Sensitive Janitor

This was inspired by a job I had at the Taste of Chicago, working as a janitor there for the Nationwide Janitorial Corporation. The Taste ran from Friday, June 25 to Sunday, July 4. In Chicago time, I normally worked from 4 in the afternoon to 10 in the evening, although the latter days' schedules were a bit different. The final day, I worked from 12 noon to 6 in the evening.

What I had to do was basically replace filled trash and recycling bags with new, empty ones and take the filled bags to a pair of compactors (one for trash, the other for recyclables) after the large cart my partner and I carried with us was filled to the point we could fit no more bags in.

It was tough work and I got marred in many ways. The hot sun burned my arms, legs, and neck significantly. I also got some larges rashes on my legs from time to time. I even had the infamous jock itch my first couple days there. I will admit that I also had to face going home early a couple times for not doing my job right. Yeah, although I was doing my job, there were some parts that I didn't understand correctly. Fortunately, I stayed to honestly explain my cases and keep working for the rest of the day. I don't want to go into further details about them, so please don't ask me.

And yes, I even got sick on day 7 (July 1) and had to spend a while in the tent where we would sign in and sign out. I thought about coming home, but ultimately decided against it. I was able to spend the rest of the day working like crazy, believe it or not (my partner was incredibly amused by the burst of energy I had; to him, it was like Superman having thrown kryptonite away from him). That happened to be the first day I ended up working later than usual, getting out at 10:35 that night.

Despite all this work and suffering, it was worth me getting a paycheck worth $625.96.

Even before I was finished working at the taste, I was inspired to draw my Sonic fursona, Berlin "Billy" Hedgehog, carrying trash bags with a poor look on his face. As you may notice, his gym shoes are pretty dirty after having been to walk on the muddy grounds sometimes.