the custodian princess diaries p.2

That first day by myself was really weird. I didn’t really know what to do. I had my pan and broom with me. I remember the first guests I helped out with. As I was walking up to Gorilla Falls, or Pangani, as all of the cast members would call it, I was stopped by this older couple heading towards the main part of Africa. “Where is the train??” They asked me. I stopped and said, “Hmm. I actually don’t know…” I pulled out a park map, and wondered what the heck they were talking about. I said to them, “You know what, why don’t you folks follow me and we’ll find it together?” They had told us in Custodial core that we could do this, so I thought why not? And there it was, two feet away from where we were standing. Rafikis Planet Watch train station. “I believe this is what you all are looking for?”

“Oh yes! Thank you so much!” They said, and they smiled and went on their way. I walked away feeling accomplished and happy that I was able to help someone, even in the smallest way possible. (I look back on this and kind of laugh. People would ask where the train was all the time… “It’s right behind you, sir.”)

As the weeks went on, I started feeling a little more comfortable in my role. The one thing I would never quite get used to was having to work in one single restroom for fourteen hours straight.

Yeah, you read that right. One female restrooms with (over?) 20 stalls for fourteen hours with like five breaks in between. Oh, and the best part about it was? It flooded. LIKE EVERYTIME YOU WORKED.

Harambe female, I’m looking at you. (We’ll get to Lion King restrooms later). If you got Harambe female all day, you better make sure you’ve got a working radio with a full battery and a whole lot of caffeine because if not you would be screwed the entire day. Also, you better hope and pray you had a partner because if not, you’re in there alone.

I should have quit, right? I should have packed up my bags and moved back to Kentucky. Who can stand being in one, very busy restroom for that long? I guess me, because I’m a crazy person. But honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Especially if you had Bill, Ben or Tristian (sometimes Joel would even stop by) who worked in the male restroom and a really cool partner named Molly, Annaliese, or Lori. AND it was the cherry on top of the ice cream when you had the best coordinator ever named Julz as custodial seventy (meaning she was working in Africa). Yeah… I miss them a lot. We would have storage closet parties and laugh way too hard when we heard stupid stuff on the radio, or that one time when Molly and I stole everything from Harambe closet. We would also make fun of guests or vent to each other when stupid stuff was happening in our restrooms. Because, yes. STUPID stuff happens in restrooms all the time. Like moms letting their four-year-old sons run around the nasty bathroom floors with NO SHOES ON. YOU ARE GROSS.

Now Lion King restrooms were a completely different story. If you got to work at 8 am and you’re clocking in knowing you have a restroom shift, you better hope you got to clock in first before anyone, because Lion King restrooms were the best restrooms on the face of the planet.

Okay, I’m just kidding. I can’t get too excited about a bathroom, but I can’t really help it. Those were the best and easiest shift days. You had three bathrooms to take care of, and while that sounds way harder than the one, it wasn’t. You had the regular Lion King restroom outside the show the Festival of the Lion King (FOLK), which only got busy after show dumps and after that crowd left, you had like thirty minutes to clean it and get it back to looking good. Then you had Tusker bathrooms, which was only five stalls and never really that busy (although it did flood, it was never as bad as Harambe). And then there was the green room. (I miss you, green room). The green room was located in the back of FOLK where the cast members got ready for the shows. There were a total of three stalls and two trash cans. That was it. It was freaking fantastic. Molly and I, towards the end of the program, would always clean it together. Why? Because there was never anyone in there at the end of the day and we could goof off as much as we wanted.

If there’s anything I need to tell you all about custodians in restrooms, it’s to be nice to them. Yeah, it’s their job to clean and I understand if you have a complaint about something. But when your bathroom is literally always jammed pack full of people and one stall looks like actual crap, please be forgiving. I can’t tell you how thankful I was when people would tell me I was doing a good job or that my restroom looked good. It really made my hard days so much better.