Two Weeks of Contemplation

I’m currently working as a custodian for The Denver School of the Arts. I’ve been chronicling my experiences through social media and this blog post. I put a lot of my own complaints and frustrations down, primarily to accurately portray my true experiences. No filter. There are good days of course. One day, this could be sort of a memoir.

I refer to myself as The Teal Fairy because this is a character that I’ve created. I hope to one day write about The Teal Fairy going back to school to protect those that have the potential to grow and flourish. Schools need more fairies over firearms to ensure the safety of the youth. I also use The Teal Fairy persona as my way of expressing myself creatively outside of the written word.

Thank you for joining me on this journey!

Day Five Hundred & Seventy: 4/1/2025

I’m BACCKKK! I really enjoyed my vacation, but all things come to an end. Though, I wanted to blurt out that I’m going to quit soon. I suppose it’s fine that I’m putting that here. No one that I work with follows my blog. I think it’s perfectly okay to say that I’m moving back to Seattle and I’ll be quitting this job in a matter of weeks. Can I get through it? Unfortunately, I need the paychecks to get me through May, then I can say bye bye.

I was very fortunate that I didn’t have to work at the elementary school today. That coworker didn’t put in his time off request, so he had to work his full day. I wasn’t really prepared to go over there anyway. If I had been given some sort of notice maybe I would be okay to fulfill this duty. However, without any notice I wasn’t up for it.

Instead, I only had to work in my area. No interruptions and the small event that we had tonight ended at an appropriate hour. I’m really going to have to pull some inner strength to keep doing this job for a little bit longer. I’ve given notice to my apartment and now it's all about boxing up my life and preparing to move states again.

Day Five Hundred & Seventy-one: 4/2/2025

Well, we are down a person today. Joy, extra work for the few that made it in. I probably shouldn’t complain since I was just off for 11 days, but you know what I am. We only have to work 4 days this week and it would have been really nice if we didn’t have to do extra work because one person called out sick. I don’t have a choice either.

On another note, maybe I shouldn’t have told a few teachers that I’m planning to quit and move back to Seattle. The word has already gotten around and I wouldn’t be surprised if my coworkers know of the news before too long. It doesn’t really matter, because things are happening and I’ll be making a change pretty soon.

I’ll have plenty of time to ponder these thoughts as I’m staying late tonight. We have a contractor that needs to work overnight and thus someone has to stay in the building. My crewlead stayed yesterday, but didn’t get any sleep so he wasn’t up to stay late again. I was offered the opportunity and I need the extra hours. So, I’ll take any extra money that I can scoop up.

UPDATE: I’ve been in the building for over 12 hours and the contractor hasn’t shown up. I was supposed to be contacted around 11/11:30 PM. I made sure that my phone was charged and I was close to the main doors as soon as they arrived. Then, time moved on with no contractor. I was told that I needed to stick around until 4:30 AM. So, here I am, biding my time and wishing I could go home, but I still want these extra hours. Too bad, there’s no one that I can contact to confirm if they are going to show up or not. I guess I’ll have to stick around for another two hours.

Day Five Hundred & Seventy-two: 4/3/2025

Everyone is in attendance today! Yay, I might be tired, but at least I don’t have to do anyone else’s work. Just my own. I’m not really in the mood to work hard either. Though, I’ve been cutting corners with my vacuuming. I'll have to make up for that. As I was going through my area collecting all of the trash I noticed that many of the carpeted rooms are in serious need of being cleaned.

Day Five Hundred & Seventy-three: 4/4/2025

I was in no mood for adolescents today! I didn’t want to see them in the hallways, bathrooms, or wandering around like they owned the place. Absolutely no patience for it. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through another 6-8 weeks of employment. I’ve lost all of my tolerance for their antics. Not sure what I can do.

It didn’t help that we had a school dance. I initially thought that we were going to host the middle school and high school students, except, I was mistaken. In this job I’m always grateful when I’m wrong about something. Because when I’m wrong it usually benefits me. The high school dance is being hosted at the DSA-South location.

Day Five Hundred & Seventy-four: 4/8/2025

Well, I clearly forgot to post last week’s blog. I got busy doing other things clearly. It’s not like there’s that much interesting things to discuss anyway. I’m over this job and everytime I show up I’m reminded how much I really don’t care for children or teenagers. If they want to misbehave or be literal shits, I’d rather not be the person that has to clean it up. Find another fairy that’s willing to put up with that bullshit. For now, I’m in the process of exiting this whole dilemma.

I’m feeling a bit more indigent about the situation because I’m over at the elementary school today. I hate it over here, but fortunately I’ll only be here three times this month. I suppose I can handle that for now.

Day Five Hundred & Seventy-five: 4/9/2025

I barely did any work tonight. We didn’t really have to because it’s testing week. Gosh how I love testing week. Everything stays relatively clean. It’s really how the school should look at the end of the day. Yes, I could have vacuumed, but it wasn’t necessary. I needed a lazy day. I’ll try to work harder tomorrow. I promise, sort of.

Day Five Hundred & Seventy-six: 4/10/2025

I still didn’t put a ton of effort into my job tonight. I used the power washer to clean the bathrooms, but I didn’t sweep or vacuum. There was testing again today and honestly I feel like I deserve the reprieve. I have to work at the elementary school tomorrow so I was not even going to give it the bare minimum. I did trash and bathrooms. That’s it! At least this week is almost over.

Day Five Hundred & Seventy-seven: 4/11/2025

Having to work at the elementary school twice in one week is not ideal. My only solace is that I didn’t have to work Monday. Gotta love an approved sick day. Though, every team member has taken a day off this week. From facility manager down to the newest custodian. The only person that didn’t take a sick day or personal day was our part-time associate. Never have I seen this happen in the three years I’ve been working in this position. Either something was going around or it was just one of those weeks. Absolutely bizarre.

I’m ending his week, just content that it’s closer and closer to my last day. I’ve made calls and have planned to complete my employment on May 26th. I haven’t given notice, but I’ve told a few people that I’ll be leaving. I’ve asked them to keep it secret, but we shall see if that sticks. I’m not planning to give my notice until the first of May.

For now, the month of April is just to maintain and keep up with the status quo. I haven’t worked that hard this week, but I’ve at least done the bare minimum at the elementary school. They were graced with my efforts because I don’t want to be blamed for mis-management of this building. This is also the end of the gray week. I needed to take a break from the usual teal attire. I’ll go back to my regular scheduled sartorial style.