Or Maybe He's A Time Traveler

I'm sure he's a good person.

I was once a janitor myself.

Also, I have lots of friends who are janitors.

Hopefully that gives me cover for the following.

The janitor who empties the trash cans on my floor is also supposed to clean the men's restrooms. For the last couple of years this responsibility has belonged to Jorge. There are roughly 600 -- mostly male -- employees on the floor so you can imagine that this is not a desirable job. However, I appreciate those who do it and always contribute to the holiday cash gift for Jorge. He gets ~$1000 in tax free cash from employees at the end of every year. I'm sure he struggles financially and the work must be terrible, so a little donation is about the least we can do.

To put my comments in context, it's worth pointing out that our restrooms have a history of being disgusting wastelands. While much of the blame certainly lies at the feet of the users, the janitorial staff was not cleaning these spaces with sufficient frequency. Apparently in an effort to combat this problem, facilities management put a cleaning record on the inside of each restroom door. The janitor is supposed to indicate when he cleans by noting the time he did so. This actually helped for a while. The restrooms were being cleaned four or five times a day, which made them mostly tolerable.

Sometime this spring, I happened to notice that Jorge had dutifully recorded his cleaning activities at 8:02 and 11:56. This was somewhat odd given that it was about 9am. Unfortunately, I sometimes get obsessed with minor issues that are out of my control, so I started casually keeping track. Over a period of a few months I determined that Jorge was cleaning mid-morning and mid-afternoon, but recording four cleanings per day. This really bothered me. Partly I disliked the lying. I work on Wall Street though, so I'm accustomed to that. Partly I disliked that the lying was probably so Jorge could nap in the big leather chair inside his janitor closet. I've seen him asleep during the day in that chair when female janitors have opened the closet as I happened to walk by. I like naps though, so that's probably just me being jealous. Mostly I disliked the fact that Jorge's lies made the restrooms even more foul than necessary. It also bothered me quite a bit that I was bothered.

A few weeks ago, Jorge was gone. The new janitor was actually cleaning the restrooms five or six times per day. Moreover, he was not recording any phantom restroom cleaning. I was happy. At first I thought maybe Jorge was sick or on vacation. Someone mentioned that he might have gone home for an extended visit. After three full weeks I assumed Jorge's reign of filthy restroom terror had come to an end. Maybe he was fired -- I started to feel a little bad for him and had some additional guilt over my concern for his inaccurate record keeping. Sadly I was wrong. Jorge returned and within a couple of days the facilities were as defiled as the timesheet.

Turns out Jorge was recovering from Lasik. He's not getting any money from me this year.

I Am A Town

Sitting on a plane delayed for four and a half hours is boring. The two positives were that I got a free bag of cashews, the kind I assume the cranky flight attendant was meant to sell for five dollars during flight, and the opportunity to overhear a conversation that made me think. As much as I enjoy thought provoking conversations, I didn't want to hear this one any more than I wanted a bag of cashews at 8:30am. I wanted to be in Chicago heading to my meeting. Since some combination of Midwestern weather and air traffic controllers conspired against me to make that impossible, I made the best of the situation. We were waiting (as opposed to flying, which is what I prefer to be doing while seated in aircraft) in a regional jet and I was two rows behind the conversants. Despite listening to music through earphones, it's hard not to hear when people are overly loud. At least the cashews were tasty.

Here's how the conversation proceeded: early middle-aged guy, clearly a frequent traveler, is chatting up the woman across the aisle from him. Guy is explaining his glamorous life as a private equity investor. Woman is an accountant and not really listening. He tells her about his family. No interest. Drops a few comments on recent events. Noncommittal replies. He asks where she lives. She's in Rye. He asks how she likes it. That does the trick - now she's involved. Woman launches into the familiar list of all the things wealthy people love about Westchester County and their own little corner of it. Guy responds by saying Westchester isn't his favorite place to live. He prefers San Francisco.

My outrage at this comment causes me to stop listening to their conversation and start thinking. How can this be? Does the cretin not understand that many of the country's finest schools are in Westchester? Has he not experienced the great dining, beach access, and incredible forested views? Is he somehow unaware that Manhattan is just minutes away and yet each village in Westchester is its own unique, quaint, small town? Once I get over my disbelief I write the guy off as loony. He's clearly been drinking despite the early hour. I turn up my music and resume deleting email.

Not until an hour or so later did I recall that for years I've told people I would love to live in California. Just days ago I said I'd work in San Francisco in a heartbeat if doing so didn't require me to wake up at 3:30am. And yet my first reaction to hearing someone express preference for the City by the Bay over Westchester County was to assume he was mentally incapacitated.

Am I a New Yorker? If so, when did I become one?