PART 1
…
In the offices and workrooms… it was different.
"Bob, I can't tell you how much we appreciate your hard work. Everything looks so nice when you're working."
"Bob, thank you for going through all the trouble of cleaning the conference room. It really needed to be vacuumed and dusted. Here, we had muffins and I saved you one- No, no, Bob. It's no trouble, take the muffin. It's my way of thanking you."
"Bob, you work hard, and you're good at your job. I'm glad we hired you."
Meanwhile, when Bob had to mop up spills in the hallways, he was completely ignored. And so were his wet floor signs. And hardworking Bob had to look on as students tracked dirty footprints through the newly cleaned floor, and then down the previously clean hallway. Yes, currently Bob was sitting on the steps at the end of one such hallway, hands clasped in his lap, waiting. He stared at his glistening floor, the perfection, the effort. And then he glanced over the wall, where the clock's second hand revolved endlessly towards the moment…
The bell rang. Bob shifted his gaze to view his perfect floor one last time, and then the doors opened. And the torrents of loud and dirty school children soon flooded the hallway, so that Bob couldn't even see the floor, or what the teens were doing to it. Not until the minute hand had shifted eight minutes along the clock's face, not until class was about to start again, did the floor clear, and Bob could view the ruin that lay before him.
Solemnly he stood, and went about re-mopping the floor, sliding the wet floor signs over the mopped parts as he redid everything. All over again. But then the chorus of teen voices rose from the depths of the hallway. Bob straightened, peered towards the sound, and his lips bent in a deep, resentful frown.
Male teens.
Jocks.
In a pack.
Being led by their coach. It was a visiting team and they had been using a nearby open field to stretch and do some mild running drills, while they waited for the Junior Varsity game to wrap up, so they could warm up properly at the courts. The coach had just received the call, and in order to save time, had made the executive decision… to take a short cut.
He was laughing with a few of his boys, leading the pack. Towards the back, though the coach was oblivious of it, Bob heard the boys discussing the female students they'd seen. "Only two of them were any good." "That blonde girl was so, wow." "Yeah." "Haha!"
They would have continued, but they noticed that their coach had stopped, and that the boys in front of them had fallen silent.
The away team's coach stared, perplexed by Bob who stood beside his wet floor sign. The sign, Bob, and the yellow mop bucket, plus the mop itself, seemed to be in the way. Glancing at the floor beneath these obstacles, the coach was well aware that it was wet, and could infer that Bob had just cleaned it. And it was obvious by Bob's stiff expression, that he did not want them to walk across his newly mopped floor.
Chuckling to thaw out the mood, the coach asked Bob, pleasantly, "Is it alright if we walk here? I hate to mess up your nice floor and all, but we have a game we need to get to…" With his smile fading, the coach stared dimly at the blue glove that pointed down the hall, in the direction they'd come from.
Unblinking, Bob explained, "Take the corridor you just passed, and make the first available left. That will take you outside, and go straight in order to reach the gym."
The coach's brow furrowed, and his temper flickered. Testosterone pumped through his 6'8" bulky retired athletic body, as his boys stood, watching him. As though he had some image to uphold, he strode forward, aiming to go around the mop bucket. But he had to stop and step back as Bob lightly pushed the bucket into the coach's path, using a squeaky shoe to do so. Now the coach glowered at the janitor, noting that this was the tallest janitor he'd ever met. A very well built janitor. But somewhat ugly to look at. His face at least. It set the coach's teeth on edge.
The coach was still several inches taller than this janitor who wore a name tag that labeled him as BOB, and this janitor, in his navy blue jumpsuit, stood with too much pomp for his station, severely lacking in authoritative powers. "Come on boys," the coach growled loudly, looking Bob dead in the eye. "Let's get going." En masse, they broke through the barricade, and someone pushed aside the yellow mop bucket that went gliding across the floor. It bumped and sloshed dirty water against the wall. The wet floor sign fell to the floor like a resounding gunshot that might start a war…
And Bob folded his arms, staring straight ahead at the empty hallway as he listened to the squeaky sneakers, full of dirt and grass, smudge his floor until they'd left an unsightly and unacceptable 'swamp' behind them.
Bob did not move. The sound of testosterone and laughter grew faint, and then disappeared. But only briefly. It was replaced by the sound of the coach and his boys trying to pushed open the doors, or unlock them. But they stuck fast, and the coach's voice boiled over. "What the hell is this crap?" He banged and shook on the door as some of the boys became a little meek, hoping he wouldn't decide to shatter the glass and force his way through. But thankfully the coach turned around and marched back towards the stairs, where he stopped, and gazed down upon the marred floor, where Bob stood currently facing him. Bob's arms were still crossed, and all he had done since the coach had last seen him was turn 180 degrees.
The coach attempted to stare Bob the janitor down, but Bob was unfazed.
So the basketball coach swung his arm back, nearly hitting one of his boys, as he angrily indicated the locked doors. "The doors are locked."
Bob didn't seem interested in this revelation.
"So go unlock them." The coach began to fume as Bob failed to show any sort of reaction, showing nothing at all. As though to insult the man.
Outraged by the prospect of this defeat in front of all his boys, the coach stormed down the steps, leading the boys over the floor that was now grey and flaked with blades of grass. "You ugly, goddamn, son-of-a-b*. Goddamn ugly bastard…" The string of curses continued, as the coach approached Bob, his fury searing into the indifferent janitor's face. "F*in' jacka-" he was hissing when he slammed his shoulder into Bob's, in order to throw the janitor off balance, to break his indifference and his resolute posture.
The boys looked on, slack-jawed, as their coach rebounded off of the janitor as though Bob were some sort of spring board. The coach stumbled over the dirty dampness beneath his shoes, yelled out something, slipped, and hit the floor. As he picked himself up, chest heaving, face red and eyes fiery, his shirt and cheek were smudged with the dirt he and his boys had tracked across Bob's floor.
The great janitor Bob gazed upon the fallen man as he rose, Bob's steadiness and his crossed arms, and his failure to move a single muscle in order to reduce the coach to this state of shame, claimed that this hallway, everything the water touched, was his kingdom. And all who trespassed were pitiful and helpless before the great Mop-Bucket-King.
But now the boys grabbed hold of their coach and struggled to pull him away. He'd shoved his red face into Bob's cold and stolid expression, seething and with his teeth barred – he looked like he was impersonating a certain Calculus teacher.
"Let go of me!" he yanked against the boys' grip, but they held fast, enduring the tearing of seams that was heard. And the coach turned again upon the janitor and spilled forth a deluge of foul language that was ten times dirtier than the janitor's marred floor. Bob considered forcing the spout of a gallon jug of Simple Green into the coach's mouth, and making him drink it all. And if he threw up any of it, he'd just have to drink that as well…
The moment received a bucket load of reality that was turned over the coach's head, when a student supposedly going to use the restroom, but who had been texting furiously as he walked along and well beyond the bathrooms, shouted in disbelief. "Whoa! What's wrong with you guys?" But of course he'd asked this as he was lowering his camera phone.
"Jesus Christ!" the camera-phone-holding student yelped when the towering basketball coach snarled in his direction. The gruff man shrugged off his boys and marched down the hall. He turned into another corridor, took the first left available, and finally led his boys to the gym.
Over an hour later, and only 20 minutes in, the referee dismissed the coach from the game. He sat on the bench beside a tub of Gatorade, red faced, furious, while the assistant coach and the team captain took charge, and the coach damned the janitor named Bob.