#that's the kind of mess we feel like we're being fairly paid to deal with after all

[krysmcscience]

^^^ Goodness gracious, T H I S. ^^^

This mindset of 'has never had to clean a public space' really rears its head at movie theaters, and I don't even have to say 'lemme tell ya' here, cuz I can actually say lemme SHOW ya:

This is a single row out of the five that were utterly covered in smashed popcorn. Five rows. Full. Of SMASHED POPCORN. You can't even get the full effect of the disaster from this picture, because it's only one row and was taken in the dark. Oh, and that back section? People don't even sit up there! That section is usually blocked off with metal bars to keep kids and teens and grown-ass idiots from falling off of it and hurting themselves!!!

Do you want to know how long it took an entire crew of eight people - janitors and managers alike - to clean all this up, between six brooms/dustpans, a push floor-sweeper, and an actual vacuum?

Twenty minutes.

Do you want to know how many people created this mess?

TWO.

Two people created twenty minutes of labor for a team of EIGHT.

Think about that for a second.

Now think about how you would feel if you had to clean that mess up all by yourself. Because I've had to do that before - a whole other separate theater, wrecked by two teen girls with apparently nothing better to do despite being there to watch a movie - and I can safely say that it is a singularly wretched experience.

Seemingly whole popcorn kernels just breaking apart into smaller and smaller pieces as you try with increasing desperation to sweep them up? Check. Tiny popcorn crumbs and hard bits embedded into the floor and refusing to come up even with the benefit of a vacuum? Check. Consistent sad crunching under your feet, unavoidably making the cleanup a little bit harder with every step you take? Check, check, aaaand check. Oh, and by the way, the next movie showing is in thirty minutes or less, and you've still got two other theaters getting out at near to exactly the same time that also have a half hour window for you to finish cleaning them up in, so chop chop, hurry up and get it done.

...Yeah. All of that mess, and for...what? A few minutes of adrenaline, maybe? Attention? The thrill of wasting the ten-plus actual dollars spent on all that popcorn???

In this particular instance, where I fortunately had a team of people to help out and share the suffering with, I like to think about what would have happened if - rather than just making them leave - we could have brought those two Literal Adult Men back into the theater they trashed, and made them clean up their own damn mess by themselves.

I really like to think about it.

Because I like to think it would have prevented them from doing the same thing to another group of janitors in the future.

im always thinking about that post where someones grandma said “some people have never cleaned a bathroom and it shows” bc it does show