It’s Sunday afternoon and you’ve just finished a grueling 3 hour-long study session. You think to yourself that it’s time to kick back and relax by making some ramen or hanging out with friends. However, as you carry your bowl of noodles to the microwave your plans are shattered by your resident’s dictatorial demands to do your cleanup duties, and do them now. After you almost drop your ramen in horror, you roll up your sleeves and steel yourself to wade through the piles of toxic waste that have miraculously accumulated over the past four days. However, not all cleanup jobs were created equal, and each has its own set of expectations and stereotypes associated with it.
Bathroom Cleaners: Perhaps the bravest and most hardworking souls in the Deerfield community. These silent warriors have to endure getting tactical with the many bodily fluids that always manage to miss their designated receptacle. The germs that coat every surface are deadly enough to bring down an entire rural Western Massachusetts community. People who willfully choose to clean up the bathroom are the unsung heroes of Deerfield, vital soldiers ensuring the survival of the entire dorm ecosystem. This job is one of the least sought-after in the entire catalog.
Trash Bags and Compost: Although this job is simple in theory, the dragging and disposal of the black holes that are whole-hall trash bags is a feat never to be underestimated. During the winter, your flip-flopped feet might grow numb as the splash through half-melted slush, and during early fall and late spring, you might begin to sweat the second you hoist those bags over your shoulder. The trash bags also tend to leak suspicious fluids, making it even more vital to carry, rather than drag, them across the jagged surfaces that could leave a rancid stain on your hall floors.
Trash Bin Liners: Staying within the comfort of the dorms, this job is one of the cushiest on the roster. For those who check-in with their resident and wait, terror-stricken, as their fate is recited from an excel sheet, this job would easily elicit a sign of relief. However, even this most-luxurious of jobs is often neglected by a careless hall. The job involves replacing old trash bags in the common rooms and bathrooms with new ones. While this job sounds easy, those who are assigned to or volunteer for this job always fall mysteriously ill sometime between grabbing a bag liner and tucking it neatly into its designated receptacle.
Hallways: A simple role that involves picking up the trash scattered throughout the hallways and depositing it into trash cans. This job varies in difficulty depending mostly on what dorm the cleaner resides in. For the most pristine dorms, this job is a practical sinecure requiring nothing more than a simple glance up and down the hall. For the most diabolically dirty dorms, this task may involve a back-breaking amount of bending over to dispose of the garbage in various states of rot that litters the hall’s floor.
Vacuum: With the state of the vacuums provided to the students, this job is surprisingly difficult. Those who volunteer for this job are the adventurous type, ready to wrangle with the wild animal that is the vacuums’ unruly suction tubes. Additionally, you are impervious to the ear-splitting sound that emanates from these decades-old beasts as they travel up, and down, and up, and down, and up, and down the halls.
Dishes: You were forced to do this. The ever-growing pile of dishes in the common room must be dealt with eventually; it appears some of them are growing mold colonies that might gain sentience if given a few days. Many leave this job for the next morning, as they don’t want to make the arduous trek to the dining hall during the witching hours. However, procrastinating on this duty means that you have to go to breakfast the next day. So, on a more positive note, this job might convert you to the early riser.