My Most Inspirational Professor — Janitor Joe
An extraordinary mentor doing his ordinary job
Tak C. Poon, MD
I was a medical student rotating through the County Hospital on the poor side of town. To stay alive after staying up all night on-call and before another 12-hour day began, I’d crawl to the cafeteria just before it opened at 6 a.m.
Through the mesh partition, I could watch the lone janitor at work. I called him Professor Joe. I never got to meet him. He always disappeared just before the gate rolled up.
I enjoyed watching Prof. Joe wipe clean every cheap scratched-up Formica tabletop with overlapping circles, digging into the edges to get the grime out, and scraping off every little patch of dried-up spill with his fingernails.
As if polishing vintage Ferraris, all dozens of them in the fluorescence-lit chow hall.
He also wiped down every one of the twelve chairs at each table with the same meticulous diligence. They were the typical metal-framed plastic stackable chairs of random colors in various degrees of disrepair.
He lined them up around each table with the precision of computer graphics. Backing up, squatting down, squinting one eye, and tilting his head for perfect alignment.
As if setting up a royal banquet in Buckingham Palace.
If there was time left before opening, he would walk around to inspect his “honor guards”, straightening out any minute irregularities before marching off with a faint smile and his head held high.
All the while knowing that in a matter of minutes, the whole trailer park would be turned back into a national disaster area after the morning hurricane blew through.
And he would do it all over again the next morning.
“Nearly everything you do is of no importance,
but it is important that you do it.”Gandhi
I had many great professors, some of them Nobel Prize winners. Without saying a word, Professor Joe taught me all I needed to know to care for my patients, honor my work, and respect myself.
I knew then if I could develop a work habit like his, I would be one hack of a healer and a mighty solid person. And it would be a healing habit for me as well.
Extraordinary lessons can come from ordinary places—if only we are not too arrogant to learn.
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Extraordinary Living by Ordinary Means 2024