Housekeeping is a good time. We clean up after everybody and plunge the toilets, but mostly, we get to enjoy the money and magazines and random accessories that participants leave behind, and two days a week, if you're part-time like me, one gets to drive around on the golf-cart, scaring slow-moving participants, speaking in code on the walkie talkies, and occasionally wiping down a bathroom or two in between bouts of unbridled fun.
Of course, I've been told that working a shift with me is an experience quite unlike working with anyone else, but I wouldn't want it any other way. Night shifts are usually the most fruitful time for shenanigans, since the boss is off-duty and the post-dessert sugar buzz is working its magic. My first epic "C-shift" was shared with Alex, a formerly serious seeming colleague who began to work her way into my favor when she mentioned that driving through one part of campus always makes her think of passing through the Strait of Gibraltar.
"YES!" I assented right away. "And that means the Registration Office would be Turkey!! Or is it Egypt?"
Alex proceeded to inform me that the Strait actually connects Morocco and Spain, which was slightly embarrassing since that means I crossed it twice two years ago. We then embarked upon a completely fruitless attempt to match the buildings around us with geographically appropriate locations, and I was starting to feel almost dizzily dyslexic before Alex agreed to call the whole thing off, and just re-label Omegan buildings however we saw fit. It would be their "essence," their "spirit" that would determine what country they were, and it did not have to be one that was currently in existence; for example, the library became Alexandria, and the bookstore, the Ottoman Empire.
We drew up a map on our dinner break, and back on the cart I continued to illustrate it with my colored pencils in between throwing chocolate balls into Alex's mouth as she drove. We identified an area of campus that could be Amsterdam, and the hills of Switzerland, and two cabins high up on the hill were Iceland and Greenland. We drive down the coast of North America all the way to the Everglades, where we found the sock of a participant that had clearly been eaten by an alligator (RIP), and adopted a comatose dragonfly named Ferdinand.
In one of the cafes in Italy we discovered an amazing ShamWow! towel, but were dissatisfied with how successful it was in cleaning and decided to brainstorm our own inventions. There need to be alternative options to the ShamWow, we said, for example, for rebellious teenagers who refuse to do their household chores.
The first towel we envisioned would mop up nothing at all, ever, and it would be called the WowMahs. It would have to be targeted to a very specific audience, and the rebellious teens who it was designed for might not necessarily be able to afford it, but we had fun acting out the ad campaigns nonetheless.
Our second towel would be designed for an even more specific audience. It would be called the MaoWow, and its teenager contingency would not only be rebellious (bordering on Satanic), but they would use the MaoWow to subvert the bourgeoisie and spread Communist ideals. You see, the MaoWow would be red and layered like the pages of a book, with propaganda peppered in its linings.
Alex and I spent a good twenty minutes discussing this in the women's bathroom, while other staff members and participants passed to and fro and nullified any successful attempts we had made at cleaning. We were already perspiring and light-headed from all the laughter throughout the shift, and as we continued to cackle and gesticulate with the ShamWow, we had more than a few queries as to what drugs we were on (at Omega, it's always a legitimate question).
With the bathroom in no better condition than we had found it in, we decided to head to the staff dining hall for a break.
In the dining hall, we found a very un-Omega-like spread. There were chips, and cookies, and cupcakes with artificially flavored frosting. There were also "nougats" made out of hardened granola, but we didn't eat those. Instead, we dropped a piece of fake kitty poop into their midst.
While we were feasting, Amanda, aka Betsy, happened to come in, for which we all rejoiced. As we rejoiced, and continued to feast, while simultaneously bemoaning how much we were feasting, more and more food seemed to materialize. Steve Cleaver came in with a pint of chocolate fudge ice cream. Another random staff member brought in the tray of leftover kirtan food (ginger, nuts, coconut shavings, chocolate chips) which is blessed by the gods and so necessary to be partaken of. Pretty soon the three of us were squeezing onto the front seat of the housekeeping cart with cups full of ice cream sundaes.
There were only a few chores left for us to do, and they were made much easier by the fact that we simply made Amanda do them for us while we sat on the cart eating ice cream. At one point, we thought we were being followed by a campus support cart, and panicked. I was told to crouch down with my head between my legs, and Amanda threw some towels over me so that I looked like a linen bag. It was during this time that the proverbial Wetsy really did wet herself.
"Maybe we should put a towel under me, as well," I said in a way that was meant to be nonchalant.
Dazed, exhausted, and undergoing a collective sugar crash, we finally managed to bring the shift to an end a half hour later than usual. Grateful simply for the fact that we hadn't gotten caught mid-shenanigans, we went to check on Felix, and then trundled off to bed.
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