This seems harder in our modern world where everything is contracted out to the lowest bidder. I've had great conversations with custodial staff at schools, parks, and other areas that actually hire the workers. At my day job, a giant corporation which hires its engineers but outsources its janitors, chefs, and so on, there's a totally different vibe.
Even the few janitors that speak English are both rushed to complete their tasks in the insufficient allotted time and almost terrified to talk to the normal employees, presumably due to the perceived power balance - were an employee to complain about them, the vendor would almost certainly fire them rather than risk offending the client. It's not fair, but it is reality, and it means that even when I do say hello or hold a door or whatever I don't get a response.
One of the janitors in my high school once gave us a lecture on linear algebra. I don't know what he did before he left the former Warsaw Pact country he was from, but it was one of those whoa kind of experiences.
In the 1990s, when the former USSR had gone to shit, you could meet a lot of menial workers from the ex-Soviet republics who had academic degrees and could hold a conversation to prove it.
I studied mathematics in Prague in 1996-2003. More than once I met a janitor or a taxi driver who, albeit with a heavy Russian or Ukrainian accent, knew what a uniformly continuous function was and what does the Chinese Remainder Theorem say.
Yep, can confirm that: The time i was working in an hospital in germany (around 2001) an older dude worked in the janitor department, turned out, he had an doctor degree in mechanical engeneering and was designing jet engines for MiG before the soviet union collapsed... and now was repairing toilets and changing lightbulbs.
We can all joke about how Big Tech shovels some of the finest technical minds towards clicking ads.
But on the plus side, the size of the tech sector in 2022 does make for much more efficient job market for technical skills, than in decades past.
I would hope someone with a doctorate in mechanical engineering, who used to design jet engines, would be able adapt their skills to go work somewhere like Tesla, or a self-driving car company, or any other similar startup.
I'll tell you the realities of Mechanical Engineering and auto.
You typically will make a single part. Maybe its the plastic to cover the car's metal. Maybe its the screen user interfaces with, maybe its airbags. Whatever the case, the plastic and screens are deemed necessary by society to sell a car. Some mechanical engineer will have this job.
At least you make cars right? Well there are over 20 major car companies, if your company disappeared tomorrow, life would move on with minimal interruptions.
The most you can claim is that you are forcing the automotive industry to be ultra competitive.
Strangely enough, startups/Tesla is the last place someone with advanced mechanical engineering knowledge would go. From a quality/feature standpoint, new companies have lower standards. Where an established company would be pushing technology and doing things that no one has done before, new companies are just trying to build a car. It would be a resume hit, because you worked on outdated/low tech.
The most you could hope for is additional responsibility and less red tape. I know a manager who was elevated to a director for taking a job at a start-up.
>Strangely enough, startups/Tesla is the last place someone with advanced mechanical engineering knowledge would go. From a quality/feature standpoint, new companies have lower standards. Where an established company would be pushing technology and doing things that no one has done before, new companies are just trying to build a car. It would be a resume hit, because you worked on outdated/low tech.
Seems like the opposite has happened. Tesla, in its desperate attempt to stay alive(3-4 bankruptcy scares thus far) have found a niche where other OEMs didn't have expertise in (EVs) and really gone all out in innovation in areas where other OEMs have dropped the ball. In the car industry if you are a newcomer and you are just trying to "build a car" you are wasting your time/money and you will die. There needs to be a competitive advantage that claws people away from existing OEMs. I'd argue that the reason Tesla is clawing people away from the luxury brands. as well as getting people to move upmarket from the economy brands is the quality and innovation of their product in areas where typical OEM does not prioritize. Things such as software, day to day experience etc.
In terms of internal engineering, there are innovations as well. For example: The superbottle and octopump system utilize software and clever engineering to eliminate a complete coolant loop in the system. This eliminated parts, made the system more efficient and reduced cost. Tesla didn't have the organizational baggage plus they attracted some brilliant and dedicated engineers to make it happen.
This is why, of all the schools I've gone to, LA City College remains the hardest, even after later graduating from a top ten engineering school. I was originally a biology major, and with Los Angeles flooded with refugees and immigrants, a whole lot of medical doctors and research scientists from former Soviet republics found themselves in a country where their licenses and degrees were not accepted, and they had to start over. Many of them ended up totally obliterating the curves in all of the underclass bio courses in various Los Angeles community colleges.
If really really smart immigrants stop coming to America, the country will be in deep shit, IMO. Per your question: they don't have to be from Soviet countries, just with qualifications that aren't accepted at face value.
The scale has changed, but those days have never really ended. I'm from a Caribbean country that people are usually quite eager to leave. I've seen numerous cases of people with post-secondary education and jobs to go with it leave for the US or UK and end up doing "unskilled" labor because their qualifications don't carry across.
New (US) grads have significantly less qualifications than anyone wants to admit. It's getting 2 years of experience that makes the difference.
When looking to hire people from South America, there was lots of manufacturing experience, but we needed Design experience.
When we hired CAD guys, they followed directions fine, but possibly too literally or would stop too prematurely. When getting local, non engineers to do CAD, they would read our mind more.
Not that this is a show stopper. If we met 3 times a day for a quick meeting with our SA CAD guys, we achieved just as much. It just required more meetings/phone calls.
I had a great conversation with a hydraulic fitter once, turned out after a couple of beers that he was a chartered mechanical engineer in his home country, and that we shared a passion for heat engines. You never know what someone’s hiding under their hat.
Was reminded of Bob's Burgers episodes with Mr Branca, the school custodian. Multiple times he refers to being president "before the coup" in his home country.
I'm betting that if I, and most of my colleagues, ever complained about custodial staff, it would be totally ignored. My charitable interpretation of that phrase is that "real" janitors probably don't realize that many of us are "just" janitors of computing, even if we get free vitamin water.
The way I read it they're arguing both that it's condescending to think that they need to be told to say hi to custodial staff, and that the custodial staff might find it condescending for someone to hold a door.
One of the interesting things I've found while travelling is the different forms of interaction with customer service, hospitality, custodial staff. US tends to have a 'customer is always right' sickly sweet interactions. China has custodial staff that almost live at the office (the feel of Mum doing the dishes and washing, and that you're almost in their house). France/Paris you always say hello (bon jour) when you enter the store or it's rude. I've never had such "rude" blunt interactions as I did in Sofia, and thought it was me/tourist/english, but no, I witnessed equally gruff dismissive interactions for locals.
I'm arguing treating "custodial staff" as some distinct group that deserves special treatment, in deep need of your smiles and door holding is condescending. The tone of the original article and this reply came across like the authors think they're somehow above the "custodial staff". Like they are lords talking about the peasantry.
I chat with/hold doors for everyone I encounter. I said custodial staff here because that was the thesis of the original article. No one's "in need of it" in any sense other than most people benefit from social interaction and being acknowledged.
As someone who has worked a few service jobs: oh god please don't start a conversation with me if I'm on my lonesome. This advice needs a huge sticker that says 'mileage may vary'.
Not everyone wants the silence to be punctuated with smalltalk.
The author's point of view seems to me quite condescending. Like being the janitor is considered less (and that, inevitably, everybody sees the janitor that way), so the author is trying to flip that view around (because he can, he is "not less").
Needless to say that being polite is out of the question here, and that I am sure that the author's intentions are not what I just commented, but I can't help to read it that way.
I would agree that "please" and "thank you" can take you far, however you don't just have to address them to the janitor, it's for everybody.
The person doing the cleaning on our office floor always wears very large and conspicuous probably noise canceling headphones, while working. Guessing she has had one too many person trying to make awkward conversation while she was just trying to get the coffee cups in the wash as quickly as possible.
I think the best bet is to just acknowledge, no need to smalltalk. Just smile and say "good morning" or even just nod at them when you run by, no matter who that is, CEO or the janitor. That will be enough for a people yearning to get noticed to feel noticed, but won't unnerve the occasional person who wants to be left alone.
I agree with this comment. YMMV. I tend to just naturally start up conversations with service folks, and at least half the time they appear to be annoyed.
