For Wells, 44, the reward is being alone with his thoughts. In the hallways of the Bell Telephone building on the Temple University campus, Wells' constant partners are the whisper of the ventilation system, the monotonous, whirring floor buffer and the occasional lilt of his own whistle, a sound quickly swallowed in the hallway's silence.
"You can't go to a party and say, 'Gee whiz, I'm a computer programmer or a schoolteacher,' " Wells says of his job. "Most people make up big names for a janitor. 'Well, I'm a sanitation engineer.' . . . I don't see it as a dead-end job. Somebody's got to be the janitors and trashmen of the world."
So somebody does. And with each passing year the demand grows for people to fill jobs as janitors - more so, in fact, than for any other job in the Philadelphia area.
Out of 27 occupations expected to provide the most job openings in this region between 1984 and 1995, janitorial work ranked highest, according to Edward Murray, regional labor analyst with the state Department of Labor and Industry. During that period, said Murray, an estimated 50,000 janitorial jobs will be added to the workforce in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Just behind janitorial work, said Murray, will be openings in retail sales, secretarial work, general office work and jobs for security guards.
The national trend for openings in janitorial work, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, is not quite so pronounced as in Philadelphia. But it is still high on the list, ranking fourth in expected growth with retail sales jobs at the top, and waiter jobs and nursing jobs ranking second and third.
But if sales jobs, office jobs and nursing jobs all carry at least the connotation of professional employment and some measure of public esteem, there is little doubt that the janitors of the future will find little more prestige paid them than the janitors of the past.
It is the proverbial dirty job. And in the year 2000 - as today - someone will have to do it.
