This is a story of a hotel bathroom janitor

[Ken Leung]

This is a story of a hotel bathroom janitor.

The main character of this story is a female university student who worked part time at the Tokyo Empire Hotel during her summer vacation. Her job was to clean bathrooms in this five stars hotel. The story goes something like this:

On her first day, when she first stepped into the bathroom she was assigned to, this university student almost threw up when she put her hand into the toilet for the first time. She tried her best to put up with her work, but after struggling for a few days, she knew she couldn’t handle it. She decided to quit her job.

As fate has it, the moment before she quit her job, this university student accidentally saw an old janitor, working in the same hotel doing the same job, grabbed a tea cup from his cart and proceeded to have a drink of water, not from the drinking fountain, but from the toilet he just cleaned a moment ago!

The university student was completely shocked when she saw that. But, when she confronted him about it, the old janitor proudly announce that every toilet he cleaned is so well-sanitized that you can drink from every one of them!

This incident greatly inspired the university student. It made her understand the true meaning of the professionalism spirit, and that is, no matter what kind of job you are have, or how bad that job can be, there are always higher standards, higher ideals, and higher purpose you can pursuit with it. It also made her realized that the meaning and value of the work do not depend on how noble or how cheap the work is, but whether or not you are able to look at it positively and discover satisfaction and determination from within it.

So, from then on, the university student stopped hating her job when she stepped back into the bathrooms. And from then on, that university student saw her job as grounds for training and self-improvement, instead of just another summer job. And from then on, every time after she cleaned the toilet, she asked herself this question, “Can I drink a cup of water from this toilet?”

When the vacation was finally over, so was the university student’s employment at the five stars hotel. On her last day, the manager of the hotel came by to check her work, and instead of finding another employee eager to leave this job behind for something better, the manager found the university student standing in front of everybody, grabbed a cup from her cart, and proceeded to have a drink of water from the toilet she just cleaned.

Every person at the scene was absolutely shocked by her action! The manager was especially impressed by this student, and decided a person like this must be hired by the hotel at all cost!

After graduation, the university student was easily hired by the Tokyo Empire Hotel to become part of their staff. With an unparalleled spirit of professionalism, she became the most outstanding raising star of the Tokyo Empire Hotel before reaching 37 years old. And with an unequaled amount of determination and spirit, she stepped into the political world of Japan and joined the cabinet with the strongest recommendation from Japanese prime minister Koizumi.

This university student’s name is Seiko Noda, the minister of Post and Telecommunications of the cabinet of the Japanese government.

Ever since her experience as a student, this forty-four years old woman, this public servant who is known through out Japan as candidate with the most potential to become the prime minister in the future, is always heard saying the following introduction every time she meet a stranger: “I am a professional bathroom janitor, and I am a humble servant of the Japanese cabinet.”

Quoted from an unknown source on the internet.

Upon reading this story from a friend on a different forum, I found myself at a lost of words to describe my thoughts and emotions.

Every day we complain how tough or how meaningless our job is, and every day we run away from challenges and standards that are easily within our grasp if we bother to spend a minute to look for them. No sounds can reflect how small I feel in the shadow of giants like her. No words can express how much I learned from a story like this.

No words, except those of Abraham Lincoln, who once said,

“Get the books, and read and study them. It did not matter, whether the reading be done in a small town or a large city, by oneself or in the company of others. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places…. Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.”

[Pavan Dave]

Thats an interesting story.

[prettycolors91]

that IS a really great story, and very inspiring. It really sends the right message to be positive and everything will turn out okay.

[KenWittlief]

An interesting story. Sounds like a Japanese twist of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree to get his football back (because he could not tell a lie - and apparently he could not climb a tree either).

You would have to completely drain the water from a toilet (including the water in the trap) and sterilize it (steam?) to make it sanitary enough to drink from, other wise you could get gastrointestinitous, ecoli, or a number of other infectious diseases

like I said, this sounds like a political/history hero myth/story. Cutting down a cherry tree to get your ball back (instead of climbing it) shows poor judgment, no matter how honest you are

and a good janitor should not need to drink from a toilet to prove to a manager they have a positive attitude.

I like inspirational stories. I like them even more when they are true (or make sense :^) Why wasnt the 65 year old janitor who drank from the toilets every day promoted to prime minister of Japan? After his whole life, he was still a janitor!

[anna~marie]

I like it

[Ken Leung]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I like inspirational storys. I like them even more when they are true (or make sense :^)

Oh you caught me there. Now that I think of it, what are the chances this is another one made up by someone on the internet modified, edited and passed around a million times until I recently see it on a chinese forum of a friend of mine?

I will edit out the "true story" part and put it in chit chat... But maybe the truth of it is not as important as what we got out of the story. Oh, I don't know, and it can go either way, but I thought it was a pretty good story.

