Frazz by Jef Mallett for July 03, 2015

Ha! Good one…..…

Maintenance Supervisor … Sanitation Engineer … don’t ever use the “J” word!

Recently asked my brother and sister-in-law how “Tom” (their son) was doing. They told me he got a new job at a local college doing “maintenance”. I thought that was odd as I knew he had probably never picked up a screwdriver in his life, much less any tool. Found out later he’s a janitor there.

Frazz, the irrepressible optimist!

Frazz enjoys his work.

.. meaning he’s got a lock on a municipal job that is over paid under worked and comes with an incredible pension plan.

Unfortunately the word “janitor” has become a derogatory word, even though the dictionary meaning “is a person employed as a caretaker of a building; a custodian.” Frazz is the building custodian, which has a more socially acceptable connotation.

Ewal Doh hit the nail on the head. We as a nation have millions of children who have been told a great lie. Get a college degree and you’ll live the good life. Unfortunately, most of them come out of college without any marketable skills and thousands in debt. We need plumbers, electricians, camera operators and yes, custodians. All honorable positions, and in many places quite well paid, just without the cachet of some other professions.

I was a janitor’s assistant in HS. Very useful when in the service, especially knowing how to run a buffer.

I like how Frazz emphasized the word “here”, implying that he really enjoys the opportunity to interact with the students and the other staff. He’d probably rather do this and make his janitor’s salary than be some high powered executive and make a CEO’s salary. The fact that his song writing pays well is just a perk.

….and then he was fifty; sixty; seventy. Oops!

“The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”John W. Gardner, former President of the Carnegie Corporation and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson.

The main thing I learned from all those years of college was how to learn, and the main skill was knowing the basics of everything. That, and six years exile in Canada, was how I survived the blacklist years. I could not only switch jobs, but switch fields of work.

You know what they say — if you’re having difficulty making ends meet, make one a vegetable!

comicsssfan: I came at it from a different approach, but then an uncle was the closest relative with a drinking problem. Alcoholism has a genetic factor – tendency, not absolute. All in my extended family were either teetotalers or alcoholics; I chose the former. The uncle? He died in an alcoholic stupor, not realizing that his cigarette had ignited the chair he was slumped in – or the eight-story hotel he was in as well.