drwex | At least he stopped calling me 'sir'

This is a story nominally about a worker in the building where my company has its offices. He's gone now, so I'm going to try to tell this little story which is about him but also about me. I've never told this story before so I'm not sure

Like many such corporate buildings, the building in which I work is cleaned by a hired company. The face of the company that we see are the workers who come around and empty our trash, scrub our counters, and clean the bathrooms. Like a lot of these companies that face is predominantly brown, and one cannot help overhearing a lot of rapid-fire and very slangy Spanish when these folk talk to each other.

By choice, they do not generally talk to us. The woman who takes the trash from my cubicle seems perpetually embarrassed when I look up and say "Thank you" to her. I always try to do that, and do it while looking at her, not mumbling it or avoiding seeing her. Her nervousness and haste in departing my cube are palpable, to the point that I do not dare venture more.

She is still here, but the man who cleaned the bathrooms is not, so I want to tell this story about him. It begins with a coincidence of schedule, in that he was almost always working in the bathroom as I was leaving the building and would stop in to use a stall or sink. At first I went to avoid using it, so as not to interfere with him, but he indicated it was no problem and I went about my business. As I left I said "Good night" and, startled, he replied "Good night, sir" in his slightly accented English.

We continued this routine for some days and I confess I cannot remember what broke it. Perhaps it was him talking on his cell phone and my curious expression; perhaps it was one of the times on a Friday when I wished him a good weekend. Whatever the cause, it broke some sheen of ice and we began to chat, a little.

At first the chats were hesitant; he was not confident of his English and said as much. In fact, his English was quite good. We talked, a few minutes a day, about our lives, and things. I learned that he worked as a welder during the day; the cleaning job was supplemental income. He had a boy about 10 years old and we joked about how our boys were both fascinated by the Wii - his on car-racing games, mine on Lego Star Wars. We compared our likes and dislikes in food, and beer.

In time he told me a bit about his family, which was quite large and split between the US and Mexico. We talked about trying to help our families and how neither of us really liked to go shopping - he seemed to be the only one of his family who looked on it as a chore. I talked about my family and even a bit about my mother, and the difficulty of caring for her. Still through all of this when I'd head home he would say "Good night, sir."

For those who don't know me I might mention that I don't much like being called 'sir' except in certain cases. But I wasn't going to tell him that, even if I could have explained it. Still, it drove home just how different we were, how our situations backgrounded and overwhelmed those things we tried to find in common. At one level he was a father like me and we could talk about our sons; at another level, simultaneously, he was the man who cleaned the toilets I used.

Then one day, out of the blue, he greeted me with "¿Como estas, mi amigo?" I don't think it was anything I had done, or said. By then he knew quite well that I didn't speak Spanish, but he still grinned when I greeted him with "¿Como estas?" And he never called me "sir" after that. I don't know that you could say much changed in our chats; it was still only a superficial few minutes a day. But it felt better, to me.

He's gone now, as I said. I worry that his supervisor might have noticed him getting too friendly with me, or maybe too friendly with one of the other people in the building. I'd hate to think he got fired, or worse deported. Maybe his welding business picked up enough that he could quit the cleaning job, or maybe he had to move back to Mexico to help out that part of his family.

I miss talking with him at the end of my day. I never imagined we were actually friends, but I miss his friendliness. And at least he stopped calling me 'sir'.