Bathroom Stalls: A Day in the Life

Neehar Kantimahanti

To everyone’s surprise, Mrs. Allen’s Spiritual Disciplines class cleaned the gym bathrooms on May 5th, 2017.

The day before, Mrs. Allen had told the class to meet in the gym instead of the classroom. “Maybe we will be playing basketball,” Anson Chin (12) exclaimed optimistically. To almost everyone’s disappointment, he was terribly wrong. The class came to the gym only to see piles of buckets, rags, and bottles of toilet cleaner. Mrs. Allen explained that we would be cleaning the toilets as part of our discipline of service. She also talked about how no one will be writing articles on this or paying much attention to this, but it would be a huge help to the cleaning staff.

Then she asked the class which jobs they wanted, such as cleaning the shower stalls, mopping the floors, or the dreaded cleaning of the toilets. Some brave souls volunteered to clean the toilets as others breathed a sigh of relief.  The class got to work immediately without much fuss. Starting off with the girls’ bathroom, soapy water was everywhere from the top of the stalls to the edge of the bathroom in a matter of minutes. Complaints could be heard about some of the not so pleasant stalls, but nevertheless, the bathrooms were looking much better already. Next, hoses were started and water was sprayed anywhere that could be seen. The bathroom floor was full of water that even the cautionary cleaning sign was put to use. After every stall and toilet was drenched in water, the class moved on to the boys’ bathroom and completed that just as quickly.

The whole point of this excursion was to teach us about the discipline of service. Instead of just sitting in class and learning about how to serve others, engaging in acts of service was a much more valuable experience. In the end, this service, which took a class of 25 students about 40 minutes to do, was a huge help to the cleaning staff, as Mrs. Allen explained the next day. With so many stalls to cover, it takes the cleaning staff much longer than that. Even though this favor was only for one day, it gave the cleaning staff a well-deserved break.