During the last five minutes of our beloved lunch period, they roll garbage and recycle bins around the room, friendly grins on their faces, and stop at each individual table to dispose of our half-eaten sandwiches, slimy banana peels, and food-stained plastic bags. Every day the janitors are there, and every day they do this somewhat unpleasant duty with a surprising amount of positivity.

Last year, the cafeteria was consistently a messy disaster by the end of lunch – it was like a tidal wave of garbage had hit. Almost every table was left littered with food scraps and leftovers, and the floor with trampled waste. You had to consciously avoid stepping on trash and, frankly, it was a little disgusting. Half of the kids in the cafeteria abandoned their garbage in confidence that someone else would clean it up for them.

But this year when I leave the cafeteria, I’m impressed that it is left considerably cleaner than it was during the lunch time catastrophes of last year. Garbage is no longer strewn across the tables and the floor is nearly spotless.

I attribute this to janitors’ willingness to roll garbage bins around to every single table in the cafeteria and collect our trash, every single day. And as we file out of the cafeteria, I notice that those guys that make the rounds of the lunch tables are still cleaning up the messes we make, and I am always reminded that without them, our brand new cafeteria would not be nearly as tidy.

So thank you, janitors, for willingly taking the extra initiative to keep our new cafeteria clean.