How supportive is your school janitor?

[CyberWolf_22]

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.

[rocknthehawk]

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.

[Denman]

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.)

[Metalhugginman]

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.

[Fixen]

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.

[Justin_302]

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.

[JakeGallagher]

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?

[sirbleedsalot]

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.

[Fixen]

Originally Posted by sirbleedsalot

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.

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

[Jay H 237]

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.

Originally Posted by BurningQuestion

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.

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 ........................Just kidding!

[Squeje250]

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

[Andy A.]

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.

[greencactus3]

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..

[Lisa Rodriguez]

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

[JP_1163]

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!