today at work

Today at work, my boss asked me to go find Eva, a chinese immigrant who used to be some sort of doctor before she emigrated. Many times I've seen her massaging people, or doing other official looking chinese medicine stuff- chi gong, reiki who knows. I'm not pretending to know anything about it, because I don't, but I can tell that it seems pretty legit. Now she cleans toilets. I know she's been here for at least 4 years, who can tell how long she's been here before that. It could be decades. I've come to find out that many of the immigrant janitorial staff have been here for 20-30 years. White people and the government love control and keeping people down, especially poor immigrants, but that's another story.

Well, today I had to go find Eva to let her know that the toilet on the 5th floor has been fixed by the maintenance department, so now she can go clean it. I found her on the 1st floor, and tried for the umpteenth time to explain something in english to her in very slowly, using simple words and phrases that almost anyone could understand.

Like always, she didn't understand anything I was saying. "Go togerer," she said about 5 times while I waited for her to finish cleaning the 1st floor bathroom. When I got the 5th floor, she finally understood what "the 5th floor bathroom is fixed, and you can clean it now," really meant. She opened up a toilet, which I assume was the one that used to be broken. There was a thick layer of shit all over it, inside and whatnot. It looked like someone's ass had exploded all over the place, basically. Green and brown mixed together to make a hodgepodge of delight for any scat queen.

Finally she understood what I was trying to tell her. "Oh thank you!" she exclaimed, her soft, confused, somewhat dead eyes finally lit up. "Thank you! Thank you!" she said smiling. Her geniuine happiness shined through like a 20 carart diamond in a pile of garbage.

I wish everyone would thank me for letting them clean up shit.