I had a couple of girls, man, nearly crazy. One’s a bunny. But she said, “I have to face you every day and I don’t hold with making out in the building.” I betcha I could go back and I’d make out. She’s a very nice girl and everything.
Some people look down on us. A ditchdigger’s a respectable man. A gravedigger’s a respectable man. A garbage hauler, he’s a respectable man —if he does his job. Now they’re saying we’re making money. They read in the papers the janitors got a raise. Thank God for the Janitor’s Union.
We’re making a lot more money than in my dad’s time. Then they were living in basement apartments, where maybe a catch basin was in your kitchen. You live in a basement apartment, you start out when you’re a young fella, you live in the apartment twenty years and when you get older, you’re gonna feel it. Oh man, it’s just damp.
I live in a townhouse now. I’ve been at this since ’50, so I worked my bones around with the owners and got the okay for it, to live off the job. Actually, I live outside Chicago. I drive in in the morning.
I make a pretty good buck. I figure if I do my work and do it honestly I should be entitled to whatever I make. For high-rise buildings, head man makes a thousand dollars a month and his apartment. You never heard of that stuff before. I’ve turned down high rises by the dozens. I can make more money on the side on walkup buildings.
Most tenants, I get along with ‘em. The bad part about a tenant, they have no respect for your hours. Maybe my day starts when their day starts, but they want something done when they come home. My day is ending too. They’ll call up and some will be sarcastic about it. “You have to come here when I’m home.” That’s not true. They can leave me the key, so I can do it on my own time. Some people don’t trust you. If I’m gonna steal something, I’m not gonna steal from somebody I know, especially when they know I’m in there. If they can’t trust me, I don’t want to be around’em.
They come home maybe around seven and you’re sitting down to supper and they’ll call. “I got a stopped up toilet. It was stopped up yesterday.” I’ll say, “Why didn’t you call me? I could have had it fixed today while you were at work.” “Well, I didn’t have my key.” Sometimes you get in a mood and you say, “Suffer then.” (Laughs.) If I’m eating, I finish eating, then I go. But if it’s a broken pipe and it’s running into somebody else’s apartment, you get on your high horse and you’re over there right away.
Phone calls always go to your wife, and a lot of people are very rude. They figure your wife works. My wife is not on the payroll. They call her up and chew her out about something, “When will he get here?” She’s just there, she’s being nice enough to take my calls for me. A lot of the janitors now are getting machines to take their calls. They’ll call you up and the machine says, “Leave your message.” They’ll say something silly and hang up. They’ll see you on the street and tell you about it. They don’t like an answering service. They want to make contact right there.
My wife gets tired of the calls. It’s a pain in the neck. My mother lives with us since my dad passed away. She takes my calls for me. She’s used to it. She’s been doing it so long. She lets ‘em talk if they have a complaint. She just lets ’em talk. (Laughs.) Some of ‘em will demand. I just tell ’em, “I think you’re very unreasonable. I’ll see you in the morning.” If they keep arguing, I just politely say, “That’s it.” And I hang up on ’em.
You just don’t let it get the best of you. We’ve had janitors hang themselves. Since I’ve been out here, three hung themselves. They let it get the best of ’em. I asked this one guy, “Eddie, what on earth is wrong?”
He’s up there fixing lights in this high rise and he’s shaking all over. “These people are driving me crazy,” he says. I read about this guy, Red, he blowed his brains out. People drive ’em batty. They want this, they want that. You let it build up inside—the heck with it. You do the best you can. If they don’t like it . . .
You gotta watch. We have a business agent in the area and, oh man, there’s too many guys lookin’ for work. These people coming from Europe, Yugoslavs and Croatians. We’re talking about young guys, thirty years old, twenty-five. They’re nice guys. They talk broken, but you get to know ’em. They bowl with us and learn as quick as they can. A lot less young native-born are in it now. They’ll take a job like a helper until they can find something better. A helper makes $640 a month, five-day week.
Back in the forties a janitor was a sort of low-class job. Nobody wanted it. But during the Depression, janitors were working. They had a place to live and they had food on the table. It was steady work. They had a few clothes on their back. Other people didn’t.
