Chapter 18

Having arrived an hour early, Jack walked around the campus trying to locate the maintenance building. He wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Most job sites of significant size had a modular building that they used as the main business building, but he didn’t see anything like that around the campus. There was a vast array of buildings all constructed in different styles. Some buildings looked to be seventy years old while others looked brand new.

The grounds were very nicely kept. The grass was mowed and there were flowers planted everywhere. He couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to work in that environment. He noticed a couple of students walking past. They looked so young and alive.

With the time quickly approaching his appointment time, he began to get worried that he’d never find the building. One of the men wearing a shirt with the name of the college on it stopped and asked, “Are you lost?”

Jack answered, “A little. You wouldn’t happen to know where the maintenance building is, would you?”

The man pointed to a road and said, “Down there. It is a little squatty building with a loading dock on the one end. There’s a garage next to it.”

“Thanks,” Jack said.

“Are you going for a key to your office?” the man asked.

“No. I’m here to interview for a job,” Jack answered.

“So they are finally getting around to hiring a flooring guy. We’ve needed one ever since Al died,” the man said.

“That’s good to know,” Jack said.

“You’ll like working here. Good luck,” the man said.

“Thanks,” Jack said. He watched the man walk off to one of the buildings.

It took Jack ten minutes to find the building. He went through the main door. A woman was seated at a desk and looked up at him. She asked, “Are you here for a key?”

“I’m supposed to interview for a job,” Jack said.

“Oh. Sorry. It is just that everyone who comes in here usually is after a key,” the woman said with a smile. She said, “You must be Jack Dunne.”

“I am,” Jack said surprised that she knew his name.

“I’m Sue. If you’ll have a seat, I’ll look for Roy. He’s around here somewhere.”

“Thank you,” Jack said thinking that was a pretty friendly reception.

A few minutes later, Sue came back. A large man with a full gray beard and a pot belly followed behind her. Sticking his hand out to shake, the man said, “Hello Jack, I’m Roy Marshal. Why don’t you come to my office and we’ll talk.”

“Thanks,” Jack said taking the man’s hand. He had a firm handshake.

While walking to the office, Roy said, “We do the basic maintenance around the campus. Most of our work is the small stuff. We might replace the carpet in an office or fix a light fixture. The big jobs are contracted out, but there is enough work to keep us busy year round. Summer is pretty busy while we are repairing the dorms. We’ve got one plumber, two carpenters, and three electricians. We had a flooring guy, but he passed away about two months ago. We’ve got more men on the grounds crew who mow the lawn and keep the campus grounds looking good.”

“Impressive,” Jack said.

Entering the office, Roy gestured to a chair and said, “Have a seat.”

“Thanks,” Jack said taking a seat.

“I noticed in your resume that you know how to install carpet, linoleum, and tile. I called your former employers and they told me that you did good work. They all made the point that you were a reliable employee and that they would hire you whenever they had work.”

“I do my best,” Jack said thinking he should try selling himself a little.

“Your resume said that you also do a little light carpentry and sheetrock work,” Roy said. He was desperate to get a man in to fill the opening. He had a backlog of jobs that needed to be done and the college was dragging its feet on getting the paperwork through.

“That’s right,” Jack replied nodding his head.

“Good. We like our people to be flexible,” Roy said. Not used to interviewing people, he scratched his beard trying to decide what he was supposed to be doing. Finally, he said, “Our people usually wear work boots, jeans and university shirts. We provide ten shirts a year, but you can buy more at the university store. You’ll have to provide the jeans. You’ll also be responsible for washing your shirts.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Jack said surprised that the man had mentioned work clothes. He had never had to wear a job uniform before and was used to buying his own work clothes.

“The work hours are 8:00 to 4:30 with a half hour lunch break at noon. You have to punch the time clock when you arrive and when you leave. You’ll earn time and half on the weekends. You get two weeks of vacation a year,” Roy said.

“That’s good,” Jack said thinking he’d never had an employer talk about vacation before.

Having run out of things to talk about, Roy asked, “Are you interested in the job?”

“Yes,” Jack answered.

“Good.” Roy glanced at his calendar and said, “It will take two weeks to get your paperwork routed through all of the administrative offices. They’ll send you a letter providing you with the details for the job offer.”

“So I got the job?” Jack asked.

“Unless there’s a problem administratively,” Roy said with a grin. They had received only a handful resumes for the job and Jack’s was the only one that met all of the criteria in the advertisement. That was going to be a problem and would slow things down a bit, but since he was the only qualified applicant the school would hire him.

Jack asked, “What about tools?”

“We provide all of the tools,” Roy said.

“That’s good,” Jack said.

Roy looked across the desk pleased that the interview had gone so well. He had been in the position for five years and this was his first time interviewing someone to work for him. He said, “Not quite what you were expecting.”

“You can say that again,” Jack said.

Folding his hands over his pot belly, Roy said, “We’re a laid back bunch around here. We do our jobs without interfering with the day to day business of running a college. You’ll find the professors are pretty nice. The students are a great bunch of kids. I think you’ll like working here.”

“I’m sure that I will,” Jack said. He wondered how much the job paid.

“Do you have any questions?” Roy asked.

Jack said, “I guess the only question I have is how much the job pays.”

“I thought that was in the ad,” Roy said. He leafed through some papers on his desk and found the one for which he was searching. He said, “$18.50 an hour.”