Further, try to abide by their requests. If they want the trash can by the door to your office or cubicle on Thursday evening, move the damn trashcan to the door. They have 100 to empty; it's a trivial task for you.
We can get wound up in ourselves and forget to hold a door, or avoid spilling crumbs on our carpet, or log out of our workstation, or use a different hallway when the floor is being waxed, or to move the trash can. It's not really a reflection on our self-importance. It's just a character flaw.
I never did any of this stuff but got along with them all. Theyplayed with my Oculus Quest, we'd shoot the shit sometimes, shared some of their bomb ass guacamole.
Everyone's got their mode of interacting with people. I'm really not into this shaming people for not matching your interaction mode thing.
This sanctimonious ostentatious virtuosity is really too much.
To make it worse this is truly junk content. God help me.
It's hard for me to imagine a place where a janitor would dare make such a request. Usually service star are dreadfully afraid of getting abused by the (relatively) powerful problem all around them who can easily ruin their jobs and therefore lives by spite or just accident .
I do get being nice to janitors--and I am happy to help them with something if asked, and I don't "ignore" them as noted in this article as I definitely agree that's rude to treat them as second-class humans unworthy of being regarded with eye contact or banter--but I am being paid to do my job and they are being paid to their job and if I am spending my time or mental energy doing part of their job then I feel like something in the division of labor has failed. No one wants me spending my time working on the website or managing the social media account, and while every department certainly has something I could add to my task list to make their job easier--such as going out of my way to maintain a high-level changelog of the product or maintain a list of new translation syringe--it is their job to let me do my job, and we hired the people to do the extra work of going back through the work I did and finding those things I didn't write down at the time so I could maximize the time I spend on new development or architecture or debugging or cutting server costs or whatever it is that I was hired to do. I also think there is something to the people who argue that if you go out of your way to put away carts or use self-checkout "to help the people who work there" without realizing that you are REPLACING the people who work there--as, due to your efforts, the company can hire fewer people to do whatever that job is--then you are not actually their friend. While I avoid getting crumbs on the carpet because it is likely to attract ants or cause other forms of permanent damage to the room in the form of ground-in debris or stains, it just isn't clear to me that the most "janitor friendly" action--in the long run--wouldn't be to actively create as large of a mess as I can without people deciding I am myself such a liability that I lose my own job (and one could imagine actually conspiring with the janitorial staff over creating such elaborate "but understandable" messes ;P). Certainly, if we merely move all the trash cans to where they are most quickly gathered, the company would be almost negligent to not assign the janitor some new task to fill the time that was saved (or reduce their hours, or scale down the department, etc.).
The point I was making is that someone else's job isn't being nice to them, because you aren't doing something nice FOR THEM you are instead doing something nice FOR THEIR EMPLOYER as the amount of money they are paid or the load of tasks they are being given will adjust behind the scenes. It isn't intuitive, but once pointed out I hope it becomes obvious? If you do enough of their job for them, they get fired :(. If you cause then enough work, maybe you can get them a raise. (And yes: capitalism sucks like this if this makes you feel bad somehow, but you are moving in the wrong direction if you are trying to work on it: you should strive to have solidarity with workers!)
>you should strive to have solidarity with workers
Kind of weird to make this point at the end, right after you apparently say you intentionally make the cleaning jobs harder. As a cleaner if people make more of a mess of things, you'll just get overwhelmed with too much work and then things will look messy and you'll get fired. Cleaners usually don't get raises, and especially not raises for doing more work. You maybe get token raises when you threaten to leave due to low pay and the managers can't find a replacement straight away.
Nobody ever saw a clean office and came to the conclusion, "Our cleaning staff must be lazing about because someone else is cleaning for them, we should fire them all!"
Again, where did this meme about 'doing someone elses job'? The point made was, be respectful of them when they're doing their job, by cooperating and not winging about it.
This has become a tortuous argument which on the surface seems to be for justifying being disrespectful or lazy.
I don't know about other people but I go through my life trying to make things easier for other people, or failing that at least not make things harder, in the hope that someone else will do the same for me.
The people at a company are all hired to fill specific positions and accomplish specific tasks. The entire goal of working for a living isn't kind to begin with. Here: let's say you literally donated your time every night to do the janitor's job entirely, so they didn't have to do anything, as you love cleaning anyway and it makes you feel really happy to see them not having to do all of this work... now the janitor is going to be fired, because the janitor isn't adding value to the company anymore. It is frustrating to be sure, but if you want to actually show solidarity with workers in a capitalist system it involves realizing that the incentives are already screwed up.
I actually do, but the reasoning isn't because I am deluding myself into thinking I am being kind to the employees (it is because I am trying to be kind to the customers, by making the food cheaper). I realize you want to be nice to other people, but you should realize you are doing it wrong (or at least doing it to a different set of people than you intended)... as noted, I treat the janitors with respect and don't ignore them and even do things they ask me to do as I tend to know who they are in a way most people don't (partly as I tend to be the only person still hanging around in the middle of the night, but also because I don't have any issue talking to them as I don't do the bad thing the article is complaining about). I have even hired janitors for my spaces and I make sure to pay them well and treat them with respect. You aren't being kind to people when you pick up their job function... you just aren't.
Following the logic here and above, do you make sure to create very large and annoying to clean messes in office spaces / spaces were janitors will clean so that, by the nature of the work, pushes their employer to increase the pay for the job?
No, because 1) in cases where it is a building I am working in/for such a thing is likely to have direct and potentially significant negative blowback on me for increasing the company's costs; 2) in other places many people (I am guessing including yourself) are sufficiently privileged to not see the "us vs. the overlords" dynamic and so look at people who increase these sorts of costs with contempt; and 3) as noted elsewhere in this thread, helping the janitors isn't the only goal: keeping costs low for society IS valuable and so it can be perfectly rational to avoid creating messes you know someone else will have to clean in order to lower the costs on society to clean them... but only if you realize you are not doing this to be nice to the janitors.
Like, the issue I am having with this thread is that a ton of people who seem to have some concept of what the ethical thing to do here is--and I don't even necessarily disagree with the concluding actions!--but I don't think they actually have the perspective to realize that the reasons why those actions might or might not be ethical are completely different from what one might intuitively expect due to the incentive structure of working for a company under capitalism. And so then you are all taking this idea of that ethical conclusion and trying to make me feel shitty for how I treat the janitors somehow when the janitors are categorically not the people you are helping with your ethical outcomes :/. Yes: the result of this thought process applied en masse would be horribly inefficient and seemingly costly for a ton of people, but the janitors would call you a hero as they are paid by the hour.
My context: while I myself am yet another privileged software developer, I am also a strongly-left-leaning elected government official who often has deep heart to hearts with friends who are union organizers... people who fight daily on behalf of people in these situations, and it is when I channel them--not some heartless asshole who refuses to even look at janitors--that I feel most strongly about these issues. The idea that you are doing someone a favor by going out of your way to not help them in their personal life but to do part of their job is just such a strange thought process to me... I have houseless people in the area CONSTANTLY asking for work, and if there were tasks that needed to get done maybe we could hire them to the beautification program we're in charge of (which explicitly works with houseless employees); so sure: if you care about them, you might literally litter our streets with trash ;P.
The reason to maybe not cause messes (and I don't, because while I am not an asshole to the janitors I am not optimizing for them over everyone else) is not to be kind to these people in the way the person I replied to seems to think: it is because it is an inefficiency--a cost to the system as a whole--and that cost to the system will be born by someone else, whether it be tracked directly back to you or indirectly cause increased costs for food or other staples. The fewer people who work at supermarkets or restaurants, the cheaper food will be--your taxes are paying for our beautification program, so your taxes might be lower if there is less work to be done--but this comes at a disproportionate cost to the people who relied on those jobs, so don't think you are doing them the favor... if you were truly wanting to do them a favor, you would, in fact, do this awkward thing of trying to cause messes.