Today a janitor is on the same level as the plant maintenance man. If I leave my work I would have no trouble walking into any plant and taking over as supervisor, maintenance electrical repair. I saw an ad the other day, it took my eye. They’re paying twelve thousand and travel. To me it would be very interesting and easy. But I couldn’t afford to take a salary of twelve thousand dollars. If I’m making more now, I want to better myself. My dad always said, “It’s not what you make, it’s what you save.” (Laughs.)
Most of ‘em will call me an engineer or they will kid me. ’Cause it’s on my coat. I wear regular uniform clothes. Gray trousers, blue. I have different colors. I have green, blue, gray. Shirt and trousers to match and a jacket, sort of ski-jacket-like, with an emblem on it. I try to keep clean because nobody wants somebody dirty around. I’m not a sweeper, I’m like a stationary engineer. I’ve been out with lawyers. It’s the way you conduct yourself. If you know nothing, keep your mouth shut. You learn a lot by keeping your mouth shut.
I got a boy married. I’m a grandfather. He’s twenty, going on twenty-one. He was an honor student in math. I wanted him to go to IIT.
27
He run off and got married. A kid’ll do what he wants to do. He hurt us real bad. He said, “Dad, why should I spend all your money and go to college. I can get a job driving a truck and make more money than a college graduate.” I said, “There’s two different kinds of work, though.”
So he’s working now as a janitor’s helper. In a couple of months, he’ll have a building himself and make eight hundred dollars a month and a free apartment. He’ll probably pick up another building on the side and make another two hundred. And this is just a start for the kid. But I wish he’d a went into engineering. I don’t know why, but I feel . . . (hesitates) . . . I believe in college. I didn’t get a chance to go and I believe in it. Even if he comes back to janitoring, he’s still got this in his head. College doesn’t hurt anybody. He’s saved me a lot of money and everything. He’ll do all right for himself, but . . .
A college man is underpaid today. We have a janitor, a kid that eats with us every morning. This guy has all kinds of degrees in electrical engineering. He can’t get a job. They want to pay him peanuts. He’s making more money now.
I carry on the side a criminal investigator’s badge. I can carry a gun whenever I want. I’m registered by the state, with the FBI and with the city police. You gotta be fingerprinted, you gotta be registered with Springfield. It’s marked right on the card, it’s volunteer.
I work for a detective agency because sometimes it’s pretty rough at night. We go down in holes, in basements. We stop a lot of burglaries, people robbing apartments. We can hold ‘em for the police. We arrest ’em and we hold ’em. I’ve worked with the FBI. Watch out for Weathermen and stuff like that in the neighborhood.
I’ve worked with two or three young FBI men, very intelligent men, very respectable men. I really admire ‘em and I love to help ’em. I’m all over the University of Chicago area, so I got it pretty well covered all around. They pass out pictures to watch for. You don’t have no authority, you just kind of see the area. This is for something like dope. We look through the garbage. They’ll tell you what to look for.
Like some of these political kids?
Yeah, in a way. But they never bothered me with that. It’s mostly like dope or something. They’re not talking about a little pot party. About somebody selling it. We had a girl living in one of these buildings, she made trips to Mexico. She was crippled, she was in a wheel chair. They believed she was bringing it back and forth. I don’t get involved because they don’t let me get involved.
You report to them now and then . . . ?
Oh, yeah.
Do a lot of janitors do this?
No, no, no.
Is it because you’re in a university area?
Well, yeah . . . (Quickly) They’re not interested in the kids. They’re interested in the guy bringing the stuff in. They might be watching him for a different reason altogether. There was a case where a kid didn’t report for draft. They didn’t want to arrest the kid or nothing. But they wanted to know where he was so . . .
All they told me is: “You know where he lives? Do you know where he moved?” So I tell them where they move. We saw him walking the street the other day and I called them and they said, “Find out where he moved.” That’s all. They don’t want to arrest the guy, but I guess they want to talk to him. Oh, I don’t know . . . what the hell, these draft dodgers.
