Packing in a car and driving 12 hours sounds like a good idea, right? I might try to catch Crazy Aunt Purl on her book tour there, seeing as it’s 13 minutes from my mother’s new house…we’ll see how that goes.

See y’all later!

I fear I may have inadvertently started a feud amongst the janitors. Or maybe not started it, per se, but fanned* the flames.

Back at the peak of heat season in August, when the air-conditioning in our building broke down and the vents were actually blowing HOT air, we purchased one of those cheap Hawaiian Breeze box spring fans. A little over a week later, I went to put my lunch in our conference room, and noticed that the fan was no longer there. I began questioning the staff (basically, my boss and my co-worker Helen), and neither of them had seen it. My suspicions immediately lighted on the Economics GTAs in the office next door, but I couldn’t very well barge into their office and look for the fan. So I took the route of asking the custodians.

Now our previous custodian, Liza, was always very friendly and helpful; she held our filing cabinets in safe keeping when they were delivered to the wrong office, and she always chatted with us. She helped clean our conference room for one of our functions, and my boss was so impressed he wrote her a recommendation. Less than a month later, her supervisors transferred her to another station (ironically due to that recommendation; my boss is still slightly bitter).

Since then the other janitors in the building have been taking care of us, and though they’re nice in their own right, they’re just not quite the same. Take Maude, for instance, an elderly woman whose blend of thick Southern accent and poor dental hygiene makes it difficult for me to understand what she’s saying. After I returned from Europe last spring, she and Liza were asking me about the trip. Upon hearing that I’d gone to Germany, Maude shared a story with us which was more or less incomprehensible: something about how she used to work for a German lady. This next part I really, really hope I misheard; she talked about how the German woman had been victimized - by greedy Jews (!), back during the war. “Ohh, she was the nicest lady, I tell you, I felt so sorry for her.” Then something about someone taking all of the woman’s jewels? At that point I simply nodded my head and excused myself. Maybe she just got it backwards and the woman was Jewish, victimized by the Nazis? Maude also has a “grandbaby” in her care, and it took me months to figure out that the “grandbaby” was in high school.

Then there’s a rail-thin guy, Jonah, who doesn’t say much but collects boxes from our recycling pile every now and then for shipping (he apparently sells things on Ebay to supplement his income). The foil to Jonah is Betty, a, well, voluminous woman whom I haven’t interacted with much, as she does not work on our floor.

Back to the fan - I saw Maude in the hallway and asked her if she happened to see a brand new fan show up one of the nearby offices. Immediately her eyes widened, and I rushed to say: “I’m not accusing anyone of taking it, just wanting to see if you’d noticed anything.” She mumbled at me that she’d investigate the situation right away, and get back to me.

I didn’t think much of it until Jonah popped his head in. “I hear you’re missing a fan? What did it look like?” I explained that it was a generic box fan, and showed him the packaging. “I have some fans that look just like that, but I bought them - got the receipts and everything.”

He then lowered his voice. “Just so you know, I was up on the sixth floor, and noticed that Betty got a fan recently that looks just like that. You might want to ask her about it.” He left, and I thought: uh oh. No way did I want to get into the middle of this. I left the matter alone, and a few days later, Maude came back with Betty in tow. Double uh-oh, they are friends - my (admittedly probably crazy) janitor and our potential thief!

“Did you hear any word about your fan?” asked Maude (in her odd mumble, of course). “No? We’ll keep a look out for it. You know, Jonah just got some new fans.”

Oh, boy. “I’m sure the fan will turn up,” I said noncommittally.

“Sorry to hear about your fan,” said Betty as the two exited. At that moment I regretted even mentioning the fan’s disappearance to anyone - it was a total of $11 anyways, and surely not worth the ensuing drama.

No more was mentioned about that fan until today, when Jonah popped his head in again, interrupting me busy at work knitting and accumulating friends for my cat on social networking sites**. He mentioned that some things had turned up missing from the custodial dens, and since one of our fans had turned up missing earlier, we might be a target.

An $11 fan is one thing, but our projectors and laptops are another! I’m fairly certain at this point that the custodians are suspicious of each other, and - I could be wrong - they appear to have divided themselves into different factions. I do remember overhearing Liza, before she left, talking with Maude about the “negative people” on our building’s janitorial crew. I’m really hoping it’s not an inside job, and hopefully the culprit can be apprehended without an all out custodial war***!

* - Pun may or may not be intentional.
** - Sigh. Only fifty more pounds and a Christmas sweater keeps me from being a walking stereotype of a secretary.
*** - Now that I think about it, a custodial war would actually be kind of cool. They could duel with broom handles and wear buckets for armor. An aggressor could bust out the floor waxer for heavy artillery. Plus, it would be the only battle that would leave the field cleaner than before!