What I don't do, though: go out of my way to clean up messes caused by other people when I know someone else has a job to clean them. Example: I now no longer clean streets myself if I walk past a pile of trash... I pull out an app on my phone and take a photo of the trash so the aforementioned local beautification program sends a person out who is excited to be paid money and the program can show that it is being successful to the community and thereby people will be OK with the taxes being paid for it. The person who was sent out to pick up the trash gets to have the dignity of a job instead of me handing them money (which I also do!!! but they really hate taking the money from me like that, and it frankly isn't scalable or fairly allocated anyway). Meanwhile, I spend my time working on software or whatever I do which earns more money than this person was paid to pick up the trash in the same amount of time, which helps bring money into the area to pay for the local taxes. This is almost entirely a win/win/win.
Or you could actually try to help the janitor by NOT doing that so they still can get paid to do it. These are people who are often looking for hours and picking up multiple jobs and you seriously think you are helping them by doing literally any of their job for them? (FWIW, I also haven't ever experienced a janitor asking me to do this kind of stuff for them and I am actually the only person at the various buildings I work at who has bothered to talk to the janitors, because I actually try to treat them like humans who have needs.)
> Or you could actually try to help the janitor by NOT doing that so they still can get paid to do it.
Sounds to me like a very inefficient way of accomplishing tasks. Marginal cost of everyone doing their own simple task is less than the cost of employing a janitor. Furthering the logic, we should litter the place for more janitors to get employed.
I agree! But the person at the top of this thread wanted to help the janitor, and that's not what they are doing: they are, at best, helping the people who pay for the janitor, whether you want to model that as the company or the customers of the company. And that's a reasonable (or even "noble") thing to optimize for (though if you work at the company and are being paid to do something else with your time or mental effort you aren't helping the company either as you are just reassigning peoples' roles that were carefully chosen), but it simply isn't the same thing as helping the janitor, which is what everyone seems to think they are doing. You 100% shouldn't be an asshole to the janitor: they are people like you and you shouldn't avert your eyes or ignore their presence as if they are a pariah... but I think if you talk to them for a while you will realize more of them than you seem to think understand how this works as they are often a unionized position and their organizers are making sure everyone knows to keep work up and not tolerate their job being redistributed to others.
> Further, try to abide by their requests. If they want the trash can by the door to your office or cubicle on Thursday evening, move the damn trashcan to the door.
Better yet, take your damn trashcan out to the damn dumpster your own damn self.
Then we can save some damn money and fire the damn janitor.
> They have 100 to empty; it's a trivial task for you.
It's a trivial part of their job. They're getting paid for it.
In Japanese schools, the kids are the ones doing the cleaning. Not just taking out the trash, but cleaning the blackboards, mopping the floor, tidying up the desks, cleaning the bathrooms, etc.
The reasoning isn't to save money, however. It is precisely to teach them there's no such thing as work that is beneath them.
my granddad who was educated by Japanese says the crappiest stuff that made you clean like you meant it; don't read on if you don't want to be obsessed with cleaning stuff.
on how to leaving any space...
Even a bird will leave their nest in a tidy manner.
on how to clean...
treat the object you want to clean like it's your soul
> Even a bird will leave their nest in a tidy manner.
I love the Japanese ethos of Community (but don't always find myself in agreement with some of the other aphorisms, like "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.").
However, the person responsible for that gem has obviously never looked into a hawk's nest.
It's not all that different than going home and doing the cooking or the laundry. Surely you don't leave housework to your partner "because your time would be better spent elsewhere", right?
We don't think of brushing our teeth as "wading into the weeds", it's just an integral part of life for us. Cooking and laundry is (hopefully) just as much an integral part of life. Similarly, the Japanese famously don't have public trash bins everywhere and yet their streets are spotless because they consider public space cleanliness an integral part of life.
And one would hope that saying hi to people is an integral part of life too.
If I had the money I would pay for a cleaner in my house, for sure. I value cleanliness and relationships enough that of course I will do chores myself absent a cleaner, but I have no illusion that I am not trading my time and that my time would not be better spent doing other things.
> I have no illusion that I am not trading my time
I think that's kinda the point of the article. The people that ignore janitors surely are under no illusion that their time is better spent elsewhere than talking to cleaning staff. Rich parents in Dubai surely are under no illusion that it is better to hire full time nannies than to waste their time raising their own kids. The people in Wall-E surely are under no illusion that their time is better spent entertaining themselves than, well, anything.
But as the increasingly absurd examples hopefully illustrate, not everyone thinks the same way. For example, my wife firmly believes that food that is paid for is intrinsically inferior, because, all else being equal, it's not made with the same level of care as if it was made by family (and this in fact can be a particularly noticeable observation if you come from a culture that takes pride in elaborate cuisine)
We all have things that we believe implicitly are a waste of our time, perhaps because of our upbringing or some other reason, but I think the overarching message of the article is that there are some things in life that we should not be compromising on, even if we did have all the money in the world.
I went to an American private high school that also did this, although not everyone was thorough, so they had custodians clean every so often. In retrospect, it was kind of cool.
Trivialities in logistics and their impact on you as a person are two different things. If I added 500ms of latency to a keyboard (ssh, a bunch of VPNs, etc) I imagine a janitor would say ‘it’s a trivial part of your job, you’re getting paid for it.’ Yet that would cause many developers to pull their hair out.
It’s trivial to correct code formatting. You’re getting paid to code, presumably. What’s the better world: one in which your colleagues make a trivial effort to install a linter and make their code nicely formatted before handing it off, or one in which they don’t bother, say it’s trivial and part of your job for you to correct it, and then threaten to fire you?
I don't mind taking out the trash but I think we'll need to have a janitor on staff because at least a few (figurative) bad apples will neglect to take theirs out, and they'll throw away (literal) apples, which will go bad, and then we'll get flies.
Straw man? The example was moving the can near the door so the janitor could efficiently collect them, without for instance entering your office and perhaps upsetting cables, equipment etc.
Let's quit jumping to strawmen about doing the janitors job, shall we? It's just about being respectful of the guy in the job next to you.
The comment I was responding to suggested that people take out their own garbage and fire the janitor, that was the thought I was responding to. Perhaps that is the comment you meant to respond to?
I'm not sure if it is a strawman. They seem to be suggesting that going too farther in the direction of helping the janitor would remove the need for the janitor. To the extent that it is a strawman, I think they've even failed to beat up on their strawman, for the reason that I point out -- the janitor would still be necessary.
I try to avoid strangers. If I was a janitor I wouldn't want people bothering me, especially because they feel bad for me or they feel guilty.
You shouldn't be rude and I have no problem with and do nod/smile at cleaning/security/service staff but I am not good at smalltalk or whatever so I treat everyone the same and ignore people unless I know them and have something to talk about.
I really dislike insincere or forced displays of kindness although one should force themselves to be polite when appropriate if it doesn't come naturally.
Yep. I live in a city and see thousands of people every day. Just because I don't talk to or notice most of them doesn't mean a thing about their value as human beings. I was expecting this article to have some kind of lesson about how sometimes the people we look down on can surprise us, so we shouldn't be so quick to judge. But instead it was basically a condescending humble brag about being nice to people seen as lower than you.
The weird part for me is that people don't say good morning for instance. I can see small-talk not being appropriate in many situations, and it's just stealing peoples time. It's the lack of acknowledgement I find weird. As you say, just a smile and or nod, that's fine.
I'd have to force myself pretty hard to ignore anyone when coming into the office in the morning. It's not forced politeness or insincere, is it what you do. Then if people need to talk, and you have the time, which most of us honestly do, take a few minutes to listen. To me that's at absolute baseline for decent behavior.
This video is literal in a way. When I moved from a small town (1200 people, largest village in my county) to the city, people gave me really weird looks when I waved and said hi, when passing them in the street.
Definitely different. Had to get used to that fast.
I do not, I didn't mean out in the general public though. I was thinking more at work, in shops, getting on the bus, things like that. I can see the issue in large scale, no point in saying good morning to everyone you meet if you work in a New York skyscraper, that would take all day and be sort of weird.
I always greet the cleaning staff, janitor or similar. Might just be nod if they're wearing headphones, otherwise I'll say hi. I try to avoid smalltalk unless they initiate though.