The janitor knows more about the neighborhood than anybody, doesn’t he?
He can, if he wants to get nosy, yeah. I enjoy my work. You meet people, you’re out with the public. I have no boss standing over me. People call me Mr. Hoellen. Very respectable. If I’m a good friend, they say Eric. I’m proud of my job. I’ve made it what it is today. Up in the morning, get the work done, back home. Open the fires and close ’em. (Laughs.)
WATCHING
FRITZ RITTER
He’s the doorman at a huge apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “I would say about 180 apartments.” It has seen better days, though signs of its long-ago elegance are still discernible. High ceilings, marble pillars, expensive lobby. The walls could stand a paint job. The floor’s tile has had it; its patterns, hardly visible. We’re seated on a divan in the lobby. He wears his uniform. He is bareheaded and is smoking a cigarette.
The neighborhood’s not so good any more like it used to be. Used to be very nice, one of the best neighborhoods in the city—Nice restaurants, nice movies, and nice people. You know what I mean? I mean very high class. The times change and everything. You know what I mean? Sure. Don’t you think so? Sure. There’s still some good ones in this building, very nice ones. Mostly middle class, I would say. And some hippies too. But I think it will go down a little bit more. You know?
I watch who comes in, goes out. If I see a stranger, I stop him and find out where he’s going. We call upstairs, we have to announce him. In the nighttime now, twelve o’clock, you have the door locked. The old days, we had the doors open. I didn’t have to stop nobody. Then it was opened twenty-four hours a day.
I worked forty-one years in this building. I started ’31, ’32, something like that. I worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. From seven to seven, nights. There was no union then, no vacations, no nothing. Now we work five days and forty hours. That’s much better.
In them days, the doorman was . . . ohhh! You had to be dressed nice—white gloves and a stiff collar. And the white tie there, even like the waiters use, the head waiter. Nicer uniforms than this. In the summertime, gray uniform and white gloves, always gloves. You had to wear hats always. I had a problem one time with the boss. I didn’t want to wear a cap. I don’t know why. I always take it off. He comes by, I put it on. He goes away, I take it off. Off and on, off and on. But that’s the way it is.
If tenants came by, you had to stand up. If you were sitting down, you’d stand up. As a doorman then, you couldn’t sit like this. When I was first hired, I sat down with my legs crossed. The manager came over and he said, “No, sit down like this”—arms folded, legs stiff. If tenants came in, you had to stand up quick, stand there like a soldier. You only spoke when they spoke to you. Otherwise, don’t say nothin’.
It was real high class, yes. Nice rugs on the floor, nice furniture. Oh, they all had maids. No maid could come in the front. You had to go all in the service, oh yeah. They were working Monday, Tuesday. The service cars would be up and down, up and down. Today they come in the front. They don’t have many maids today like they had before.
When the house was high class, the tenants look down on me. When they used to see me on the street they’d make believe they didn’t know me. There was a restaurant in here. I used to go there once in a while, they’d make believe they didn’t see you. But it didn’t bother me. Because I don’t give a damn if they speak to me or not. Because I did my job a hundred percent. Even to this day, the old-timers, sometime they see you somewhere and they make believe you’re not there. It’s the truth. They think they’re better. Years ago, sure they did. They wouldn’t say nothin’. You couldn’t say boo.
One time I felt lousy, I had hay fever. I was on the elevator, I say, low, “Good morning” to the man. And he says to me, “Don’t you say good morning?” I say, “I
did
say good morning.” ‘Cause I had hay fever and I feel bad. He didn’t spoke to me no more and he cut me off for Christmas. But I didn’t care. It was about 1932, ’33. See how people are.
I had good times here, don’t get me wrong, very good times. Everyone dressed up, my dear man. They were dressed high as anything. There was movie stars living in this house. Sure. Singers, Metropolitan. Sure. Doctors, lawyers, bankers.
An elderly man walks by, erect, though with a slight touch of fatigue. He is carrying a doctor’s black bag. Fritz calls out, “Good morning.” The man nods, hardly looking our way. “He’s an old-timer. He’s been here thirty-five years, very nice man.”