the secret files of uni high
THE MYSTERY OF THE MAINTENANCE MEN PT. 1
By Lestari Ida Bagus
The “maintenance man” has a name, and it’s Benji.
We’re all used to seeing the maintenance staff around Uni High doing all sorts of jobs, though we have not yet seen them as the individuals they are. There is a great distinction between who you are at work and who you are as a person. Funnily enough, I was due to interview the other maintenance man, GP, but when I got to their office, GP was already being interviewed! This gave me the opportunity to find out about Benji, a just as notable associate, and what I found out about him was fascinating. It wasn’t fascinating as if he was an undercover spy, it was fascinating because I could now see him as a person.
Benji works alongside GP, and together they take charge of maintaining Uni High and keeping it a safe, enjoyable environment. Benji shared with me what the maintenance workers do on a daily basis and what all the jobs they take part in are “Yeah it's tricky, and a heap of different jobs. Like for instance we’ll fix doors, and get people in to fix windows. Personally myself, I organise a lot of trades to do that sort of stuff, whereas GP will do a lot of the smaller tasks. Like if the door needs to be fixed, someones thrown up on the stairs, for instance someones locked out of the classroom, someones locked in the classroom, pretty much everything that you can possibly think of that you’ve had a problem with at Uni High that's not regarding teaching, facilities and maintenance deal with it.”
I asked Benji “What should I do if I find a hole in the wall?” in order to form a perspective of a student that is questioning what to do and who to seek help from if property is damaged. Benji replied “Okay so that's great. If you find a hole in the wall I would tell your teacher or your subschool coordinator or whoever, anyone you can really do and say “there's a hole in the wall”, you can even take a photo of it, show your teacher and then tell them, and this is the important part, put it on issue tracker, and then that goes to me, and I see that everyday, and then I either get a tradie to fix it, or I fix it, or GP fixes it.”
Getting to know a bit more about Benji’s personal life was why I decided to conduct this interview with him. A few questions were asked relating to his social life and what he does in his free time. Benji talked about what he had planned for the upcoming weekend, “tonight I’m hanging out with a mate I haven’t seen in a while and I’m watching, we call them cob seshes, I’ve got no idea why, we drink some beers, some cob juice, we call it cob juice, stupid nicknames, and watch some movies.” As well as hanging out with mates, Benji talks about his prized possession, his playstation 5. “I've been playing Cyberpunk 27 at the moment but everyone says it's a glitchy, crappy thing, but it's alright, and I'm easily done. The other one was The Ghost of Sushima which is like a Japanese, historical thing where you're just a samurai and I love chopping people up and I love gore. I'm a horror movie fan.”
Benji is an animal lover as he passionately described his two dogs and two cats to me, “I've got a samoyed, which is a big, fluffy, Alaskan, I think it’s an Alaskan breed, from the Spitz family, and a Finnish Lapphund which is the native dog of Finland that herds reindeer over there, that's what they were built for. And then two cats, both strays that we sort of took in.
Finally, I asked Benji “Do you enjoy your job?” and he replied “Yes, love it. It can be stressful and I don't enjoy the stress but I enjoy the challenge. I like trying things that I don't know how to do and figuring the problem out and its sense of accomplishment pretty much.”