Nothing forced though. I greet my colleagues, they provide a valuable service, so they're equal in that regard.
I use grammarly to avoid citations from the grammar police like this for professional writing but not for HN. You understood what I meant so since this is a comments section keep the policing and unsolicited advice to oneself.
It seems to be a result of they as a gender neutral singular pronoun. Which has a long history. Here oneself also works, perhaps even is more correct, but with the increased prominence of them as a singular pronoun, I can see why people write it like this.
Grammar purists consider “correct” to be an absolute non-gradable adjective, I believe - though colloquially have at it and do whatever suits your written voice. I only mentioned it in contrast to the insistence that, er, one should use one rather than them - which to my written voice is a tad too formal.
Do people here from outside the US think this is the case everywhere? Because I'm from Latin America (more specifically Brazil) and I don't think ignoring the lower paid staff is the status quo. Actually it is considered pretty rude not to at least acknowledge them and say the usual pleasantries (Good Morning, Hey Jon!, etc...).
Having been to the US I'd say I don't think that is a fact everywhere also. In NYC for sure, as people are more transactional with each other, or SV where people are awfully superficial/shallow. But I've been to cities where people are much warmer (from the top of my head, San Diego).
One step further I'd recommend you to do is to sometimes move past from the "automatic pleasantries". For example, when the cashier at the fast food asks you "hello, how are you sir", instead of answering "fine, thanks, I want...." go for "I'm good Jennifer, and you? How are you doing today?". My experience is that this always get people off guard and has a very positive impact of them, as bring them back to a more human (and less transactional) aspect of the interaction.
Very much agreed ... was raised in a mixed Southern and Spanish household and think this topic is saying a lot more about certain people and casual apathy towards their own fellow people than they probably would like. The line that I was told was to always treat the CEO and the janitor the same (with the understood: because they're humans).
Funnily enough, my Colombian grandfather had a memorable related quip as far as not idolizing others to the other extreme, roughly translated to: "they shit in the pot the same way you do."
I grew up in a middle class blue-collar household and I was taught to treat service folks well; I try to do so today.
That said, in Minnesota where I reside, acknowledging and talking to strangers is generally seen as something you do not do socially. For recent transplants I am sure it's alienating and uncomfortable; however, that's just the culture here.
Is...being decent to everyone regardless of job status in life a new thing? Has tech come so far that we have to re-teach ourselves the basics and then brag about how we smile at "service staff"?
Up next in a techbro blog post: "I have discovered that money doesn't buy happiness, and that being an asshole isn't a good thing."
I think there is just a high correlation between people for whom this "tip" isn't painfully obvious and people who think their thoughts are so valuable that they belong in a substack.
You have to be nice to the little people that read substacks; they after-all are people too, not as smart, sucessful, attractive and knowledgeable as ones self, but still deserving of a lesson or two in life to help them.
as a tech guy who comes from a family of blue collar and service industry workers I always have to laugh a little bit about pieces like this. It always reads like someone just went on a safari and found an exotic animal or found themselves in Good Will Hunting. Like, more than half of the population doesn't have a college degree. Store clerk, janitor, delivery driver etc are the most common jobs around, I always wonder how people manage to dodge all of them.
That said I don't think the piece is that bad because the author at least genuinely seems to try and to be kind, there are quite a few people in the industry who are genuinely callous.
It’s not exactly limited to tech but is more general to knowledge workers. Especially ones who employ support staff even at their homes. Over time they get so far removed from doing household chores that they begin to treat it as beneath them and hence the staff as unworthy of their respect.
I’m saying this being from a nation where employing household cooks, maids etc is norm once a certain income threshold is crossed, and where owing to really high inequities human labor is extremely low cost.
It’s hard to talk to people who make 10x less than you and live in a HCOL city without making somebody feel like shit. Janitors have terrible lives and I’m sure both of us would rather not discuss it.
"Janitors have terrible lives and I’m sure both of us would rather not discuss it."
There are so many articles shared here on developer depression, burn out and so on. Maybe you should try speaking with some actual janitors, some of them do quite ok. Maybe some are actually happy, because now they have a job to support their family and are not on the run anymore.
Or they did not bind their happines to their bank account and find meaning elsewhere. Or maybe they rather do cleaning, than feeling proud to know how to game SEO and flood the world with shitty adds or alike.
They can’t afford families because they can barely afford to rent a room in a basement an hour from the office. Sometimes they share a bedroom so they can send some money back to a developing country I guess?
If they were born early enough to be home owners then they probably increase their net worth by more than me every year and it makes me feel like shit for losing the real estate lottery
This can also be something of a trap. For some time now I have worked as a housecleaner and there is a common scenario that I have learned to avoid: Clients are friendly and ask how you are. Cleaners then answer honestly about how this is an opportunity for them and hard physical work is all between them and crushing poverty. Clients are generally unprepared for the extreme problems that people living as cleaners may face, so the conversation tend to end roughly with clients wishing they had stuck to basic politeness instead of daring genuine inquisitiveness. As a result, when I train people to work with me as cleaners I specifically recommend that they be polite and conversational, but focus as much as possible on the task and the client. The reality is that most clients of cleaners tend to be genuinely disturbed by how cleaners live in this society and the challenges they face, so it is better to gloss over all of that.
When, and this is not a hypothetical, I'm getting to know someone socially, and they open up about the crushing difficulty of paying the bills with unskilled labor, I respond... like you'd expect a decent human being to respond. One who has been through periods of grinding poverty with no safety net, and escaped it through luck more than anything else.
If I've hired someone to clean my house? Personally, I pay what a cleaner asks. I'd like us both to leave feeling at least ok: I have a clean house, they have money.
If, and I do, I say "hey how's it going?" and I got a response which was about the emotional difficulty of earning a living, I would feel pretty uncomfortable, since I'm engaged, in real time, in exchanging money for services with this person. I'd wonder if I should be paying more, if I didn't tip enough last time. It's emotionally manipulative in context.
I've gotten some insight into the lives of the three-person team who does clean my house, without them souring our professional relationship like this. Saying something open-ended like "times are tough, you know?" is plenty to open the door without, and I'm going to quote here:
> Cleaners then answer honestly about how this is an opportunity for them and hard physical work is all between them and crushing poverty.
Making the person who hired you uncomfortable about the contract you both entered into willingly, and with awareness of the broader economic circumstances and labor relationships involved.
> Making the person who hired you uncomfortable about the contract you both *entered into willingly*
Emphasis mine. If hard physical work is all that's between them and crushing poverty, as the OP said, there's some question of how far you can extend the notion of "willingness".
Unpopular opinion: complaining about life circumstances isn't polite conversation with an acquaintance, especially a client. Your interlocutor will feel put upon, that if they don't engage sympathetically and try to help they will be seen as unfeeling or cruel. They may wonder if they are being emotionally manipulated.
Have had people do that to me when I'm buying from them, and first time it felt awkward. Typically, that's the last time I do business with them as well.
2001, I owed someone some money from a business transaction. They'd dragged their feet for weeks getting this done, and we'd already missed an initial deadline. She then sent me an invoice the instant I said "yeah, looks OK", and I got half a dozen calls and emails that afternoon demanding payment then. "Fedex a check". "I need this now". "I have to get my car repaired". The amount was just under $5k. Left a horrible bad taste in my mouth, and I never used that person again. I also told the person who'd connected us who was suitably... taken aback at how aggressive that pestering was, and subsequently they didn't do any more business either.
I've been able to sense it ahead of times sometimes, and in other cases, I've gotten better at ignoring what I take as attempted manipulation. It's also made me perhaps a bit more (over?)sensitive to how what I'm saying to someone might be taken (or twisted).
> Clients are friendly and ask how you are. Cleaners then answer honestly
This is not unique to interactions between the well off and not well off. It's true that in most case, when people ask "how are you", they're not looking for a detailed answer. It's a pleasantry, and the expected answer are of a more general form ("ok", "great", "not great, but getting by", "not a great day", etc).
