My full time job over the last 3 years has been father to two amazing kids as well as their homeschooling educator, but because we live in the era of American Oligarchies, I do have to have a second job on the side. I love this job, but I don’t need to talk about this job because I am not my job and my job is not me and I’m done defining myself by what I do to pay the bills. It’s pretty dumb that most people here in America have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet, but instead of complaining I’ll try to change that and during that time enjoy my life in the in-between moments. That’s the key to life that I’ve found recently. I love it.

At this job we were doing our weekly clean. I love the weekly clean. One person sweeps and mop the wood floor. One person vacuums all of the carpets. Another person cleans the restrooms. No one whines about doing any of the jobs. They just get done and then once those jobs are done it usually means “time to go home”. I love that time. Don’t you? I think we all do because while work is part of life, we’re not here just to work.

The conversation then went to our manager. He doesn’t have to clean the toilets. I get it. He’s got a lot of other stuff that he needs to do. I’m glad he’s doing that because that keeps things going which means that I keep getting a weekly paycheck and I still get to go home to my family. We talked about how at a certain level of employment in most places you can get to the “well you don’t have to clean the toilets anymore” level. I think about that level a lot. As a former never-again Library Director, I got to the level. Once I was there, it felt nice for a moment but something always felt missing inside. It was the fact that I wasn’t cleaning toilets or doing the other daily tasks that I was used to doing in my other roles. Management typically doesn’t have to do those roles. I understand…you have to take care of other things. But there’s a lot of time to do things in this world, and I think we can all make the time to clean the toilet. Now I’m not saying that my current manager should clean the toilet….I really don’t care what others do. What I am thinking about here and what I am trying to say is that I think we all need to work to change the MINDSET in this world that once you get to a place or a level that you get to stop doing the things that contribute to the better of the world. Cleaning the toilets matters. Basic customer service matters. We all need to be a part of this for it to work, so we should all be cleaning toilets. No more hieraracy. No more power trips. Just a bunch of humans living together, respecting each other, and everyone pitching in on the basic stuff.

We need to be more together than we are right now. This is a step towards that. Thank you for listening.