Out Of The Fire And Into The Frying Pan

Perhaps you remember the fireworks and streamers and marching band and cupcakes the citizens of Hillmomba, and more specifically the employees of Newmentia, celebrated with when Cus moved on. Don’t you worry about Cus! That was Cus’s request.

So Newmentia has been hosting a revolving carousel (as opposed to a stationary or linear carousel) of evening shift cleansers. No, they are not sneaking in with a briefcase containing bottles of milk in order to dispose of Newmentia’s excess muffin stumps. They are simply here to give the facility a spit-and-polish shine from day to day. Apparently the powers that be are in the midst of talks to find a permanent replacement.

Far be it from Mrs. Hillbilly Mom to dare inquire at the lunch table anymore, what with the condescending brow-beat-down she received from her fellow faculty the last time she asked if she was supposed to walk through piles of trash as high as an elephant’s eye until the replacement was found. Okay. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. But still, when the wastebasket is still overflowing on Monday morning the same as it was on Friday afternoon, there’s a problem. There’s not even room to deposit an allegedly dead snake/lizard/salamander/newt before it skitters under the door of the adjacent storage room. A problem that is not at all problematic to those who have their own private cleanser at the other end of the building.

This morning I entered my classroom to find that I have been plucked from the fire and deposited smack-dab in the middle of the frying pan. My wastebasket was not overflowing. In fact, it was sitting there with a clean black trash bag lining its gaping maw, eagerly awaiting refuse. However…on top of the two student desks that reside in the corner, on top of one stack of today’s assignment, was a black trash bag of indeterminate shape. Kind of like an opaque, tar-colored jellyfish.

Yes. The wastebasket had been emptied, but the contents were left on top of my assignments. Hmpf! I grabbed that half-full sack and beat feet toot sweet down the hall to the cafeteria, where I deposited my yesterday’s trash. I suppose that falls into the gray area of the contract where we are expected to perform “other duties as needed.”

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom does not ask for much. Okay. She does. But in this instance, she does not need her microwave scrubbed, her mini-fridge cleaned, the ball-of-snakes wire nest next to her command center heaved to and fro for table dusting, her laptop keyboard wiped, or her whiteboard whitened. Nope. All Mrs. Hillbilly Mom needs is her floor swept and her wastebasket emptied.

Now I must further elaborate that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom needs the detritus from her wastebasket actually removed from the classroom once the wastebasket is emptied.

That is all.