As a side note, I have a cleaning lady and have gone through a number of them over the years. Some of them we've been friendly with (we knew the names of her kids and asked about them, etc), some we were only passing acquainted with (friendly, but in the general way above). It can vary a lot depending on the people involved.
Usually when someone has some trouble, if you can help you do your part, and the trouble isn't your fault.
But when the issue is wealth inequality, the wealthier person can help, but doesn't want to, out of selfish greed, and is on the "team" that is at fault. The wealthy person is either wracked with guilt (and a hypocrite for not acting) or is an entitled jerk.
Unless the employer are paying the cleaner a good wage (almost never happens), there is direct responsibility.
> Usually when someone has some trouble, if you can help you do your part, and the trouble isn't your fault.
There will always be someone that you can help. And there will always be another charity that wants your money. In many of those cases, the person or charity is a worthy cause. But you cannot help all of them, so you must decide which ones are important the most important to _you_ to help. When you turn away a charity because you've already decided to give to different ones, that doesn't mean you think the charity is unworthy, nor does it mean that you're a bad person for not giving to _that_ charity;
Because god knows the rich folks can't have their delicate psyche disturbed by the intrusion of reality. Yes, I know you have a business to run. I also know that if people are allowed to isolate themselves from uncomfortable realities, those realities are likely to continue.
This is overly condescending of rich folks. The "I wasn't looking for a real, detailed answer to _how are you_" is a common thing in the US. It's a pleasantry, and (for people you aren't close to), most people don't expect a detailed answer. It is in NO way unique to rich, poor, or any other segment of society in the US.
Some people have thin skin and sometimes its tiring to work around it. I wish i could be more open about my "this and that is in shambles but i'll have managed it next week" without people getting uncomfortable.
It's more than that. The reality is what what the rich person is doing is wrong (taking advantage of people's desperation, as an opportunity to underpay for labor), but they can't handle facing it.
I'm currently arranging for a cleaning company to come in and scrub my mothers house down and I'll also be paying them what they ask.
In addition, I've been paying the same husband and wife to clean my house for something like 5 years now. How did I find them? I paid a company for a cleaning then offered the woman who showed up to cut said company out. They make more, I pay less.
5 years later and I've been completely happy with the arrangement, but I recently moved so will have to find someone else.
---
I pay what I'm charged. If you want to blame someone for these workers not being paid enough, blame the companies employing them.
I believe a lot of people have a cordial/friendly relationship with their cleaner. I know my cleaner's wife and kids, have helped one of their kids get into coding and them to get access to training (bus-driving school, which they completed, then went back to cleaning because they didn't like the rude commuters).
When I replace an appliance, my kid outgrows his cloths or I replace a laptop they've got second picks (after family) on hand-me-downs.
It's also worth mentioning cleaners make a pretty decent wage here ($20+) and don't live in abject poverty.
It's certainly not a glamorous life (and one some family members worked at at different points in their life) and it's hard work with few options for internal promotion - but it's not that soul-crushing for everyone.
I think a part of it is that good cleaners are in very high demand here and I have an incentive to have a good relationship with them because it helps a lot in getting them to clean my house the way I like and for us to work around their holidays/time off and vice versa.
It's also important to be nice to the cleaner since things become simpler logistically once you trust them with your house key and money to purchase cleaning supplies.
same here. I recently moved but until that happened I had used the same husband and wife couple for something like 5 years. The husband is a bit of a handyman so they've picked up other work from me as well (fixing privacy fence, replacing things around the house, working on my car, and so forth).
I've had them call me up because they were stuck in town due to a car breakdown and what not, and I've happily given them rides to places.
Thing is, they both used to be into drugs, and they both got clean. My impression of them (especially the wife) is that they're hard working, honest people and I wish them the best in life. They're about 4 years from outright owning their house and I'm happy for them. They recently ran into car trouble and I've asked my brother to see if he can find something in their price range (strange as it sounds, his hobby is finding cheap vehicles and getting decent use out of them).
At the end of the day we're all just people trying to get through life. I'm not trying to take advantage or cause harm and I trust they're not trying to take advantage or cause harm. We have our life circumstances and for this moment we're here, together. That sounds a bit like the temporary friend thing from fight club, but in some ways I think it's true.
No, it is important. One of the more common scenarios that comes up is the flash of genuine fear clients get when they are informed this cleaning job was the only opportunity the cleaner was able to find after getting out of prison. What should be about them happily receiving service at a reasonable rate turns to dark doubts and a sharply increased rate of not being invited back which is a problem because being invited back and recommended by delighted clients is at the core of success for cleaners who endure.
Got to be satire when mentioning janitors. Can't find a worker to respect more than the janitor. A recurrent character of downfall into hell writings. Satire as well here: https://bit.ly/3KO3e5C
PSA for the younger reader and / or parents: Try being the janitor.
I was effectively the janitor for a public ice arena outside Detroit from the age of 14 to 16. I cleaned public restrooms, as well as hockey locker rooms. I emptied large trash bins (thankfully before recycling was mainstream). I cleaned below the bleachers. That was probably the worst. But, if I may say, that experience helped mold me, for the better. People were rude to me, but it wasn’t quite as consistently bad as I might have thought. Perhaps it was my age that softened the treatment and showed slightly more humanity. In any case, I wear the experience as a proud badge of honor (as if you can’t tell). And yes, just be nice.
Over in Japan, it's quite common in schools for the students to clean the classrooms, club rooms, hallways, and occasionally also the restrooms themselves. The schools mandate it as part of the curriculum, since it teaches vital life skills and builds character.
The schools have janitors on their payroll, of course.
The secondary school I went to in Germany made students clean and rake the outside areas. Though with a class of around twenty it never took longer than an hour.
I never inquired why we did it, not expecting a straight answer anyways. I suspect it had more to do with discouraging littering than any deeper character lesson.
Of maybe it was a normal job which you were respecting to its true value? Being treated as a human being sometimes feel uplifting compared to other experiences.
I hired an intern (in France it’s a two-year contract for 20-year-olds where I pay their study and they get shit pay). One the first two days, she worked 6.45 hours (contract is 7hrs).
It’s her first job in an office (has once worked as a vendor) and I’m tempted to terminate her. She has learnt less at school than I thought. Maybe she’s young. I thought when you really wanted a job your worked 8hrs the first day, just in case. I can’t tell her that, because as an employer it’s forbidden in France. If I fire her, she’ll have to find a new employer before the beginning of the classes, which is impossible, so she would have to only start school next year.
But I fully expect that the reason she hasn’t learnt enough at school (like, not learnt Ctrl+Z, or using Caps Locks for a single uppercase, I mean common you’re a digital native, I’m not, I was expecting her to do most of our marketing), is the same why she worked 6.45.
I’m also upset that you can pass Baccalauréat and license degree and not master basic typing.
It was more of the opportunity I got. I've been told it's a high prestige job, and I've learned enough to start my own company. It's also the highest paid $/hr in my field.
My father was an elementary school janitor, so I have a different perspective than some. Something I've repeated often: "My dad worked for a living. I just play with computers."
Of course, in most offices in my part of the country, and I suspect in many other areas, is that the janitors are often Hispanic, with language being a common barrier. I wouldn't want to speculation about their immigration status, but knowing the economics here, I wouldn't be surprised either way. Unfortunately, it works out to be a de facto caste system, with the respect dynamic that accompanies.
> Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. (...) -- Ingersoll
There's a difference between knowing and understanding and the older I get the more I understand just how true this is.
I would also add the cliche that with power comes responsibilities and most people don't respect that responsibility. Mistakes happen and obliviousness is a thing (communication is never perfect), but I've been shocked by how cavalierly some people will wield power that has real effects on other human beings many times in the past.
I also had it wrong, and thought it came from Lincoln originally.
Per Reuters Fact Check team:
> Misattributed. There is no evidence Lincoln ever made such a statement about testing a man’s character. The author appears to be Robert G. Ingersoll, who used this phrase to describe the 16th president of the United States on several occasions in the 1890s [1].
When I was single and dating, I found a high correlation between how a dating partner treated service workers (including waiters) and how nice/desirable a partner they were. Garbage people tend to treat service workers as their personal servants, to bully and abuse.
