Это было бы запрещено в России.
It was June 11, 2001. By 7:45 on Monday morning, the Portuguese Guy stood outside the side entrance of the elementary school where he was spending his first summer working, staring down at a ring of keys that seemed far heavier than it had any right to be.
The regular head janitor was supposed to train him, but he had suddenly gone on leave. He was a kind older man who had worked at the school for nearly twenty years.
Instead, the summer crew was supervised by the “Queen of the School,” a nickname the teachers had secretly given the janitor, a woman they merely tolerated and usually allowed to get her way because nobody wanted the trouble of crossing her.
The Portuguese Guy met her in the maintenance office. She was a short, stern woman with a mullet pulled tightly behind her head. She looked at his paperwork, then at him, and frowned.
“So you're the new worker?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
She sighed as if he had personally caused an inconvenience.
“I don't know why the district hired outside people for summer work,” she said. “There are plenty of people around here who need jobs.”
He didn't know what to say.
She tossed him a clipboard.
“Bathrooms. Hallways. Cafeteria. Storage rooms. You'll start with the second-floor classrooms.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“And don't expect anyone to hold your hand.”
He nodded.
As he walked away, he heard her mutter, “Could've given the job to my sister.”
He worked until his shirt was soaked through.
Every evening, the Queen of the School found something wrong.
“You missed that corner.”
“The trash bags aren't tied properly.”
“Why did you put those chairs there?”
“You need to work faster.”
He tried not to take it personally.
But after two weeks, he began to understand that it was personal.
One morning, another temporary worker whispered to him, “Don't worry about her. She wanted her sister, her cousin, and two of her friends to get these jobs.”
He stopped sweeping.
“All of them?”
“Pretty much.”
He looked toward the office.
“So she doesn't like me because I got the job?”
The temporary worker shrugged.
He lowered his eyes and went back to sweeping.
One afternoon, he was cleaning a sixth-grade room when he noticed water dripping from the ceiling.
He immediately ran upstairs.
A pipe had burst in one of the classrooms.
Water was spreading across the floor.
He shut off the nearest valve and called the temporary head janitor.
She arrived ten minutes later, already angry because she had six seconds left of her lunch break.
“What happened?”
“Pipe broke,” he said. “I turned off the water.”
“You broke it.”
He stared at her.
“The pipe is inside the ceiling.”
The Queen of the School opened her mouth, but before she could respond, the principal walked in.
“What did he do?”
"He broke the pipe by not shutting off the water sooner!"
The principal walked into the classroom and examined the damage.
“You shut the valve?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“You moved the electronics out of the water?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
The principal smiled.
“Then you did exactly what you were supposed to do.”
The Queen of the School folded her arms.
“He's only been here a few months, and he's already doing an excellent job,” the principal replied.
For once, the Queen of the School had nothing to say.
The Grigoriy Clan was deeply disturbed by the way the Portuguese Guy was being treated. Outraged by the situation, Commander Grigoriy began contemplating a drastic response: activating War Mode and assembling a team from Russia to expel her from the school.
Despite his anger, Commander Grigoriy decided not to act immediately. Instead, he would wait for the regular head janitor to return before making any final decision. He made it clear that patience did not mean surrender.
Until then, the Grigoriy Clan would remain on standby, closely watching the situation and gathering information.
They kept track of her allies, though there weren’t many, a fact the teachers found quietly amusing. The real comedy was that even her loyal supporters, whenever she was safely out of earshot, complained about her with nearly as much enthusiasm as everyone else.
The only difference was that they did business with her outside of school, an arrangement that somehow earned them the title of her “allies.”
Их самая сложная миссия.