Waylon nearly jumped out of his own skin, startled by the sheer proximity of the man. During his admittedly short employment with Murkoff, he’d grown highly suspicious of anything and anyone within the facility that was Mt. Massive, so to have someone interrupt his coding by physically bending down to whisper in his ear had thrown him for quite the loop.
Eyes sure to be comically wide at this point, Waylon turned sharply in his chair to stare at the man who’d backed away by a bit, a dilapidated mop in one hand and a spray bottle containing some sort of neon blue cleaning solution in the other. Out of the corner of his eye, a few feet behind the man, Waylon caught sight of a trolley full of cleaning supplies. A janitor? He’d hardly noticed him enter the room, yet alone sneak up on him like that.
The realization that the Murkoff staff actually included a janitor, came as somewhat of a surprise to him. In his wild imaginings, he’d gone so far as to assume that the billion dollar enterprise would have equipped the facility with some sort of system that would automatically hose down the facility or even, in his more ridiculous daydreams, that a team of roombas might be what kept the facility clean.
But no, of course they employed an actual person. Cheaper to pay someone minimum wage than to install a highly expensive automated system (or to buy a team of roombas).
"Why would you-" Waylon started, still a little disoriented, before the janitor held up his hands in defense, quickly scurrying off to the trolley where he scooped something out of one of the buckets before returning to Waylon’s side. Scratching the back of his neck, the janitor held out the object to him, looking embarrassed. Waylon simply stared.
It was definitely his mug, the words “Waylon Park, #1 Dad” gave that away, but it had obviously been shattered and put back together, quite haphazardly from the odd angles that the shards had been put back together in. Slightly speechless, Waylon took the mug.
"Sorry, I was cleaning the break room and bumped into it with my mop, y’see…" The janitor trailed off, shuffling his feet slightly. "I really tried, I know it’s kind of a shitty fix, but yeah, sorry. Had to go to the administration block to ask where your desk was. So that was fun…" He muttered, looking like it had been anything but fun. Waylon could do nothing but nod.
Backing up a bit, the janitor paused at his trolley, still looking embarrassed. “Well, anyway, gotta get back to work. Sorry.”
Waylon absentmindedly traced the letters in the broken pieces of porcelain with a single finger. Lisa had given it to him as a joke, but now it was just a painful reminder that home was just out of his reach. He didn’t look up. “Yeah, me too. Work, that is. It’s alright.” He mumbled.
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