Don't be a chump or your city might soon be a dump.

Tonight I was studying at the Starbucks in the University hospital and on my way out there was a custodian buffing the floor in front of the exit. I didn't want to make more work for him, so I stopped and asked if it was okay to pass. He smiled at me and told me it was quite alright for me to walk through. As I passed him he said, "Thank you for asking". I had my head phones on so I just smiled with a nod. In retrospect, I regret not telling him that the floor looked as good as it did. On the rest of my walk home I thought about what happened, which is odd because how often have I bumped into a custodian and never given it a second thought.

We owe a great deal to the workforce that maintains the nation's infrastructure. As a whole we rarely show it, maybe because much of this work is completed while we sleep and we just don't see it, or is it because our society saves praise for the extraordinary not the ordinary. Stories on the news acknowledge a doctor saving a life almost nightly, but what about the custodians that rises early every morning to salt and clear walkways and roads around the city in the bitter cold. Have they not saved lives? Being polite to custodians, construction workers, maids, and all who work to keep our infrastructure up and running goes a long way. If maintenance crews stopped working and went on strike tomorrow, what condition would your neighborhood or workplace be in a week from then?