people
unseen and unsung
Meet four University employees who keep the University running smoothly.
Picking up papers inside of a Wescoe auditorium, Ray Gray of Lawrence completes his duties as night janitor on Tuesday, Oct. 7.
Jared Soares/Kansan
NIGHTSHIFT ENCOUNTERS
If you decide to have sex with your significant other somewhere late at night on campus, it's possible Ray Gray might walk in on you.
Gray, and his new co-worker, Theo Henry, work as late-night janitors on campus, but their jobs can be more exciting than cleaning bathrooms and picking up stray copies of The University Daily Kansan.
Gray says he has walked in on students having sex in Wescoe Hall classrooms, making his 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift a bit more interesting. "Sometimes girl and boy do their thing in these classrooms," Gray says. "I just tell 'em: 'You gotta go. You can't do it here.'"
The strange occurrences aren't just relegated to student fornication. Gray and Henry routinely encounter wild animals, such as hissing raccoons and lost skunks. "We learned to avoid the skunks," Gray says with a cautious laugh. Gray says he also once found a car stuck on a stairway, abandoned between Wescoe and Budig halls. "I was just scratching my head on that one," he says.
The late hours don't seem to bother either of them. Henry, who says he has worked at the University of Kansas for two months, and Gray, a three-year veteran, are grooving to a blaring boom box as they replace trashcan linings. Justin Timberlake's Rock Your Body supplies the beat and both men oblige to the music. They're not the subdued, grumpy duo you visualize when you think of janitors. Instead, you may think they are the first ones to arrive at a party and are just waiting for everyone else to show up.
Henry admits he enjoys working with Gray - rearranging chairs in classrooms,
picking up glass left behind by independently contracted maintenance workers and cleaning bathrooms. Both men agree that sometimes the job feels hectic or tiring, but it's often fun, and it's what they do for a living, because students generally don't clean up after themselves. "I
know that ain't going to happen," Gray says.
—Luke Daley
COOKING WITH KINDNESS
His smile is the first thing you see when you walk into Mrs. E's, but his meals are
what students remember. If you live on Daisy Hill, you've probably sampled some of Jerry Rials' pizza and pasta dishes. Rials has worked as a chef at Mrs. E's for seven years, and he used to work security at Robinson Center. He says cooking and security are in his blood; his
thursday, october 9, 2003
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