave you guys a nice place to work.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Some wisdom I learned long ago-

anything in a school is somehow reliant on the janitors so you always want to maintain a good relationship with them

as a result- our guys are good friends of the team and they are willing to do just about anything for us.

When we hold Brunswick Eruption and take over the school we ask a lot from them. But we make sure thay always get shirts or giveaways and the team takes great pains to clean up after the event and leave the gym and food areas spotless.

We've been complimented by the janitorial staff that our events are the easiest school events to work with. Since we want to keep having them with the blessing of all the guys with the keys, we intend to keep it that way.

WC :cool:

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitors are nice and supportive of our team. They must have unlocked the doors / turned on the power 20 times this season already. We clean up all our messes and give them free pizza if we have extra, its always nice to be nice.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitors are FANTASTIC. These guys even come back to the school to lock up so that we can stay later. We do our best to keep their workload down, empty trash, sweep, make sure windows doors and lights are taken care of. They are also invited to share our food.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We have our own site with keys to come and go as we please but our new "baby sister" team XQ Robotix has had an incident where they were locked out of school because the janitor failed to show up to let them in.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

The maintenance at my school is EXTREMELY supportive, one of them especially is very enthusiastic about our team, and last year even tought some members how to weld.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our team's high school janitors are very supportive. However we only normally see a handful of them because they each have their own section of the school.

The few we see usually stop in the shop and say hi most every night. They usually chat and talk with us too.

When their shift is up and it is time to go home they either tell our team leader to either close up shop or set the security... LATE NIGHTS.... :ahh:

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We help our custodians as much as they help us. Normally we clean all of our floors and any mess we make but usually once every 3 months they come in to our lab and give the floors a really good cleaning and buff them. Also during the off season we help them a lot by moving stuff were they need it or we assemble desks for them. They give us food when ever they have extra and we do the same for them. Also our Lab is literally next door to the custodians' office area.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our custodians are amazingly great to us. As long as we treat them good, they treat us good. We mainly stay in the machine shop, so they don't mind, and we have a master key so if we need to get into somewhere, wedon't have to go find them to do it. They also don't mind that we stay late, and they let us know when they set the alarm, and then leave, so it doesn't matter what time we leave. It's pretty great that they treat us so well.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Just remember, treat them well, as well as secretaries, porters , jobs like that. They dont really want to be there any more than you (i mean at school, of course you want to be building robots...), remember they are human beings (and they can really screw you up if they arn't happy.)

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our support people are extremely inquisitive and seem to enjoy the change in their routine. Our team is responsible for our lab area. The garbage is even emptied by team members from our shop.
We always share our food and make Andre, Pat and Doris welcome in our shop. We also give them team shirts and let them know that we consider them honary members of our team.
Andre, who works late into the evening seems pleased that he has some company in the building with him. We are very fortunate to have such a great "environmental engineering" team.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We have a mutual coexistence. Period. However, the teacher for the wood shop we're using would screw us over if we don't keep it clean.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

we have a handful of great janitors and then the one...mean one. theres one that stole our drill and didnt return it until 4 hours after we started working. we sent kids home to bring in their drills. he parks in the autoshop and complains there are too many kids working in the shop. other than this one....they all help out and deliever packages when they come.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We have one custodian that is really supportive of us, sometimes he even comes in to our workroom to help with projects if he has the time. The others...not so much. I guess it's because some of the members of my team (myself included) show up or leave from meetings while they're working...
We clean up after ourselves, so they don't dislike us because of that, I'm not sure why. Maybe they just don't like children?

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Yea you do not want to get the janitors made because that is what our spanish teacher did, and now she does not have heat in her room.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

God, that had to suck. :ahh:
Fear the power of the custodians!

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our custodians are very good to us.

The ones who have been there for several years know some of us mentors/adults on the team and will unlock doors for us and even ask us if we need the power on in the shops. We give them any leftover food we have if they're interested and even do small projects for them in the shops when we have free time. A few of them pop into the shop from time to time to see how we're doing with the robot. Last night one of them decided to stay an extra hour for us. We also clean up after we're done and if we have any major garbage we will put it out by the loading dock for them.


