Dirty Jobs

Working behind the scenes, hundreds of people on campus and across Mount Pleasant labor unthanked and unnoticed. They clean up the messes in restaurants, classrooms and at bars before most of us even realize there has been a problem. 

When it comes to dirty jobs, there is none more challenging than cleaning up the carnage left by the post-bar customers of Dog Central. Although she never has to deal with the customers themselves, Kinde junior Ashly Bambach is all too familiar with the mess they can leave behind.

“On bigger weekends when there are (football) games, there’ll sometimes times be puke or poop all over the toilets and bathroom that I’ll have to clean up,” she said. “We’re open until 3 a.m., so we’ll get a decent amount of drunk people coming in.”

Bambach began working at Dog Central earlier this year after filling in for a friend. She loves working nights at the restaurant because of the relaxed hours.

Most nights, Bambach only has to work two hours. The only stipulation of the job is that she has to have the entire place cleaned by 9:30 a.m. Other than that, she can choose what time she wants to come in to work.

“I don’t know exactly why I like working at Dog Central, I just do,” she said. “I love it more than any other job I’ve ever had. It’s just very easy-going because I get to work at my own pace.”

Between taking out the trash, sweeping and mopping the floors, wiping down the counters, cleaning the bathroom and washing the windows, Bambach’s two hours are jam-packed. She comes in every day of the week except Sunday, when the restaurant is closed.

“It would be nice to work with other people, but it really only takes me about two hours to get everything done,” she said.

While stressful moments are few and far between while working at Dog Central, the worst moment on the job, she recalled, came the Saturday morning of Homecoming Weekend.

“There was one instance during Homecoming, the Saturday morning before the game, where I had to clean puke out of the sink from the night before where there were (whole) hot dog chunks still in it,” Bambach said. “It couldn’t go down the sink, so I had to fish it out of the drain with my hands.”

To Glorify God and Waiting for his First Bar Fight

Puking students, drunks or fistfights can’t stop him from doing what he loves.

Bellevue senior Evan Bloch said a big reason he became a bouncer was to meet people. But an even bigger reason, he said, to bounce at the Blue Gator Sports Pub and Grill is to honor and glorify God.

“That’s weird when I first say that because I know bouncing is a job you wouldn’t typically think of when talking about God. I think that’s part of the beauty of it,” he said. “It’s not where a lot of people go to (talk about religion), and I think bringing that aspect (of God) to (the Blue Gator) is a good thing. I’ve had a lot of fruitful conversations with anyone who comes up to me to talk.”

Bloch was hired as a bouncer at Blue Gator after a friend employed at the club called him up one night and said the bar was short staffed. It only took one night on the job and he was hooked.

“Being able to provide that safe and secure environment for Encore or Blue Gator is something that just naturally sort of fulfills me,” Block said. “I really appreciate and enjoy what I do.”

Bellevue senior Evan Bloch stands in Encore Nightclub connected to the Blue Gator on Oct. 16. Bloch works as a bouncer at the nightclub. (Monica Bradburn | Assistant Photo Editor)

A normal night on the job could lead Bloch to be poised at any position within the bar: The door, the desk, the floor or even in the men’s bathroom.

“The weekend before Homecoming, we had a customer come into the bathroom of all things and start ripping down some of the stalls,” he said. “Apparently he said he wanted to take some of the stall doors home.”

Most nights aren’t usually as exciting as that one, Bloch said, with bouncers doing “rounds” of the club to make sure customers are behaving themselves.

“Typically, I just do a lot of passive security and make sure everything is OK and running smoothly, customers are having a good time and feel safe and secure,” he said. “If things get out of line, other bouncers and I will come over the radio headset and we’ll see to a situation from there.”

Bloch said the worst time for fights and drunken altercations typically comes around Homecoming and Western Weekend. He recounted one incident, just prior to this year’s Homecoming, in which a drunken patron was kicked out of Blue Gator twice before trying to start a fight with the bouncers.

“One dude somehow got back in and had flopped himself down on the dance floor on his back like a starfish. He was trying to grab other customers (by the ankles) to stay in the club,” Bloch said. “He started kicking some of the guys who were trying to escort him out. We eventually did get him out but he still tried to come back in again.”

