A Few Moments Out of My Workday

Here I am; as is my custom, once again killing time before a visit to the fitness center. I am at this second thinking about my workplace and a few moments out of the day. When I arrived at work at around 8AM, the first coworker I saw was the custodian, an older black woman dressed in a light brown uniform shirt and dark brown slacks. She had been employed in the building ever since my first day on the job a few years ago. This morning the woman was spraying a cleaner on the hallway door’s pushbar and then diligently wiping it off with a paper towel. When I arrived at the door she opened it for me and smiled. I smiled back and said a good morning.

Later this morning, I saw the same woman as I was walking down a corridor. She was alone, vacuuming a carpeted conference room floor. I glanced in as I passed by and noticed that the woman had moved all the chairs to one side of the room so she would not miss vacuuming any of the carpet under the room’s long table. She did not see me walk by the conference room’s door; she was too busy attending to her chore.

Somewhere around the middle of the afternoon I saw the custodian once more. This time she was at the far end of another hallway. She was about thirty feet away from me, mopping the hallway’s tile floor. Her back was turned to me and so she did not know I was there. For a moment I watched her work, swishing the damp mop back and forth across the tile. Every once in a while the woman would stop her mop’s to-and-fro motion to concentrate for a few seconds on a smudge or scuff mark on the tile. She was obviously a very conscientious worker who took pride in doing a good job.

I then walked down the hallway to the woman. She did not see me coming until I was just a step or so away. When she saw me, she ceased her mopping, came upright out of her stoop, and turned my way. I told her that we had worked in the same building for about two years, and that I had not stopped to introduce myself. I told her my name is Katie. For an instant the woman seemed just a bit surprised by my openness, but then she gave a little nervous smile and said her name is Donnella.

Today I stopped to learn Donnella’s name. The truth is; I should have stopped to learn it a long time ago.