Under-assistant prairie maintenance man

Subtitle

BEN POGGEMILLER, VOLUNTEER STAFF

ILLUSTRATION BILLY CHUNG

There are a lot of things that go on in office buildings that you probably don’t know about. People come streaming in to their jobs, taking for granted their water and precious air, and then leave. I’m sure they think that magic pixies filter the air and heat the water, but I have news for those people: the pixies had to be let go about 15 years ago since they were snorting pixie dust on the job; plus there was talk of unionizing.

I currently work for a commercial property management and investment company. This company replaced the pixies with the “boys in blue” who keep the buildings from collapsing in a heap of incompetence. I am not one of the boys in blue. Actually, I can wear whatever colours I want, but I normally stick to blue strictly out of allegiance to the maintenance guys. My job title could most readily be described as “helper monkey,” which is exactly what it sounds like. This is my second summer as a helper monkey, so I have earned respect and have become a grizzled veteran of sweeping up dust.

However, sometimes I undertake certain tasks that could vaguely be described as maintenance. If you’re an impressionable youngster looking for a career path, there are certain things you need to know to be a maintenance man.

The most important thing you need to be able to do to be a maintenance man is to swear at inanimate objects. I have a lot of experience with this one and it’s actually a lot harder than it looks. It usually comes as a result of hitting my head on something. Sometimes I’ll be in a large, noisy mechanical room with nobody around and I can let it fly. Other times I’ll be in a quiet hallway, surrounded by law offices, and I have to wince in silent, expletive agony for fear of getting my pants sued off.

Here is a simple guide for swearing at inanimate objects:

If you really want to go the extra mile, you’ll mutter something like, “Who put that there?” This doesn’t help much, though, since the effort of finding out that the man who installed that one damn pipe in mechanical room D by the parking doors was Jeff Grendel, 363 Waterview Lane, East St. Paul, MB, father of two, non-smoker, is wasted if I find out that he died in 1988, one year before the B-52s released their Cosmic Thing album. I guess never hearing the wonderful song called “Love Shack” is a far worse punishment than any I could inflict.

One thing not known by most prospective maintenance men is the frustration of removing and installing ceiling tiles in an old building. Sure, in your fancy new office buildings it might be a snap, but I can picture an old building designer somewhere talking to his grandkids:

Grandpa: Back in my day we built buildings that pissed people off. You just don’t get that anymore.

Grandkid: Tell us more, Grandpa.

Grandpa: Well, the trick was to make most of the ceiling tiles pretty easy to install so the guy replacing them would build up his confidence. Then you’d make sure there’d be one right between a pipe, a light fixture, a wall and a wire suspending the T-bar. That way, he’d have no room to work with and he’d spend hours on just that one tile! If you were really cruel you CATHCARTwould weld a metal swastika to all the pipes. Then when the guy hit his head on them all you would see is this cursing fellow with a swastika on his forehead.

Those were the days.

Trust me, though, the job is not all pain and swearing. Sometimes my lungs get clogged with dust; and the repeated cranial abuse may have left me with brain . . . something.