Bloch knocked on the wood tabletop he was sitting at when he said he’s never been in a fight while on the job, though, he feels like it comes with the territory.

“It’s bound to happen in that line of work, but I’m almost weirdly looking forward to it,” he said.

He called the idea of breaking up a fight “thrilling.” What he doesn’t view as thrilling, is the after hours clean up. The Gator closes at 2 a.m., and Bloch said he cleans well into the night, sometimes not leaving work until 3:30 or 4 a.m.

“We have a little Zamboni we run around the club, we mop the floors, just typical end of the night wipe down things,” Bloch said. “I’m not too big of a fan of the cleaning but other than that I really, thoroughly love my job. It’s just tedious at the end of the night when everyone is tired.”

Pride in Their Work

Not once during a 36-hour shift, in which she developed blisters so severe she was forced to clean the floor in her socks, did Mindy Kinkead ever consider quitting her job as a custodial staff member at Central Michigan University.

“That’s just the kind of person I am,” she said. “I don’t like to leave jobs half finished.”

Kinkead has worked as a custodian for 20 years, the last eight of which at CMU. She came to the university  after serving as a custodian at Gratiot Medical Center where she prepped operating rooms for surgeries and trauma patient care, like treating victims of car crashes.

She decided to make the change, she said, when the oldest of her four sons became eligible to go to college. As an employee of the university, Kinkead receives an employee tuition discount. This means most full-time employees receive 12 free credit hours per semester that can be used by them and their direct family members. 

“(Custodians) could have better pay, but a job is a job and you take what you can get,” Kinkead said. “The free education for my kids is worth more than the extra pay. I would rather my kids have a future than worry about a few extra bucks. “

Custodial staff member Mindy Kinkead puts a new trash bag into a trash can outside of a class room in Moore Hall on Oct. 15. Kinkead works the midnight shift and cleans all the classrooms on the first floor in Moore.  (Monica Bradburn | Assistant Photo Editor)

Kinkead works “strictly midnights,” throughout the school year and summer when she is able to.

“As a first floor custodian I’m extremely busy, especially when school’s back in session,” Kinkead said. “Between the man who fills the pop machines and drips pop up to down the floors and the amount of trash and garbage left on the floors, I’m constantly mopping where machines can’t fit into. When we get to the winter, the salt is even worse.”

Alongside Kikead on the night shift is Brenda Price. The two are a part of the small team of custodians who spend their nights cleaning Moore Hall.

Price, who has worked at CMU since 2011, said the worst part of the job isn’t cleaning bathrooms, but cleaning in the winters.

“We have so much salt that we have to deal with and there’s no controlling it," Price said. "There’s students coming in and out of the hall and they track salt everywhere constantly, so cleaning up is a lot of work.”

Spending much of her life cleaning hotels, nursing homes, private residences and now the university, Price said wherever she goes, the people she meets are the highlight of her day.

“I enjoy cleaning, but mostly I enjoy seeing and meeting different people. Here there’s the students; in the nursing home it was the older people,” Price said. “I enjoy the people I work with and the students I get to meet. We have some bad days, we have some good days but, you know, it comes with the job.”

Unlike Bambach and Bloch, Kinkead and Price say the worst part of the job isn’t the toilets or the trash – it’s watching some students not be thankful for the things the university gives them.

“Seeing students not respecting the new property they get, like the new desks with putting gum under the (seats and desktops) is disheartening,” Kinkead said. “They get brand new, nice things which CMU provides for you (students) and you repay them by gouging into the desktops and sticking your gum underneath them. I just hate seeing the destruction.”

It’s the students who make the job worthwhile, she said, even with the long hours and intensive nightly cleaning regiments. Kinkead said students are the janitorial staff’s “biggest supporters.”

“We get nothing but genuine respect from students. Our students are our best pat on the back to us,” Kinkead said. “We have students who come up to us and tell us that we do such a great job and that to us means a lot because you don’t get it so much from anyone else. But you know when it comes from the students that it’s genuine and comes from the heart. They mean it, and we take it with pride.”