Mopping up vomit from a long night at Roscoe’s, collecting stray hairs from bathroom sinks and showers, scraping half-eaten meatloaf from plates in the caf — work-study presents some very dirty jobs. Student workers complete these foul jobs daily to keep our campus clean.

Arguably, one of the dirtiest places on campus is Dieseth Hall, but that does not stop Landon Auld (‘08) from trudging through the filth to keep things sanitary. Auld is a student assistant for Custodial Services. His main duty is to fill in when students are not able to work. He also completes jobs that are usually forgotten about, like cleaning the banisters.

“When cleaning the stairwells in Dieseth Hall, it is not uncommon to have a bucket of water and after a floor or so the water in the bucket is pitch black,” said Auld. “Much of the stuff is chew spit and snot, saliva from people trying to spit from the top floors to the ground. Most of the time it isn’t terrible but then there is always spit in the elevator, and spit, spit, spit.”

Auld is thankful, however, that his job does not include other bodily fluids.

“Fortunately, being a student, the issues of vomit are left to either the residents who caused the issue or the head custodians of the building,” said Auld.

In a previous interview, Security Officer Erik Stoen recounted his experiences in vomit clean up.

“I would say I clean up around four vomit messes in an average week, but the most I’ve ever done in one night is seven,” said Stoen.

Cleaning vomit four times a week for the last 19 years has given Stoen extensive knowledge on vomit.

“I can pretty much tell what you’re gonna drink, what you’ve been drinking and what you’ve been eating,” said Stoen.

Some students get to view this food before it is discarded while working in the trayline at the caf.

William Morris (‘11) described one disturbing scene while employed by Dining Services.

“A few weeks after I started in the caf, I was working on the trayline and got a tray with a napkin shoved in a cup,” said Morris. “I reached into the cup to remove the napkin and found that I had shoved my hand into the largest booger I have ever had the dubious pleasure of encountering. Someone had blown their nose and shoved the napkin in their cup.”

Another Dining Services worker, Jared Weyant (‘11), described his experience in the dishroom.

“Well, one fateful Sunday night, I was working in the dishroom, washing plates off as usual,” said Weyant. “It was like any other night until I had started washing a soup bowl, and I saw a tray completely covered in ketchup, mustard and chocolate syrup. There were glasses upside down stuck tightly to the tray, and it was the most ridiculously gross thing I have ever seen. In fact, I was so distraught that I accidentally dropped the glass soup bowl down the garbage disposal.”

In a different aspect of caf life, Jess Boese (‘09) works as student manager/dock manager.

“As a dock manager, I take care of running places and getting food for the kitchen ladies, unloading trucks and of course, dealing with the caf garbage,” said Boese.

Boese detailed a particular episode involving her garbage duties.

“On this particular night we were serving BBQ ribs … yum,” said Boese. “Well, the only hitch to this is that in the dishroom, we are not allowed to put bones into the garbage disposals. Some of the kids who were scrubbing pots and pans thought it would be a good idea to just dump the left-over ribs, juice and all, into the garbage instead of picking just the bones out of the pans and discarding them in the garbage. By the time I caught it, we had half of a 30 gallon trash can full of BBQ ribs, juice and nastiness. We had to dump the garbage into two or three bags and I can’t even begin to describe the smell coming from that garbage can.”

But sloppy messes are not found only in the caf. Justin Carlson (‘08) works plugging clay in the pottery studio. Carlson describes the job and messes that come with the territory.

“Basically, it involves taking 55 gallon buckets of wet, slimy, sloppy clay and adding dry mix to it inside a pug mill,” said Carlson. “After a few rounds of that, the clay becomes recycled and re-usable. Imagine an inch of heavy wet/dry/grimy mud like clay on your fingers after you’ve scraped it out of a huge barrel that is intermittently spotted with ‘black spots,’ or in other words, where hair and skin cells and the occasional sponge/chamois start to decompose in the actual clay bucket.”

All of these jobs, as disgusting as they may be, are necessary for a clean and secure campus, Luther students complete these semi-nauseating tasks daily to keep the campus running smoothly.