Having been there and seen your unheated attic space I'm jealous along with my team. We would love to have a space like that dedicated for our team. This past summer the school had us move out of our 15'x20' storage closet into a 6'x15' shared storage closet with the electronics room. We have to be very picky about saving field elements and parts now because of the lack of storage.

As for the flies and spiders they're not bad, just coat them with Hershey's chocolate syrup :p ........................Just kidding! ;)

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

our school janitor is really nice, she doesnt mind cleaning up after us, IF WE LEAVE A MESS (KEY WORD IF), she says we clean up well thoutgh. she has been watching the robot get built and she actually wants to come down to regionals with us :D

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We've never really worked in a school for much time. Where we do work, we often are working along side janitorial staff or even 2nd/3rd shift workers. As far as I know, we've never had anything but good relations with everyone we share space with. To some degree, I've noticed that employees at our sponsors take a bit of pride in the team, and seem truly pleased with the students and their interest in engineering. The owners and managers of the buisnesses are also fantastic, as they understand what kind of stress we are under and forgive us when we are not the greatest guests.

Also, we've had the same bus driver drive us down to our first regional for years now. She's shown up in many team photos and seems to enjoy the trips almost as much as we do. Many thanks to her for getting us where we need to go safely.

So props to all the people that FIRST teams work with, around and on the shoulders of. We couldn't do it with out their help and support.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

ours are great, sum love what we're doing, sum dont care, and sum have no clue. we just tell those we're makeing an adapter for the arm to hold a mop and they're happy. aftrer all, all those rubber marks down the hall is our fault.. :p

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitors are FANTASTIC, they're on a first name basis with most of the adult mentors on our team. The ones that don't clean the area we work on often come in to visit us and see how we're doing. We clean up after ourselves and check with them before we do thing we're not sure about.

This year one of the janitors helped us out A LOT by designing a ramp we built for a community service project. He's great, along with all the other ones.

We love our janitors

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Rules to live by when dealing with support staff (custodial, secretarial, food service).

1. Fully inform them of your needs for space, cleaning aids (brooms, paper products, copies etc.) and time you will need to be in the area.
2. If you make a mess clean it up. Your custodian(s) already have more than enough to do without cleaning up after you!
3. Thank them profusely when they do something nice for you and bite your tongue if everything doesn't go well. Remember, everyone has their good and bad days. Maybe you just hit one of their bad days on your good day. Deal with it and move on.
4. The gracious in gracious professionalism should move into all areas of your conscious actions. Not just when you are in FIRST. Make it a point every day to be gracious in everything you do and with everyone you meet. In this way conflicts will be minor and soon forgiven or forgotten.
5. A happy support staff can make your efforts or break your efforts. Its much easier to deal with the former than have to lament the latter.

Cheers!
:)

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

technically, our workshop is not in school, so they don't need to clean (and yes, underclassmen usually have the privelage of cleaning :p ); however, when we need to get down to the shop,and no one has a key, they always lend us one, which may seem like a small thing, but it has saved us quite a few times when the new mentors on our team would come for meetings, and no one had a key!

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

After every practice we all lend the janiters a hand and help tiddy up our working space.

We build in a garage but drive/program/auto. in a very large classroom.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

our school janitors want to rip some of us limb from limb :eek: . its insane they think we make fun of them and stuff like that its crazy!!!!!!!!!!! :ahh: :ahh: :ahh:

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

The new building that we work in is the janitor storage and office type area, every night we have to have our team meeting right in the hallway/room where they move that nights new cleaning stock from the loading bay to there trucks, so sometimes we get in the way. They have been extremely nice to us and they work around us even though we are in there way most of the time.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We don't really have much interaction with our janitorial staff. Our workshop is basically half of the technology room, and since the tech teacher's also the main advisor, it works out nicely. :) We're also headed by the metal and wood shop teachers, and between them, they have all the keys we need if we need to get into the cafeteria or gym to practice.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We don't really see much of our janitors, except when they empty out the trashcans about twice a week. We clean up after ourselves (everybody, not just underclassmen) and make sure the room was like it was (or better) than when we got there.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

The Janitor that cleans our wing of thse school is awesome. He's helped us clean some pretty nasty stains (including paint) on things like carpet. We all love him for all the help and support he gives us. He even sometimes pops in to see how we're progressing and such.

