Fossil Ridge High School custodians say they feel appreciated but they do have one wish: that students pick up their trash.

“Basically just, in the classrooms pick up your trash- there’s a lot of trash that’s on the floors,” said Caleb Suggs, a member of Fossil’s custodial team.

However, most of the custodians say they enjoy the job and feel some success every day.

“Just being open with everybody, like talking to everybody… getting to be friends with the students and the teachers,” said Maryam Azeez about the good parts of her job.

But many of the custodians still share the same wish, which is for students to pick up after themselves better.

“Students [should] try to clean up after themselves, help us keep it clean. I think some of them have attitudes that they have custodians, they can clean it up,” said Mark Vadovsky.

Custodians may be the hardest working people at Fossil, because with a population of nearly 2000 students and staff and a big school, it’s a lot to keep clean. Some of the biggest problem areas in the schools are the bathrooms.

“Flush the toilet,” James McDonough said when asked about what students could do differently to make his job easier.

“Well, a lot of other kids would just throw stuff around, and like, they’d trash the bathroom really bad,” Benjamin Suggs said.

Sometimes the custodial staff has to clean up some strange messes.

“A floor lamp glued to the doors above the gym entrance near the parking lot. Seriously, it was. They took one of those five colored shade lamps and a lawnmower, and got it up there and glued it to the concrete,” Vadovsky said.

“There’s like been cheese all over the lawn. Just cheese,” Azeez said.

Despite this, they do enjoy many other parts of the job. 

“Just being in the school, seeing the kids,” Vadovsky said.

Lee Davey agrees. 

“I can’t complain. Teachers and students help out quite a bit,” Davey said.