Entitled lunch lady complains about janitor's cleaning method at school, janitor cleverly complies with her demands, leading to a mess in the cafeteria: ‘I'm just following orders’

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Feb 5, 2025 1:00 PM EST

Janitors are one of the most important and hardworking people at school. Their role is the kind of role that we unfortunately don't always notice or acknowledge while it's being done, but we cannot live without it. We let them wander the school's halls, and do their honest job, and we hardly ever pay our gratitude. If it weren't for them, surely we can all imagine how terrible it would be to walk those same halls. The school quite literally cannot function without them, yet we hardly ever let them know that.

Since we agree that these hardworking people basically run the school, if there is at least one thing we should all be doing, is to allow them to do their jobs. There is no reason for us to get in their business, or try to dictate how they should or shouldn't clean the school. If it ain't broken, why try to fix it, right?

That is the question that the lunch ladies in this story should be asked.

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  • For some reason, they did not approve of the way their janitor cleaned the cafeteria, and they went as far as complaining to the janitor's boss and demanding a change of methods. Why do they care? Nobody really knows.

    Thankfully, the janitor does not falter easily, so he decided to teach the lunch ladies a valuable lesson about minding their own business. They soon understood that sometimes it's better to just keep your mouth shut.

    Keep scrolling to read how the janitor managed to pull that off.

  • "Complain about how I do my job? Cool, let's see how things go when I do it your way"

    Cheezburger Image 10462720256
    via AndreyPopov

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • I work as a school janitor. Half my day is spent in the lunch room emptying the trash cans and sweeping up. At most schools, you get 15+ minutes in between each lunch period to do all
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  • the cleaning. At my school, I get less than 2 minutes, if I'm lucky. Normally, if a trash can isn't full, I just dump one can I to another, and then tie off
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  • THAT bag when it gets full. It's a lot faster than having to replace every bag every time, AND it saves a ton of bags. I also sweep up around the tables, and, if I see a big mess under a table,
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  • I ask the kids to move their feet and sweep that up to. I do it this way because it's the only way to keep up and keep things clean. If I pulled every bag every time instead
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  • of dumping one can into another, not only would I run out of bags halfway through the week, but it would also take way longer. If I only swept under tables when there was no kids
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  • sitting there, I would literally never have an opportunity to sweep under tables. Enter the lunch ladies. Most of them are nice but there's this one older one who is just a miserable human
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  • being. She yells at everyone including the kids, and is just always angry about something. Earlier this week, she yelled at me for dumping one trash can into another instead of pulling
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  • the bag. Why she chose today to do this, I don't know, since I'd been doing this every day for the past 3+ years. I know how to do my job and didn't ask her opinion, so I just ignored
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  • her, didn't say anything, and kept doing what I was doing. Fast forward an hour or two, and I'm getting a call from my district boss that there was a complaint filed against
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  • me. The lunch ladies are saying they don't like that I dump cans instead of pulling bags, and they don't like that I sweep under the kids feet. My boss tells me just stick to cleaning in between lunch periods. I try to explain
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  • that that's literally a period of less than 2 minutes and isn't even a fifth of the amount of time I'd need to do it that way, he says just do it anyway to keep the lunch ladies happy. He's a good dude, but he's just
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  • trying to squash complaints and keep them from going further. He says from now on, I'm ONLY to empty trash or sweep the floors in between lunches, where there's not students in the
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  • cafeteria, and also I'm to pull the bags every time. No more dumping cans. Cue malicious compliance. Starting then, I ONLY cleaned in between lunches
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  • when there was no kids. Of course, this is literally like a knife and a half, so I only had time to get to half the trash cans. And since I was replacing every bag instead of dumping cans, each can
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  • took longer. I didn't even have time to sweep AT ALL. The trash cans I couldn't get to would fill up and overflow, and the kids don't care and just keep piling trash on top. The floor got more and more covered in
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  • trash, since I didn't have time to sweep at all. I did this for the rest of the week. The same bitchy lunch lady tried to scream at me to go empty the trash when I was standing there on
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  • Tuesday, but I explained "I was told by my boss that you guys didn't like me sweeping or emptying trash around the kids, so now I'm only allowed to do that when the cafeteria is empty.
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  • Cheezburger Image 10462730496
    via @monkeybusinessimages

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • Id love to go get that trash can, but there's kids eating lunch right now so I'm not allowed." She tried to argue but I just told her I'm following direct and explicit orders from my boss. There was nothing she could do.
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  • When the final lunch ended, I cleaned as much as I could before 2pm and then stopped, as that was my lunch time and the union REQUIRES that we take our lunches at our allotted times.
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  • It's nom-optional and zero tolerance for deviation. And after my lunch, I have to go clean classrooms since school is out, and classrooms take priority over the cafeteria. End result? The
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  • cafeteria never got fully cleaned. When the lunch ladies came in Monday and found it still half filthy, they went through the roof and complained to my boss. He called me ina and I explained
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  • that I was just follow orders, and the lunch ladies were the ones who asked I do things this way. Suffice it to say, I was told to go back to doing it however I thought was best.
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  • You wanna stick your nose in my business and tell me how to do my job? See how that turns out. Oh, and also since then, I spent the rest of the week calling THEM out on all the
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  • things they were doing wrong. Previously I just kept my mouth shut and minded my business, but now? Now we're doing this the way you wanted.
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  • Door propped open because its incredibly hot in the kitchen and you need the air flow? Sorry! That's a security issue, doors CANNOT be propped open. Greasy wax paper in the cardboard recycling? Sorry, that can't
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  • go in there! Normally I'd just grab it as I see it, but now? I waited till the end of the day and then tell them. They had to pick it all out by hand. You guys like having the radio playing in the kitchen? Sorry, not allowed! Shut it down.
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  • TL;DR: lunch ladies tried to tell me how to do my job. They got what they wanted. Didn't like it.
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  • s4ndbend3r I don't know if it was accidental or not, but I found lunch break being nom-optional hilarious.
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  • ForeverSeekingShade School janitors are super under appreciated heroes. Well done, OP.
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  • Mapilean I spent the rest of the week calling THEM out on all the things they were doing wrong. Chef's kiss.
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  • Phinbart The fact you turned it back on them is brilliant. I really hope that the rest of the lunch ladies realised what the busybody one had done and turned on her for making their work lives worse.
    via Phinbart

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janitor boss cafeteria workplace-stories school manager malicious compliance work lunch lady reddit story lunch workplace Reddit malicious compliance reddit entitled people
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