On the Job
Oh, My Dear!
It was a dark and stormy night at the ever-daunting, Willow Hall. Drunken freshmen – and a handful of creepy upperclassmen trying to take advantage of aforementioned freshmen – were busy mulling about the grounds. Their inebriated stupors resulted in mischievous episodes not limited to sneaking beer past their RAs, writing inappropriate things on neighbor’s dry erase boards, dragging deer heads into elevators…
So the deer thing doesn’t exactly coincide with the other “mischievous episodes” mentioned, but it happened. Although Willow’s custodial staff has had their fair share of cleaning up everything from birdseed to inexperienced freshmen’s vomit, Rich Garrey’s scariest horror story includes a very dead deer.
“An average day [on the custodial staff] includes 49 to 50 custodians in the residence halls cleaning the bathrooms pretty thoroughly, each custodian being assigned three to four bathrooms,” Garrey, head supervisor Iowa State’s custodial staff, said. “Other than routine cleaning, we’ve had to clean up after some pretty gross things, but the deer head was probably up there with being the worst.
”Arriving at Willow’s fourth floor that night, Garrey saw that the head had already been removed by an unlucky student, and taken to the dumpster to join Bambi’s limbs. The custodial staff, however, was in charge of cleaning the blood and hair remnants that were embedded into the carpet and elevator crannies.
That night, the Iowa State custodial staff cleaned up after a juvenile student who thought it would be comical to bring a deer head into one of the frequently used elevators in a busy dorm. Keeping the residence halls clean is technically their job, but next time you get plastered and decide to pull a brainless prank, sober up a bit before you do it. Our campus custodians already clean up after plenty of our nights out, and disposing of dead animals doesn’t need to be added onto their already substantial to-do list.