Homerline was perplexed. Why on earth had someone been going around changing the signs that she had spent eight (overtime) hours of Company Time fashioning and another three strategically hanging about the building? This one. The one right over the microwave in the break room, the one that she had gone to all the trouble of laminating to keep Randy’s Hot Pocket splatter from strafing the paper. “YOU’RE MOTHER DON’T WORK HERE!!!” it had once shouted. Now it read “XXXXXX your MOTHER XXXXX doesn’t WORK HERE!!!”. The small, neat, confident red Sharpie of the correction stood in glaring contrast to the Rockwell Extra Bold seventy-two point of the original.
“Probably that smarty-pants college boy from Front-end,” she shrewdly deduced. “I knew better than to hire him.”
Homerline pronounced the word “college” in the same manner you would expect Billy Graham to pronounce “from the great mind of Charles Darwin” or Joe McCarthy to say “Marxist wisdom dictates…”.
“Yup, probably him,” she concluded, decisively.
It probably wasn’t.
On the days he wasn’t trying to complete level fourteen of Hollywood Ninja Pimp IV, or hung-over, or both, College Boy (whose name was Joseph) attended Nueces Junior College (through the courtesy of a basketball scholarship) with punctual irregularity. He had about as much inclination toward grammatical second-guessing as he had enthusiasm for reading his homework from Developmental English 0388 (pages forty-four through fifty-three in the second book of the “Tommy Cauldron” series- The Conjuror’s Staff).
“Well, hogcrap,” she thought- although she felt a twinge of embarrassment at her own strong language- “I don’t have time for this right now. I gotta get back to my office and try to figure out what to do with them extra eighteen boxes of thirteen-seventy-eights I accidentally ordered before Mr. K. finds out. I’ve already had two write-ups AND a coaching/counseling session this quarter. One more write-up and…”
“Modesto!” She pronounced the janitor’s name “muh-DAIS-tow”. “Get over there and pick up them ketchup packets and sporks Randy knocked off the courtesy table. And then…Oh, are you on break?”
“I’m just finishing up, Mrs. Snoddgrass,” he said while putting down his book and throwing away his neatly removed mango peel on the way to his custodial supply chariot.
Homerline, who never missed an opportunity to let someone know how observant she was, tried to draw attention to herself by looking at the open book lying face-down on the table. She also liked to make it well known that she took an interest in the life of “those people”.
“Spinoza (she pronounced it “spy-KNOW-zuh”), huh?” came the Socratic query. “Is that one of them Meskin cowboy stories?”
“I’m Chilean, Mrs. Snoddgrass,” Modesto corrected, dryly.
“Oh, oh, well, all right then. You know, Modesto, just between you and I”- (Modesto visibly winced) - “If you start bein’ more proactive, like it says in the Employee Handbook, I might be able to help get you a promotion to Assistant Night Lead Custodian. It’s forty-five cents more an hour, you know.”
Modesto noticeably remained quiet.
As Homerline left the room, she thought she heard something along the lines of “…an occupation more odious could hardly be imaginable to a person of sensibility…”, what ever that meant. Probably not. Anyway, that couldn’t possibly have been Modesto…

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