When I was at the Cambridge office of Google, I liked to work until late. When the lights went out and the open space went quiet, finally I could get in the flow.
The cleaners were coming in after dinner. Many of them were Latin Americans, so I could engage in simple conversations to keep my Spanish fresh. A man from the Dominican Republic told me that previously he was a "periodista", a journalist, but his education wasn't applicable in the United States because he barely spoke English.
English literacy can be a huge economic advantage even in non-English speaking countries. My doctor in Tokyo could make a higher salary than ordinary Japanese doctors with the same qualifications, simply for working in an international clinic. Same goes for teachers in international schools. Many multinational companies which require English in their branch offices will pay higher than average salaries for engineers, sales and management.
For some people just being proficient and comfortable in the local language can be a huge advantage. But it can be very hard to get any kind of real world experience, especially in countries with a high proficiency in English.
Just like you I often stay late in the office to get into the zone, and I became friends with one of the janitors. We even started going to the gym together. I met his family. In just half a year his Norwegian improved so much that we went from trying to make conversations to actually discussing things. Then covid happened and everyones lives got turned upside down.
My first "real" job out of high school was working in a factory as a machine operator. There are two things that I remember hearing at some point that have always stuck with me:
1. It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice.
2. Never forget where you came from, because you might end up back there someday.
I've cleaned change rooms at an outdoor swimming pool. Things I'm glad I can say I've done, and probably helped on the way to dealing with the parenting of babies, but would be happy to never have to face again.
Well, I prefer that people ignore me when I work in service roles. There's no better way to observe people in their natural habitat. I once drove Uber and Lyft for a couple of years and was fascinated by what I learned by people who thought they were confessing to an uneducated driver. Why do this? Well maybe you're writing a book or working on a PhD thesis.
In addition to janitors & wait staff: you can chat with the homeless people, too. You don't have to ask them about "their situation" or offer to help them. Weather, sports, the traffic... just treat them like a person who's not invisible.
Before anyone jumps up & objects: yes, there are a lot of homeless who don't want to talk to you, or who are downright dangerous. You can avoid those.
How do you pick out someone as being homeless? I'm in the UK and (accepting in the US it may be different?) there is a common misconception that people who sit in shop doorways begging for money are 'homeless' people when, in fact, they are usually just people who have a drug habit they need to continually finance.
The real homeless people are doing their best to blend into the background and not to look homeless.
I cannot stand it when people ignore (or even worse, are hostile to) custodial staff.
If anyone ever thinks taking out the trash is an unimportant job, try living without rubbish collection for a week. Suddenly it will become very important!
Show some appreciation for these people doing a very laborious and repetitive job for minimal pay, often outside regular business hours, and so probably cuts into their family time.
My mom was a night guard, then a janitor for many years. I tagged along to some places she worked. I got to play and hang out after hours in the interesting buildings. But yeah, we were "invisible" so to speak. People were often impolite and rude to us because they saw us as beneath them. I always make a point smile and greet the janitors and other service workers I encounter, partly because I know what it feels like to be "invisible".
I often work till the very late evening, which gives me a chance to meet most of the custodial staff. Some of them have very good, eye-opening stories, showing me how lucky I am in life (and I am making waaaay below what I perceive HN folks to earn). It is also a good opportunity to practice foreign languages and to try some foods I haven't eaten before. (I sometimes bring some homemade food for folks who take care of the office and they sometimes reciprocate, even though I do my best to make it clear that they don't have to.)
I would highly recommend trying to get to know the "janitors!"
Okay, some people apparently need a reminder to be nice and friendly with other people. Great. But maybe not very interesting.
Here's something I find more interesting: software consultant/pioneer Gerald Weinberg (I think!) said that if you want to find out what's wrong in an organisation, don't talk to the people who work there – talk to the janitors, landlords, etc.
These people may not understand a single thing about the work that goes on, but they deal with the physical artifacts that enable the work, and the physical artifacts always tell a story.
My grandfather was a public school janitor after he moved from the farm to the big city for a better opportunity to feed and raise his kids. There were more than a dozen of them so steady work was important.
He cleaned the school and in the process set his kids up to be responsible adults. My grandmother used her sewing skills to become seamstress for the wealthiest families in the city too. Neither of my grandparents ever got rich in their new work but they did survive and set their kids up for success.
He had a mischievous twinkle in his eye and he loved telling stories. With a steady supply of grandkids from all his children he never lacked for an audience.
Feels like this quote fits perfectly into this context:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
(Attributed to Maya Angelou)
It's one of those things so obvious once you know. Not like I was anywhere near a total jerk beforehand, but it changed how I approached lots of different interactions.
As someone who worked as a high school kid for several weeks wiping the streets, I think post is complete bs.
At first, when I enrolled into this job 7 to 3, to keep a designated govt area clean, I was fascinated with the fact I clock at 3 PM. This gig was to earn extra $$ for my upcoming trip.
First day was entertaining as I do believe making things clean and in order is rewarding. But after a week of shoving the broom, I understood a few concepts: no matter how hard you fight the dust, sand, leaves on the street — next day will bring you the same. On top of it, humans litter. And they litter a lot. On top of it, the area had a pond. And we used to get a boat with the old-timer working there in his retirement and fish out plastic bags, glass bottles from the bottom of the pond. It was disgusting at what people do to the nature at this leisure area they have...
The only thing this job taught me is to throw the garbage into a bin, and if I miss — pick it up and put it back myself. And the next second thing, is that this job teaches you to be humble and disciplined. As it reduces your potential to one of the most primitive functions a human being can perform for money.
Given this, the condescending tone that is deemed as nice by the small-talk initiator — is plain hypocrisy to make him feel like a good person and show off with the blog post we have right now.
some custodians like to shoot the shit. others do not. same with lobby staff.
when they do i've found that it's worth listening, they sometimes have very interesting things to say.
same used to go for nyc cab drivers, although it's a bit different in the uber era. i have a book sitting on my shelf that was written (and self promoted) by a cab driver.
Very true. Everyone at the very least deserves a basic greeting and acknowledgement, but it's unrealistic to expect anyone on the job to socialize at length.
Especially if that person was just berated or humiliated by someone "important" on a power trip, extremely stressed by the job, or is preoccupied with personal issues that you have no idea about.
I've been in that position before.
I think privilieged people that don't have the same kind of stressors in their life that working class people frequently have, can then scoff when that person doesn't have the time or energy for a conversation, as if they expect those beneath them to entertain them with conversation in addition to their job duties.
It's surprising how much taking 5 seconds to say "Hi, how's it going" can improve any interaction.
I talk to the janitor daily. He used to be a schoolteacher and mainly took the job for health insurance benefits. Folks often look down on this type of workers. I quite often find genuine human beings in them, they don’t have to pretend at all…
If I am a janitor i REALLY don't want the rich guy bugging me in an office setting. That interaction has a high chance of getting me fired/in trouble, either via me making a wrong comment (or even the right comment but not the right degree of enthusiasm) or me getting slowed down in my work because the rich person wants to chit chat with the plebes. One of the few benefits of janitorial work is the fact that you can just do your job and not play fake nice all day.
If we are talking about personal home cleaning, the personal interactions are more important and would be welcome because building those personal relationships is very important to maintain clients.
I feel like trading spaces every month or so with a different employee for a brief period of time would be a really, really positive exercise. If you could arrange it so you can mitigate business disruptions while people fumble around (maybe do whatever is typically done with new hires), I have a feeling the mutual appreciation for what other people contribute would lead to better cooperation.
I know there are lots of TV shows and movies about this, so it’s not a novel idea or anything, and I understand the potential for it to backfire, but I can’t overstate the cooperative benefits of gratitude if you really understand and appreciate what it is everyone is contributing.
Yeah, there are almost too many reality shows like that, really.
I wouldn't make it a "trading places" thing. I'd like to see a full semester of retail work and a full semester of food service work be a requirement to get a bachelor's degree. I've done both, and for far longer than a semester each. One thing it taught me was to never get angry at someone who's trying to help me.
