the secret files of uni high
Who REALLY runs our school?
THE MYSTERY OF THE MAINTENECE MEN PT. 2
By Yazid Achary-Khan
GP is the energetic talkative maintenance man at Uni High. You’ve probably seen him running around the school, carrying chairs, cutting wood and doing other odd jobs. Despite their important job here, I would say that the maintenance people are largely a mystery to the average student.
GP tends to wake up at 6:30 am, and arrives at work at 7. Upon getting to the campus, the first job for the day is to tidy up the school. He often finds syringes, bottles of alcohol and sometimes even weed left behind from gatherings. Nobody really knows who uses the school for these purposes, but GP and his colleagues need to clean up whatever is there to make the school suitable for students and teachers to study within.
After cleaning up he checks his compass. On the compass is a list of issues that need to be resolved. Problems such as lights that don’t work or broken pieces of furniture. A majority of the day is spent working on those odd jobs.
Over a 5 year period before getting his job at Unihigh, GP worked as a joiner (people who make cabinets) for a Carpentry Cert IV, as well as doing construction formwork. After that he moved to Perth and did odd jobs around the place. I was told he really likes Perth, saying that it is “like Melbourne, but quieter”. GP described Fremantle, a city in greater Perth, as having the same sort of hippie culture that one would see in Fitzroy. The people there are very friendly, and will invite you over to have a chat and a bit to drink, even if you don’t know them.
The maintenance people do have one thing they really like. Coffee. In fact, inside their office is a small coffee maker. GP tends to start his day with a large cappuccino with no sugar, and sometimes he may even have one more later if friends or family are over.
GP and the rest of the maintenance people are ridiculously nice and friendly people who do some very valuable and underappreciated jobs in our school, and getting to talk to him was a great experience that opened my eyes, and I hope yours, to the very interesting lives of the maintenance people.