[KenWittlief]

The basis of the story is correct, you need to be willing to start at the bottom and embrace the most demeaning jobs if you want to be a leader.

I saw a video about a man who wanted to help out a neighbor - his neighbor was a crazy old hermit who lived alone, acted bizzare, and everyone in the area was afraid of him. The man decided to befriend this outcast.

Long story => short the neighbor was mentally ill and really did need help. Over a period of sevearl months he helped him in many ways, getting him to take showers, buying him new clothes, taking him to get his haircut, cleaning up his house for him...

the connection here was the day he decided to clean his bathroom for him, and was face to face with a toilet that had not been cleaned in 10 years. That was the real test - that was the point where he almost threw up his hands and said "screw it!"

But once he got past it - everything else was easy. With his help the hermit got the medication he needed, the human connection he needed, and instead of being that weird old guy who lives on the corner, he was transformed into an accepted and respected elderly member of the neighborhood.

[Bill_Hancoc]

good story but to clean and completly disinfect the toilet in a manner that was safe to drink from that didnt take too long...wouldnt that require chemicles thus making the water again unsanitary??

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Bill Hancoc

good story but to clean and completly disinfect the toilet in a manner that was safe to drink from that didnt take too long...wouldnt that require chemicles thus making the water again unsanitary??

You know, you aren't necessarily going to get sick from drinking out of a (recently-flushed) toilet—it's tap water, plus a small quantity of filth. Besides, dogs do it all the time, and don't fall ill. Plus, you have an immune system for a reason.

It's essentially a fable: the story is about the symbolism, not the actual efficacy of some janitor's particular method of cleaning toilets. (And besides, the source is unknown—it might as well be an outright fabrication.)

[Beth Sweet]

You know, I saw a story on Oprah the other day that drinking toilet water out of any given toilet is more sanitary than the ice cubes from fast food restaurants. Less germs...

Interesting story though, sometimes you have to put up with the rain to see the rainbow

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Beth Sweet

You know, I saw a story on Oprah the other day that drinking toilet water out of any given toilet is more sanitary than the ice cubes from fast food restaurants. Less germs...

I find that hard to accept. The drain pipe in a toilet is S-shaped, the trap that prevents sewer gas from entering the room is under or behind the toilet bowl.

It is impossible to clean the S shaped trap (you cant even see it), and the water inside the bowl stays in contact with the water in the trap.

Dogs do drink from toilets, they also lick their butts, and they lick the faces of some dog owners

and people do get ecoli and other infectious diseases, and infect other people (esp if they happen to work in a resturant, food market...)

How they got sick in the first place? Who knows for sure? No matter how you look at it, slurping out of a toilet used by strangers sounds like a bad idea.

[Rick TYler]

The follow-on story is that she died of typhus.

Everyone needs to start with a scut job that they take seriously. I had to do a really large number of disgusting things as a box boy at Albertson's back at the dawn of time, but one of the ones that really stands out in my mind is the time a clerk knocked over a stack of 1-quart jars of kosher dill pickles. You haven't lived until you've cleaned up 28 quarts of pickles mixed with broken glass. (Of course, broken mustard and mayonnaise jars are harder to clean up, but I never had to deal with 28 quarts of mayonnaise.)

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

How they got sick in the first place? Who knows for sure? No matter how you look at it, slurping out of a toilet used by strangers sounds like a bad idea.

Then I wouldn't get any drinks containing ice from your local fast-food joint either, if I were you.

Toilets and Icemaker study

People, and even whole societies, are ruled by their perceptions (true or not) of the world around them and very few have the guts to challenge their own view of the world.

"People will either say the same old rhetoric or say the truth, and it will sound like it comes from Neptune" (probably slightly misquoted).

[Daisy]

Originally Posted by Beth Sweet

You know, I saw a story on Oprah the other day that drinking toilet water out of any given toilet is more sanitary than the ice cubes from fast food restaurants. Less germs...

Interesting story though, sometimes you have to put up with the rain to see the rainbow

Here is a website that talks of the experiment. It was a seventh grader who did a science project, and after collecting samples send them to a science lab.

Click here to see the hits by googling it. They are pretty much all the same.

But that's besides the point. The moral behind the story is the point. It's about caring for what you do, no matter how important it may seem.

[JaneYoung]

25 years I befriended a married couple from another country. They were both teachers in the small community where I lived. One evening they invited me to their home and taught me how to make one of their traditional meals. As we cooked, they shared some of their thoughts and beliefs. The mother of one of the teachers had swept floors for a living all of her life. The brooms were handmade from straw and the floors swept were dirt floors. Together the husband and wife told me that in their culture, it was the respect for the job itself that brought dignity to the worker. Their whole community believed that way and they missed it in our community.