In return we give him gifts and cake whenever we have a party down it this little underground room we we work in :D

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

I get the impression that our janitors are always sick of us coming to them asking if they can open up a part of the school that we need access to, such as the storage shed at the back of the site. No idea if they're interested in what we do, either. Last year's team apparently bought the janitors a crate of beer to keep 'em happy, as a "thanks for your help-- no need to glare" kinda gesture.

So yeah. Try not to make too much of a mess and bring them the odd present every now and again, and they should be fine. :)

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our Maintanance man, Ron is very supportive, helping us out with tools and ideas.

However our janiotrs definately hate our guts because of the amount of trash we generate, and all the metal and plastic shavings on the floors. (The skid marks in the hallway don't help either). We try to kkep it neat, but, quite frankly, its a losing battle against all the trash, especially the pizzas boxes :)

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Without our school's janitors my team wouldn't have gotten anything done the past few years because we would be building out robot in what is basiclly a unheated storage area above the custodial garage. They have been kind enough to move and store their unnessacary equitment elsewhere for our build season and allow us to use a bay of their garage. Its a great space with heat and many outlets. There is no way possible to express how much we appricate their kindness.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We work in the school system's vocationals school and everyone of the night janitors has come down and seen our robot. Julie is one of the night janitors and she has come down almost everynight checking on the robot. We told them "you dont have to clean up anything" because we clean up the machine shop and ajoining rooms everynight. They LOVE us! :D and we love them!

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitor is totally supportive of us, he'll come in and talk to us and see if there's anything he can do to help...until someone doesn't flush the toilet that is... :ahh:

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our janitors are always stopping by and checking out what we are doing. They are always supporting us, opening doors for us, and helping us out with anything we might need. Here is a picture of some of us with our favorite janitor Paul.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Interesting anecdote about janitors.

The head custodian at my middle school used to work for NASA as an engineer. (Dead serious). If you go to kennedy space center and do the firing room tour, you can still see a cardboard cut out of him in his office overlooking the firing room. During apollo 11, he was the guy on the microphone with the third astronaut who stayed in the capsule. He stopped working at NASA, from what we've been able to gather, at about the design phase of the space shuttle. Interesting guy, he's got insignias and pins and plaques and things of that nature. His first name is Earl but I forget his last name off the top of my head.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

You weren't there when we had the lego league build the night before... they were helping us build the arena....

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.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

Our Janitors are in between, as long as we don't make a mess or anything bad.

However..

One day during build season we wanted to go get some pizza, we got about $50 to spend, but delivery cost $7 and it was raining. we wouldn't send the mutant electric scooter we built for that purpose (pizza box holder and all) out in the rain. One of our guys managed to sweettalk one of our janitors to go and pick up the pizza for us in his car... it was amazing!
Also, we fixed anouther janitor's motorcycle lights because he asked us to, it was an easy job. We did it to keep on his good side, but he gave us $30 for it, mind you he would have paid much more at a repairshop, but he didn't need to give us anything.

Re: How supportive is your school janitor?
 

We are a school of less than 600 so our team members know our custodians.

They are wonderful people and very helpful. The Ohio Association of Public School Employee (OAPSE) was a MAJOR financial sponsor of our team for 3 years thanks to Joanne Johntonny, President.

They support our fundraisers and are flexible when they find out, at the last minute, that we have an assembly, or career fair planned, or media event, and we need the bleachers out (or in) and the tarp on the gym floor and the podiums and the microphones, or the carpet vacuumed because the TV station is coming at 5 a.m. Monday to do a live shot!
We try to let them know in advance, but even when we don't, it gets done and we love them for that!

We have our own entry to the building and don't go in the rest of the school or set off the alarm (mostly), so we're lucky there!

Because we clean our own mess (mostly) and put big stuff in the dumpster ourselves, we can work when they're not there and come and go as we please. That's a plus and a big thank you to them.

I think they realize what an awesome experience FIRST is and even though, by union contract, they could insist that they must be there when we are (and who on Earth would want to work those hours anyway, especially at last minute notice!?), they also realize and respect that what we do benefits the students (and if they were there, our team members would be paying their wages, not us).

So, we have a great relationship with them and love them all for all that they do to support us!