I don't get why a lot of people here are trying to rationalize why it's ok to ignore service workers...
You are not requested to engage in small talk every time that isn't OP point. Also while I usually say hello to every worker with whom I have eye contact, I obviously don't interrupt busy people.
The point is that some office workers avoid eye contact with janitors and they shouldn't.
As my former boss used to say a good recruitment process start by asking receptionist if the candidate treated them well.
Without service workers our work conditions could literally turn into a pile of shit and they deserve utter respect.
There are few cats I've met that tolerate being ignored, they just escalate their activities until there's a choice between 'give attention to cat' and 'buy new carpet / furniture / bedding / clothes'.
(coming from me though, who can't ignore the big, scruffy -to put it mildly - neighbourhood stray tom cat that comes to visit a few days per year for the last six or seven years)
If you claim to have a secure working environment, I'm not looking for an unsecured VPN, or an unpatched SSH server, I'm asking who cleans up. The two correct answers are:
* Nobody, that's why this place looks like a fucking wreck.
* We all take turns, I hate it.
If you have cleaners, there is no way that's not a security risk. Firstly you probably pay a contractor, which means you're not even interviewing or vetting these staff. The contractor will say they do that, but they're actually picking up as many illiterate immigrants as they can who'll take less than minimum wage and be happy nobody checked their documentation, because they keep the profits. Even if the management doesn't do that, their people on the ground do. Secondly, even if you hire these staff yourself, realistically your standards are poor and turnover is high. Nobody has "Clean up other people's trash" as their career goal except in some vague "Fix the Pacific garbage island" elevator pitch sense.
So either way if I want access to your "secure" environment I just have to pretend to need the work and ignore all the red flags to get a cleaning job. And then, as the article implies, I become invisible. A guy in a Ninja outfit roaming the offices late at night is a call to the cops. But put them in overalls and give them a black plastic sack now they're a cleaner, carry on. What's in the sack? It's just garbage of course. Well, OK it's the 23-25 financial strategy, a copy of our internal price list and six unlabelled USB drives that used to be on people's desks. No problem, the black sack covers many sins.
Vetted custodial staff with security clearances exist! As far as custodial pay goes, having a TS/SCI is probably going to put you in the top tier, it pays to stay out of trouble sometimes.
The security risk is a good reason to follow the advice of the article though - know your people. Also, badging and physical security.
Our custodial staff come into secure facilities to clean—they just need to be escorted by a person who does have an active security clearance. We have a duty roster that everybody rotates through in the office space for both lockup and escorting custodial staff.
It's only a security risk if you don't mitigate it through physical security policies.
One thing is not to be an asshole and respect people, but other is that janitors seem to not understand that when people who sit in the office after hours probably are doing unpaid overtime (in some companies you can at least take those hours back) and would prefer to finish their tasks as fast as possible and go home.
I used to work 9 to 5 (sometimes 9 to 8) and sure, I can greet the janitor, have some small talk, but I dont have the time to listen to their life story. And some janitors really liked to talk a lot, while I just wanted to finish my job and go home. (If they started at 6pm they were fresh at the beginning of their shift, while I should have already left 1 hour earlier).
So I understand why my colleagues (especially ones who had kids) ignored the janitors. If you leave 15 minutes earlier, you have 15 more minutes for your kid. If you are late the kid will be asleep.
And yes I talked with janitors, but I remember that one lady who thought that everyone can talk with her for 30 minutes at 7pm and just wouldnt take a clue to move on.
She didnt understand that the team was stuck at work after hours to finish something important, it was an abnormal situation.
There is a famous photograph from the White House of Obama stopping to fist bump a janitor with a mop. It would be a great illustration for this blog post.
Justice Thomas is also well-known for knowing everyone's names.
> He knows the janitors, cafeteria workers, everyone. He knows their names, the names of their family members, where they're in school, and he is viewed by the law clerks of all the justices as the most accessible of the court's members.
I recently witnessed a customer treating a food server at a small Chinese restaurant quite badly. It was a very upsetting because she is such a sweet woman who really takes her job seriously.
Next time she was at our table I commented to her that people who treat her like garbage are simply showing their inner self, which is in fact garbage.
Indeed you can learn a lot about a person by how they treat people who are in their service.
I always try to talk to everyone but I'm not sure its the right thing to do. The guy who talks the most is a manager who is worth tens of millions but talks and laughs with the Janitor, its nice but you know he'll never get invited around for dinner which makes it a bit fake to me.
I’ve always made a point of not just being respectful, but of actively cultivating relationships, with “lower-echelon” folks.
There’s personal reasons for this, which aren’t really relevant (for example, I am mostly self-taught, and have been treated like crap for most of my life by those with formal schooling), but I’ve often found these folks to be interesting, appreciative of the respect, great sources of information (when you are invisible, people say stuff around you), and, quite often, able to be very helpful.
At my previous company, I made friends with the service techs, down in the basement. They provided my department with thousands of dollars worth of utility kit (like cables and batteries), and often fixed my stuff, very quickly.
This isn't about janitors or even service workers.
It's about ignoring the humanity around us.
Yes, we're all tasked at work, and have limited bandwidth and interest.
But still: prioritizing kindness make the world a better place for everyone, because it's a way of shouting quietly: I am not a tool, and neither are you.
This applies to how developers treat QA, or marketers treat developers, leads and newbies, etc. Because that's where it seems my task involves getting you to deliver.
Instead, help others feel respected, and want to do their job, instead of having to do their job. Don't be surprised if they don't: it's their choice.
I'm reasonably friendly with office cleaners at buildings where I have clients/etc (it's a way to practice my Spanish, plus I'm often there at odd hours, and it's a good way to evaluate some security threats.). Still, it's usually contracted out to outside companies, etc. (Same with security guards)
Actual janitors/facility maintenance people, on the other hand, are usually super interesting to talk to about maintenance/infrastructure issues, potential efficiency or other upgrades, etc.
These type of articles are always cringy. Essentially:
"low social IQ tech type discovers other people, suggests we talk to humans since they seem to like it".
You should certainly be nice to the janitor: They are not part of office politics and so can afford to just interact naturally and decently.
Conversely, people are careful to stay on guard to threats and opportunities in interpersonal power-games, and so when they see the janitor, the fact that politics does not apply makes them relax and behave naturally: This is either rudely or nicely, depending on the individual's character.
Call it professional deformation, but I came into this expecting an article on the sneaky ways in which automatic janitor services can mess up a digital system. I cannot count on two hands the number of times the culprit of mysteriously disappearing records/files turned out to be an overzealous janitor service. I will try to be nicer to them next time.
I used to be a janitor. I preferred if you people ignored me. I don't want to have to tiptoe around not offending the sensibilities of people I have little to nothing in common with. If I wanted to interact with you people I could have made the same money operating a cash register instead of a mop.
How about something much simpler, throw your used paper towels INTO the garbage can in the bathroom. I am amazed by the number of supposed professionals that leave them on the counter or just on the floor. It boggles my mind how hard this is for some people.
When I read articles like these I get a feeling that there's a whole other society out there with very different customs than the ones I'm familiar with.
There are bubbles, I get it. But how prevalent is this?
This is the kind of content that could've been at LinkedIn for /r/LinkedInLunatics to drool over. The only thing that's missing is the vertical line spacing.
Why is this on top of HN? "Mind blown, I just learned about the concept of treating people nicely regardless of their job"?
I don't know; the article is hardly self-aggrandizing (which is the primary attribute I see on /r/LinkedInLunatics), and certainly some of us could appreciate the reminder, myself included. Do we really have to be all intellectual, all the time on HN?
I agree, treat OP nicely. Also, I'll use this opportunity to quote the great philosopher Scooter "It's nice to be important, but it is more important to be nice!"
I ignore the janitor because of the obvious wealth disparity between us. He works just as hard as me but is doing a job nobody likes and is paid less for it.
It's completely unfair. And when I just see the janitor it's all I think about.
This article is like, be nice to the people you step on. Yeah. I don't disagree with that sentiment.
