From "The Golden Ticket" to "Their way or the highway"

Anon — It was definitely a good place to work and people retired there. People's families worked there together. Family members, parents, whatever, and so once you're there, you would've been there for a long time.

Diane —  I was so excited when I got that job, I thought, oh my, it felt like winning the lottery. I was so happy. And it really changed my life. I loved working for the college because the reputation it had, I loved how they had the learning and labor motto, it seemed like they were fair to their employees and I gave it everything I had. I worked night shift for ten years. I didn't care, I just did anything I had to do to be able to stay there.

Susan Carroll— At the time I was single with it was a child and I was 20 years old. So I needed to make some good income and at the time, that was the best thing around.

Mary — You know, you got your, you got your turkeys at Thanksgiving. They gave you a little get together at Christmas time. But then over the years, that slowly started to change. You can see the company worker relationship changed.

Pat — Ashland was a campus that looked down on custodians. Oberlin, I never had the sense or the feel that I was looked down upon.

Diane — The kids actually felt like my kids. That's kind of what you do when you see the same kids every day, and especially at my age, my kids were their age or even older. So you just kind of relate to them as like your kids. And then two, when it's your own building you're in all the time you take, at least we did, we take pride in our building because it reflects us.

Anon — And, actually having a pension, that was a big thing. It's just a dinosaur now. Everyone's moved away to 401ks in the past 30 years. So the chance to pay into an actual pension and then the college matching 401ks. That was a huge difference because, right now, you're lucky to get a company to match 2% of your pay to a 401k.

Diane — I remember in the elevator in Burton, I was going up it one day and I kept hearing this drip, drip, and I kept thinking, I've never heard that sound before. Why am I – what is this dripping sound? And I kind of brushed it off, and then I asked my sister, I was like, "Do you ever notice hearing that drip before?" And she’s like I don’t know maybe it's just some pipes sweating or something. And I was like, that's not normal. So I called service building and I asked them to have someone come over and check this out. Here they pulled up the elevator, in the bottom of the elevator shaft it was flooding because the sub pump broke. And it was only like three inches from hitting an electrical outlet down there. That would have—if that would have gone up to hit the electrical outlet, it would have shocked anybody that went into that elevator and killed them probably. Another time we were getting all kinds of mold problems in that basement of Burton where that carpet is and the computer labs and stuff. White mold kept growing, forming all over the place and black mold on the walls and we kept telling them, there's something not going onright with the blowers. We could tell the difference in the sound, the sound is different. And we kept– Scott Kallow came over there and said we were stupid and couldn't–didn’t know what we were talking about. Everything's turned on, nothing's not working, and they were gonna tear up that whole flooring down there and put different flooring in. And then finally, we got air conditioner, HVAC people to come and check up in the attic. Sure enough, a blower’s been off for months. Soon as they turned that on, we cleaned the carpet, never had mold or mildew down there again. So, it’s like, we saved that college a lot of money just because we were familiar with the building. We were familiar with the sounds and everything about, it’s like your home.

Jeff — I really enjoyed working for a union because it took a lot of the guesswork out of where everybody was at and what the work conditions would be, at least on paper. Similar, very similar things were expected from everybody, everybody knew what everybody was making as far as money went, we all knew we had the same benefits, and that collectivist nature of it was nice too, it was every couple of years you get together and you negotiate with your brothers and sisters and that's the way that--I have a friend that--I've made some really good friends that I'm still friends with from Oberlin College, and one of them in particular that I still talk to are--we'll go to the bar and get drunk and, you know, talk about the old days and whatnot. And we talk about how nice it was when contract time rolled around, how it felt like a family.

Marsha Rae Douglas — Because of my job at Oberlin College I purchased the house here in Oberlin. I assumed I'd retire from my job, so I purchased the house September 1st of 2019, so. I didn't even make it a year here before we were all let go.

Vince — I, I enjoy it with the theater and stuff like the summer theater stuff and just do all the work the students put in and everything. And it's like working there. You just, you get a bond with everybody and it's like, yeah, in my whole life, it was probably one of the jobs I loved the most.

Michele — The main reason was the job security. I had always, when I got hired in there and then I did, you know, I started out part time and then when I went full time, I was planning on staying there until I retired. And me being 53, I still had quite a ways to go.

Ted — So I'd stop in from time to time. And I took a job at Cleveland for a year and then when I was out again for a little bit and I come down and put an applica-- you know, I applied for if they had something for custodian, or I think the trucking jobs were the only other jobs I could apply for. But I started doing that like, you know, five or six years before I ever landed something.

Lori — All of a sudden, you couldn't call facilities anymore if there was no heat in a students room. The student had to report it through an email. Yeah, It was probably one of the last years that I worked there. It was towards the end, and I remember it was a night when the wind chills were like -30 degrees or -20 something. It was a really cold night. And I remember this student said he had–it looked like he was living down in the basement, like in one of those little study rooms. He would have food down there and a little crock pot, and he had blankets and–this was day after day–and I said, "Where do you live?" I thought he lived in the dorm because I would see him around, and he said,"There's no heat in my room. It's freezing." 

Jack — Well, there was a particular manager that would would bully the employees. Many times I was accused of doing things or was confronted about my work style and it was totally uncalled for. There was times they would throw you under the bus for things that they weren't properly managing and it happened quite often. It wasn't only me, it was many others. And, because of the way they were, people in dining services, the only way they could retaliate was to take time off. Because you couldn't tell them anything, you couldn't reason with them. It was their way or the highway and a lot of times they were wrong.

Lori — I just felt like they didn't, I don't know, they just didn't care in the end about the students, all the -- I felt like they thought the students were just dollar signs, and they had a certain quota they had to meet. It was just very bad in the end. Very bad.

Anon — Definitely more stress, more anxiety. When I was working at the college, it was, it was great, I was working for something. I had a pension, I had a retirement, you could actually work in a really nice place that was recognized as a great place to work by literally random people that you would happen to meet. And now I have to explain to people, "Yeah, I still work at Oberlin College, but I don't work for the college. And it's just some job. And, you know, it is what it is."

Jeff — Bon Appétit was just bloated at the top of management and they didn't really do anything. I remember several times going, if I was running on the Expo Line at Stevenson, for instance-- that's where you just like cook up a given product given recipe right on the spot, right for the students in front of them-- I'm assigned to the Expo Line and then I go to open my book to check my work, and there's nothing in there. And I'm like, "Hey Manager Mark, I got an Expo Line for I think it was like Japanese pancakes or something, where's the recipe for that?" And he was just like, "Oh, I'll get that for you real quick." And I come back in his office like 5 minutes later and I walk in and take a look and he's just on allrecipes.com. That's what I get my recipes from. So it's not like Bon Appétit brought some fount of knowledge of recipes that are tried and true. They-- I've walked in on managers playing online poker, just like farting around on Facebook, I mean, these people were utterly--again, you can use my full name and everything--these people were utterly useless.