STORY Rachael Carlomagno
PHOTOS Jacob Stewart

It’s 4 a.m. on campus. The library and Student Center have long since closed. The late-night trickle of people coming back from the bars has died. The lights that earlier illuminated the hundreds of residence hall windows have faded. A few night owls study or watch television, but most students sleep quietly in their warm beds.

While most slumber, others sweep, mop, dust, scrub, refill, empty, vacuum and wipe. They work until the wee hours of the morning, when many students begin to rise for 7:45 classes or early workouts. It’s the third shift. It’s a tough job, and somebody has to do it.

“It’s hard work — not hard as in difficult — but a lot of manual labor,” says James Champ, a third-shift custodian in Bowman Hall.

Custodial work is divided into three shifts. First-shift workers continuously refill items in the restrooms and empty the garbage. Second-shift workers then come in, do much of the same and prepare the building for third-shift workers. And around midnight, the late-night staff arrives, ready to take advantage of the solitude.

In Bowman Hall, music from a small boom box echoes through the hollow building. The noise helps cover up the strange and surreal sound of silence.

“The calmness can play with your head sometimes,” Champ says. “Every once in a while you have a night when you’re by yourself, and you hear every little noise. It makes you scared because you know you’re all alone.”

But the silence of these nights is a small hurdle compared to living life after the late shift.

“It takes some out of your lifespan — everybody can’t work through it,” says Gene Brown, who has worked the third shift at the Student Center for 13 years.

Getting enough sleep during the day becomes a struggle when interrupted by simple tasks — like going to a doctor’s appointment.

“Working the third shift, seven to eight hours of sleep just isn’t enough,” Champ says. “You can’t get continuous sleep because there’s stuff you need to do during the day.”

With four children at home, Randy Crownoble, a Bowman Hall custodian, has to plan sleep around his schedule and theirs.
He sleeps from 9 a.m. to about noon, and then his kids get home at 4 p.m.

Crownoble says he likes coming home in the morning and getting them to the bus and then making them dinner at night. But he only gets a chance to see his wife in passing, which makes things a little crazy, he says.

“She thought that it would be a lot better than it is,” he says. “She had my whole day planned out — she just forgot I had to sleep sometime.”

Champ is getting married in June, and he says he already sees the strain his shift puts on his relationship with his fiancee.

“On the weekends I stay awake until she goes to sleep because she can’t go to sleep with someone else there anymore,” he says.
“It’s the little things that you can miss.”

Matthew McBrian, 25, works the third shift in the Student Center and goes to class during the day. He says he rarely sees his family and only sees friends between classes on most days.

“The third shift is taking away from my social life since I usually work weekends,” he says. “You’re up, and everyone else is sleeping. When you’re ready to do things, everyone else is at work.”

Brown, 62, has worked nights for much of his life. He says his wife and three children never really minded the hours.

“As long as they’ve got something to eat, they got their toys, and they got their car, they’re happy,” Brown says of his children. “If they saw me more, I’d be telling them to clean their rooms.”

Brown originally applied for the job so his children could attend class for free, and one earned a degree.

Like Brown, many custodial workers on campus take the position so they can send themselves and their families to school for free — a considerable perk to the job.

But day classes and night work don’t always mix well.

“It’s very hard to take classes,” Champ says. “At the most, one to two classes a semester — even two can be pushing it sometimes.”

Champ is not enrolled this semester and says it’s frightening to think about how long it will take him to graduate. Although it’s a hard concept for Champ to swallow, he says it’s better than rushing through school and having a mountain of student loans to pay. Day-shift custodians have little time to revel in their work before it must be done again. But when third-shift custodians head home to their families, beds or schoolbooks, they leave behind a cleanbuilding.

Champ likes that he can see the results of his time and elbow grease.

“It’s nice because at the end of the day, you know what you did,” he says. “But by 8:15 a.m., what we did doesn’t exist anymore.”
Even though custodians say they find fulfillment in their work, they still have pet peeves.

Snow, mud and salt that students track into buildings during the winter makes for harder custodial work.

“In the winter, this job can kick your butt,” Champ says.
But any time of the year, students leave plenty of garbage to pick up.

“Sometimes it makes you laugh, the things that students do to these classrooms,” Champ says. “One night last week we had to fill the backof a pick-up truck three times with trash.”

Randy Crownoble has worn this badge nightly since he started this job about 11 months ago

But Champ says he is most bothered by students’ tendency to ignore him while he is at work.

“It’s the people that you’ll make eye contact with and smile at, and they just look right through you,” he says.

Champ recalls times during his shift when he passed students that he knows and talks to and was ignored by them. Champ says that when he is wearing that uniform, he feels he is seen as a lesser human being in the eyes of students. Champ says the job made him realize how poorly people can act toward others.

Students may tend not to acknowledge custodians, but Duane Redd, who has worked the late shift in the University Bookstore the last 12 years, says he doesn’t take it personally.

“They don’t see you, so they don’t know you as a human being,” he says.
“They’re in college — they’re here to get an education, to get ahead. They’re not here to be custodians.”