That seems like a rationalization to me, and one that doesn’t actually make anyone’s life better. Inequality is a fact of life. You both work hard, but you could do his job and he couldn’t do yours. He almost certainly knows that and has come to terms with it. You don’t interact with him because acknowledging the disparity causes you discomfort embarrassment. But doing that doesn’t make his life any better.
And, of course, people aren’t just their jobs. Maybe you like the same sports team. Maybe he likes to talk about his kids. Who knows?
No that’s ridiculous. I don’t want to do that job and I wouldn’t choose it but I absolutely can do it. I cleaned my own house just fine for 20 years before I hired someone else to do it for me.
If you think you’re stepping on the janitor, maybe you should stop.
It’s a job, not a caste. When you apply to work somewhere as a janitor you expect to work as a janitor. Don’t pity people doing a job that pays less, you have no idea what their story is or why they’re doing what they’re doing.
And if you think you aren’t adding to collective wealth and making salaries go further and further than they have before by growing the pie, maybe you should switch jobs and find one that keeps that pie growing.
>I'm saying everyone including you participates in this fake BS. As if being nice to the janitor solves the fundamental problem. It just covers it up.
Are you're saying that unless other folks make as much money as you do, they should not be treated with simple human respect, because doing so points up the inequality in our society?
Wow.
Being kind to the folks around you has nothing to do with wealth/income inequality or other issues in our society.
Rather, it's about our shared humanity.
What's more, being kind (or at least polite) is the least you could do. If you're not willing to do so unless that other person has something you want, what does that say about you?
I'm not telling you what to do, think or say, but I hope i never meet you.
>Are you're saying that unless other folks make as much money as you do, they should not be treated with simple human respect, because doing so points up the inequality in our society?
Are you putting words in my mouth?
Wow.
Being kind to folks is basic knowledge. Everyone knows it. The article is obvious. It's not telling anyone anything new. Why was such an obvious article written? For what purpose. Certainly not to teach engineers to be nice to poor people. That's obvious... no need to teach them.
It was written to make you feel better about yourself and your relative position to the people you step on everyday when they clean your toilet because you can't clean it yourself.
>I'm not telling you what to do, think or say, but I hope i never meet you.
How ironic. Being kind is basic knowledge. Yet you say something like this while purporting to be kind... even though it's quite obvious we are unlikely to ever meet. Why waste energy to say something we both know? Why did you say something so obvious?
You said it to be mean. While pretending not to be mean. Why? Because it makes you feel better.
>>Are you're saying that unless other folks make as much money as you do, they should not be treated with simple human respect, because doing so points up the inequality in our society?
>Are you putting words in my mouth?
No. Note the question mark at the end of the sentence. That means (as apparently you are unaware) it's a question, not a statement.
That was the impression I got from your comment. Apparently, I misunderstood your point (and if so, I'm not sure what your point was. Perhaps you could elucidate?). My apologies.
>Being kind to folks is basic knowledge. Everyone knows it. The article is obvious. It's not telling anyone anything new. Why was such an obvious article written? For what purpose. Certainly not to teach engineers to be nice to poor people. That's obvious... no need to teach them.
It should be basic, but it isn't. And more's the pity.
I didn't read (nor do I intend to) the article.
I have no idea why an article I didn't write (or read, for that matter) was written. Perhaps that's something you might ask the author.
>It was written to make you feel better about yourself and your relative position to the people you step on everyday when they clean your toilet because you can't clean it yourself.
If you say so. But as I didn't read the article, it doesn't make me feel anything.
I'd add that I'm kind and polite to people not because they have something I want, but because I respect other humans and myself.
>>I'm not telling you what to do, think or say, but I hope i never meet you.
>How ironic. Being kind is basic knowledge. Yet you say something like this while purporting to be kind... even though it's quite obvious we are unlikely to ever meet. Why waste energy to say something we both know? Why did you say something so obvious?
Because your comment appeared to not only demean those who clean up after you, but also to beat up on others because you think that being kind to such folks isn't sincere.
It's been my experience (I'm more than half a century old) that when folks ascribe motivations to other people, that reflects the motivations of the speaker rather than the recipient.
As such, I can only assume that you feel that way. I don't want to interact with folks like that. Hence my statement.
I didn't say that to be mean, as I have no interest or stake in your personal emotional state.
Rather, I said it because I don't want to be around folks who present themselves as the only arbiters of other peoples' motivations and feelings.
>You said it to be mean. While pretending not to be mean. Why? Because it makes you feel better.
Your assertion doesn't make it true. I don't need to make others feel bad (or have others make me feel good) to feel good about myself.
I try to live my life as a decent, kind person. I don't always succeed, but I do my best. And that's enough for me.
Do you clean someone else's mess? Are you wiping up someone else's shit? It's a demeaning job. There is clearly a difference. I think you're sort of trying to dance around it.
I see what you're saying and I'm half way there with you.
The important things are:
a) don't ignore (just in the same way you won't ignore any other person, it's not a status thing, just a human thing)
b) don't patronize - the comments in this thread and the general "be nice to poor people" has a feel good condescension written all over it, which you're rightly calling out. But it is possible (and baseline important) to be respectful to anyone and not be condescending.
you have a point. I guess I'm more referring to the tendency and desire to ignore them. I'm embarrassed about my position, but I and most people won't ignore them as that's against common human decency.
Feel good condescension is exactly my point. It's the perfect phrase to illustrate what I'm trying to say. Thanks.
If you step back and look at what you wrote, you’re saying you believe wealth disparity is awkward, and that you find it less awkward to ignore a person.
The person you choose to ignore might not agree with you on either of those points, but you don’t let yourself find that out because you won’t talk to them. It might do you good to second guess yourself now and then, in order to escape these local minima.
> This article is like, be nice to the people you step on.
The first step is to not step on those people. Simple things matter, like following simple requests (e.g. the placing the trash can next to the door mentioned in another thread). Attitude matters too. There is a reason why some places call janitors caretakers: they are there to maintain the physical spaces people work in, not to clean up people's messes.
I'm saying every engineer is stepping on him by virtue of being paid 10x more. We all step on him but NONE of us acknowledge it. We're all posers, pretending that being nice to him makes any difference.
Janitors realize that the people they work around have no control over what they earn in the vast majority of cases. What people do have control over is their behaviour towards janitors, whether their direct interactions are respectful and whether they make the job of those tasked to cleaning up easier or more difficult.
Being nice also makes a difference in the sense that being nice makes a difference when you are working with your colleagues. Having healthy attitudes towards each other reduces stress and remove roadblocks to getting work done.
You can control it. Give him part of your salary, instead of throwing him useless smiles and acknowledgment.
Saying you can't control it is a lie you tell yourself to feel better. You obviously can control part of it. We all can. But why don't I give him my salary? Because I care more about my salary then his suffering. Same with you.
About your flagged child comment: you are stating as fact you know how others think - you are wrong and even worse, you are rude. Are you assuming that others think like you do? Take care: I think your attitude is likely to result in strongly negative effects in your life.
You may find this post by someone who spent most of his life poor then became reasonably well-off enlightening, specifically his comments about how he was historically confused by the rich people in his life avoiding the topic of money:
I'm not insulting the janitor. I'm insulting myself. And you. And everyone else who works at the company who steps on him. I'm saying, that a "hi" and a smile is utter bullshit. We all know we're stepping on him and a "hi" and a "smile" is opium to make us feel better about ourselves.
I think ignoring someone because you're embarrassed by them is only marginally better than ignoring someone because you think you're better than them. A smile and a nod are free.
Marginally. And obvious. We don't need an article to tell us the basics about how to be decent people. The article wasn't written to tell engineers obvious things that we all already know and likely do.
It was written to make us feel better about ourselves. "Be nice to poor people" is a better title for this article.
Even the few janitors that speak English are both rushed to complete their tasks in the insufficient allotted time and almost terrified to talk to the normal employees, presumably due to the perceived power balance - were an employee to complain about them, the vendor would almost certainly fire them rather than risk offending the client. It's not fair, but it is reality, and it means that even when I do say hello or hold a door or whatever I don't get a response.