Martin Luther King Day

[H2O Man]

11. Even the supervisors

understood it when I put it that way. And, boy oh boy, it is the truth.

I remember that a co-worker told me that he had been slightly offended, when he heard my responses to the various supervisors' attempts to belittle and insult county workers. I didn't get upset and react to their attempts to bait me. Instead, I spoke about us as "social janitors," who were tasked with keeping our communities' appearance of "a nice place to live" up. Polite society doesn't want to hear about -- much less, actually see -- the problems we were supposed to clean up. The supervisors, I noted, were comfortable in slamming services such as mental health or alcohol-drug abuse services --until one of their family needed help. Then they were comfortable in demanding special treatment, such as immediate appointments, whereas the general public would be put on the waiting list.

About a year later, that co-worker brought the topic up again. At a staff meeting, he noted that we were treated like social janitors, and gave me credit for the saying.