Tim Johnson crinkled his forehead as he tried his best to think of his personal pet peeves. It was only 7:30 a.m. on a Friday morning, and the heat of the late summer day had not quite crept in, but he was already sweating--the 46-year-old man had, so far, replaced a dozen trash bags.
"I like my floors clean," he answered after a moment, taking off his cap to wipe the sweat. "Showers, too. You know, those silver things where the water comes out from?" Johnson demonstrated with his hands, pretending to dab something in front of him. "I like it when they shine."
He stood on the first floor of House T, taking a rare momentary break to catch his breath before hurtling up the several flights of stairs to attack the next set of garbage cans and bathrooms. Tall and soft-spoken, Johnson has worked as a housekeeper in Craven Quad since 1992, mopping flooded bathroom floors and tackling mountains of beer cans for 11 years.
"I've seen and heard so much, nothing surprises me anymore. What's abnormal is normal, and what's normal is abnormal," he said, emitting a little chuckle. "If something was normal, then I'd be worried."
Originally from Baltimore, Johnson made his way down to North Carolina in 1987 when his mother fell ill. A few years after she passed away, he found his place at Duke; today he says he would not work anywhere else.
"I love talking to students from all over the world," Johnson said. Appropriately, behind him, a world map was neatly tacked to a bulletin board, pinpointing the different homelands of the dorm residents.
Johnson began to move again, from bathroom to bathroom, in an easy and efficient manner. He knocked each time before entering a girls' bathroom.
"Housekeeper," he called out, paused, then knocked again. "Housekeeper."
The bathroom was empty, but that isn't always the case.
"One time, I walked into the boys' bathroom on this floor," he motioned at the door. "I knocked, and then I went in. There was a girl in there, right out of the shower. She got a towel on just in time," he laughed.
"We just stared at each other for a while, in shock," he added.
Johnson has witnessed multiple incidents ranging from the scary--such as cross-dressing fraternity boys--to the downright bizarre, like when a boy suddenly burst out of a girl's dorm room, ran past Johnson, down the stairs and across the commons room, up the stairs on the other side, then back to Johnson. He paused for a bit, chatted with the bewildered housekeeper, then proceeded to exit the building.
"The girl came out and asked me if I had seen this boy," Johnson explained. "When I told her that he left, she looked at me like this"--he pulled his face into a downcast expression--"and said, 'He didn't even say goodbye!'"
Despite his 11 years of experience, however, Johnson's familiarity in dealing with the out of the ordinary still has not completely immunized him from the effects of what he considers to be the grossest mess: vomit. Whether it's sprayed across bathroom floors, or smeared on the shirt of a student still passed out in the hallway when Johnson comes to sweep away the recesses of a weekend party, throw-up is still, as he aptly terms it, "disgusting."
What may repulse most Duke students, however, is the fact that Johnson wakes up at 5:30 a.m. every morning to go to work, making his initial rounds before some even go to bed.
At 9 a.m., signs of life have begun to appear throughout the building: a student stumbles by Johnson, mumbling "good morning" before wearily making his way out the door.
Johnson leaned against the wall and planned out the rest of his day. Sweeping and mopping the floors--it was a Friday, after all, there was not too much to do. Monday, on the other hand, remains a different story.
"Yeah, Mondays are the worst," he admitted. "Because of the weekend, you know, students like to party."
But unlike most students, Johnson's time to shine comes after the party, in the wee-hours of the morning, when no one else is around.
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