Teresa Puckett: at home with graveyard shift

Blasting Q101 radio, Custodian Teresa Puckett arrives at 3 a.m. every weekday to clean the Science Center.

Each day, custodian Puckett said, she comes in, takes off her shoes and turns the radio on in Room 106 loud enough so she can hear it from wherever she is in the building. The only station that comes in is Q101. She turns it off around 6:30 before people start coming in, though sometimes someone like Roman Miller does catch her. Most people start coming in around 7:00.

Puckett says she hasn't always worked the graveyard shift at EMU. Although this March will mark 15 years since she began work here, she started working the 3 to 11 a.m. shift just this year. Of the variety of shifts she's worked, Puckett prefers her current shift. "I like being able to come in and get what I have to get done before a lot of people get here," said Puckett. The early morning hours allow her to get home in the afternoon, clean up the house, help her 13 and 10- year-old sons with homework, and fix supper for her family.

Getting up at 2 a.m. can be tiring. "I don't get enough sleep; I know that," said Puckett. She tries to make up sleep on weekends, but naps don't work for her since she can't sleep during daylight hours.

Although she graduated from Dominion Business School in Harrisonburg to be a medical secretary, Puckett returned to the work of her grandmother, mother, and many of her aunts. "I come from a family of cleaners," said Puckett.

Puckett joined the EMU staff in 1990. When she started working under a temporary summer contract, her husband worked as a mechanic at the Physical Plant and her father, the current structural service supervisor, also worked there. After the woman responsible for cleaning Northlawn was injured in an automobile accident, Puckett was asked to fill in for her. She supplemented the daily six hours by working full-time in the snack shop. Several years later, Puckett was transferred to the Science Center where she chose to stay despite an opportunity to move to the Commons.

Cleaning in the Science Center does have its hazards. Puckett recalls one time when someone broke into the chemistry rooms and knocked over some mercury. She had been trying to clean up the silver beads on the floor when a professor informed her how toxic mercury was. The story sticks in her mind because she had not realized at the time how dangerous the substance she was handling is.

Another time, Puckett said, she knocked something over in room 103. When she tried to wipe it up with a rag, it started smoking. She has also had to deal with eggs thrown at the glass doors around Halloween and neighborhood children running on the roof in the summer.

Over the years, Puckett has experienced changes in attire, both for students and for custodial staff. Under her first supervisor, she said, they had to wear smocks while they worked. The next supervisor made that more of an option, and it's not something she wears today.

Recently, Puckett has noticed more turnover of faculty and staff. When she was hired, she said, there was the sense that people just stayed in one place. Her own father, Charles Nesselrodt, has worked at EMU for 36 years. Puckett, at age 35, has no plans to leave anytime soon. She said she always jokes with students that "they'll either see my head up there on one of the walls in the 'head room' or I'll be in there in the cadaver room."

Believe it or not, Puckett enjoys cleaning. "I have days where I - like everybody else - hate [my job]," she admitted, but she says she much prefers the active nature of her work to sitting behind a desk. The flexibility of her work schedule and the family atmosphere are also benefits.

In 2002, the Pucketts' house burned down six days before Christmas. The way everyone helped their family out really gave Puckett a sense of community. Going through the fire and losing everything has made Puckett appreciate the little things and realize how much of life gets taken for granted. She would encourage students not to take the cleaning staff for granted and realize how much work it creates when they write on desks or how helpful it can be to just pick up trash that they notice lying around.