As dusk begins to fall, most students start to head back to
their dorms and apartments. Professors start heading home; clubs
finish up their meetings and classes come to their conclusion. But
at 5:30, shortly after the dorms start their dinner, Andrew
Martinez shows up on campus for work.
Martinez is a second-year psychology student, taking classes at
both UCLA and Santa Monica College. He decided to go back to school
at the age of 27 and took a job as a janitor at night so he could
attend full-time during the year.
“I wanted to do something that was going to help further
(full-time attendance) along, and it’s a full-time
job,” Martinez said.
Martinez sweeps and mops the floors, dusts the work areas, takes
out trash and cleans bathrooms. He maintains the corridors, secures
the building at night and reports any leaks or problems.
Before heading to southwest campus to speak with Martinez at his
workplace in Warren Hall during finals week of Session C, I
ventured onto campus in the evening. I had been on campus that late
before. But this time, I paid close attention to the vast amount of
activity that goes on.
Maintenance staff entered buildings with large pipes and
cumbersome equipment.
The emergency aid helicopter landed at the hospital.
People waited in the emergency room, and families gathered at
the waiting area near the main entrance.
At the hospital, “Nothing stops. Ever,” said Verkin
Jansezian, the night house and nursing supervisor at the UCLA
Medical Center.
The hospital has a night capacity of 600 patients, and on a
given night, it usually holds around 475 to 535.
During the night, the hospital maintains the same size nursing
staff as it does during the day, with between 200 and 300 nurses on
duty, Jansezian said.
There are also doctors both physically present and on call.
The rest of the campus is also busy.
There are about 250 custodians working every night on campus
from 5:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. and close to 400 on the maintenance staff
total, said Jack Powazek, assistant vice chancellor of general
services. Many of those are also craft employees, including
plumbers and electricians.
In addition, certain construction projects, roadwork and street
cleaning get done at night, Powazek said. Facilities Maintenance
always has people on duty.
“Even at midnight on a holiday we always have a few people
here,” he said.
For most of Martinez’s colleagues, work on the custodial
staff is another much-needed source of income.
“For a lot of people, this is their second job,” he
said. “Mostly because of the benefits.”
Much of the custodial staff has been here for a long time,
Martinez said. For many, it is their first experience with a 401k
and health insurance, he said.
Martinez makes about $10 an hour, a slight pay increase over
daytime work of a similar nature. This is not enough to support
himself through school, so he relies on financial aid to fill in
the gaps.
Though one of many who labor at night on UCLA’s campus,
Martinez is in many ways unique. He sees the cutting-edge science
that makes up his physical surroundings as he works as an
opportunity to learn, and he discusses the projects with
researchers he comes across. At one point he introduced me to two
researchers when one needed to borrow equipment. The researchers
had worked in the same building for years but never met.
“I interact with the graduate students and researchers;
it’s an interesting community at night,” he said.
“It’s been exciting.”
The very places that we as undergraduates and professors see as
our lecture halls, labs and offices are the workplaces of others as
well. But it seems as though these worlds rarely intersect.
As I went farther into campus, I came across some more custodial
staff. I stopped one to inquire why she worked at night. She
couldn’t talk because, well, it was her lunch break and she
was hungry. For some, when it is 9:30 at night it means the day is
ending. But for others, it’s lunch time.
Contact Mishory at jmishory@media.ucla.edu.