“That’s good,” Jack said thinking it was the most he’d ever made.

Roy said, “Odds are good that you’ll retire from here. This is one of most secure jobs left. When times are bad, enrollment goes up with people looking to retrain for new careers. When times are good, things stay the same. We’ve never laid anyone off.”

“That’s good to know,” Jack said. He had thought that job security was a thing of the past.

Roy said, “I’ll let you go. You should be getting a letter in a couple of weeks with the job offer. It will have some of the details about health benefits, retirement benefits, tuition reimbursement, and union membership. I know that it seems like this process is slow, but that’s how it is around here. They follow the same process regardless of whether they are hiring a professor or a maintenance guy.”

“Great,” Jack said rising from his chair. He wasn’t going to complain about how long the process took. He figured that he’d last long enough to be able to wait for the job without starving.

Jack returned to his house and went inside carrying a large bottle of name brand soda. It was a special little treat to celebrate getting a job. He wasn’t sure what it would be like having year round employment like that, but he was anxious to find out. He poured a glass and took a seat. Getting out a calculator, he calculated how much he would make a year. He stared at the number surprised at how much money it was.

There was a knock on the front door interrupting his thoughts. He went over and answered it to find Claire there. She asked, “Did you get the job?”

“Yes, I did,” Jack answered with a great big grin.

“That’s wonderful. We’ll have to celebrate tonight,” Claire said with a grin. She figured they would bake a cake or something along those lines.

“The guy who interviewed me said that it would be a couple of weeks before the offer letter came in the mail,” Jack said.

“I kind of expected them to hire you on the spot,” Claire said with a frown. She had expected him to start working the next day.

“He says that it is lifetime employment. I’m not going to worry about it taking some time to officially send me an offer,” Jack said shrugging his shoulders.

“That is still great news, Jack.”

“Yes, it is. I’m going to be making really good money,” Jack said. Rubbing his hands together, he said, “I hope that I’ll get enough work done on the community house for us to use it before I have to start working fulltime.”

“I’m sure that you’ll get it done on time,” Claire said with a smile. She knew that she could trust Jack to do what was necessary to help the commune. She didn’t think that he’d turn his back on them now that he was getting better financially.

“I’ll try,” Jack said. The interview had been at one and it was now three in the afternoon. There wasn’t enough time to pull all of the carpet out. He sighed and said, “I suppose I could mow a couple of lawns before dinner.”

“Take the rest of the day off,” Claire said patting him on the arm. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

“I guess,” Jack said thinking it had been a long time since anyone had said that to him.

The rest of the month seemed to fly by with all of the activity in the commune. Emily had moved in with Sally and that had helped each one of them financially. Mary and Johnny moved into the commune by the end of the month. The infusion of a little extra money had really helped Clair and Gail directly. They had held a monster garage sale that had brought in over fifteen hundred dollars.

Dave and Jack were at Mary’s old townhouse fixing up some of the things that had fallen into disrepair so that she could sell it. While the market on all properties had fallen, townhouses and condominiums had kept their value a little better than houses. The property taxes tended to be a little lower, the initial outlay was less, and they were often a good choice for down-sizing from larger homes.

Dave stepped back from the wall looking at the paint job and said, “Well, the painting is done.”

“Tomorrow we start with laying carpet and that will finish the repairs,” Jack said looking around the empty room.

“At least we didn’t need to use a hose to clean it up,” Dave said making reference to their attempt to take care of the mold in Emily’s house.

“Don’t remind me of that little fiasco,” Jack said with a pained expression on his face. They had ended up with water everywhere and very little bleach. The mold had bloomed overnight and they ended up having to scrub every surface with a concentrated bleach solution. It hadn’t been pretty.

“It sounded like a good idea,” Dave said chuckling.

“At least the wiring didn’t catch fire,” Jack said. He would never forget the sparks that had flown when the spray of water had hit an electric outlet. He couldn’t believe they had been so stupid to try that little idea without flipping the main breaker off.

Dave laughed and said, “That was impressive.”

“That was stupid,” Jack said. Wanting to change the subject, Jack said, “At least this has been an easy job. It will look real nice with the carpet she picked out.”

“She should get a pretty good price for it,” Dave said hoping that was the case.

Jack said, “You’ve been keeping track of the expenses?”

“You bet I have. I’ve also kept track of how much time we’ve spent on fixing it up,” Dave said.

“Why?”

Realizing that Jack hadn’t been around when Mary had discussed paying them for their work, Dave said, “That’s part of the cost of getting it sold. She set aside three thousand dollars for our labor. Mary agreed that half of the money would go to the commune coffers and we could split the rest.”

“I wasn’t aware of that,” Jack said with a frown. He felt that they should be helping each other.

“It would have cost her a lot more than that to get someone else to fix the place for sale,” Dave said.

Jack nodded his head and said, “That’s true.”

“We’ll both get seven hundred and fifty dollars out of it,” Dave said.

“At least I’ll make my mortgage payment,” Jack said. Jobs had become very hard to find lately and he hadn’t heard back from the college about when he was supposed to start working there.

Hearing the relief in Jack’s voice, Dave said, “That adds about fifteen hundred dollars to the repair fund. We should be able to get the roof repaired on the community house if we are careful with the money.”