Moonlight Cleaning

Kind, Gentle Doris Harris Has Worked the Nightshift at Gelman for 31 Years

Lunchtime for Doris Harris is just like any midday break for a hardworking person: she sits down at her favorite table, eats her chicken salad, and relaxes by playing solitaire, keeping in mind that the second half of her day is fast approaching.

It’s 2:30 a.m. and Harris is at the midway point of her job; she works the night shift at Gelman Library.

“I really don’t eat breakfast,” she stated with a soft hum, referring to the meal most people eat when they wake up. “Since I wake up in the afternoon, by this point, I’m really hungry.”

Born Doris Brooks in 1960, she was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, the daughter of a welder and a housewife, and the oldest among her two brothers and three sisters.

In 1974 she came to Forestville, Maryland “a few years after graduating high school” to find work.

Soon after, she found a job at a toy factory, Taka Toys, in Landover and in December 1975 married Joseph Harris, an employee for Giant Food.

After Taka Toys shuttered its doors, Harris quickly found work at Gelman Library as a nighttime custodian, or housekeeper, as she prefers to be called. She learned about the opportunity from a man in her apartment building who, at the time, was also employed in the library.

“I started here June 5, 1978 and I’ve been here since,” she said in her soft-spoken voice. “I’ve always done the night shift. I’ve been doing the same thing for 31 years. I dust, vacuum, pull trash, and that’s it. I don’t do no mopping.”

Harris, an ample, dark-skinned woman of medium height and short dark hair, attentively cleans the library from Sunday to Thursday while most of the campus sleeps. Everyday she dresses in her light blue smock, dark blue trousers, and chocolate brown crocs.

Though the shoes are technically out of regulation, “tennis shoes hurt my feet, especially with all the walking I do,” Harris stated.

She starts her shift at 11 p.m. with the seven other custodians, beginning with the seventh floor. She and the others slowly work their way down, each cleaning a particular section.

“Though we’re supposed to stay together, during the school year we divide up,” Harris explained. “I get the right side when exiting the elevators.”

Though the staff is required to move down, cleaning each floor in order, “oftentimes, though, we have to skip the sixth floor because it gets crowded,” she admits. “We just can’t clean with that many people.”

Normally, by the time she finishes cleaning the third floor, another popular area for students, it’s 2:30 a.m. and time for her hour-long “lunch break.”

At 7 a.m. her shift ends, and Harris gets in her car to drive home.

“Some mornings I’m really sleepy,” she said. “But usually I make it home just fine.”

Harris has had 31 years to adjust to her hours, and, as she explained, she’s become nocturnal.

“Lack of sleep bothered me at first, but then I got used to it,” she says.

The hours don’t really bother her anymore. Instead she has a whole new problem: arthritis.

“I feel it in my legs. I feel it in my knees,” she says softly. “I’ve had it for about four years. We just walk around a lot and it hurts.”

“After 31 years I want to retire,” Harris continued. “This is my last year, but don’t tell anyone. I don’t want everybody to know right now; they’d worry me to death. They’d be asking me a lot of questions. I want to leave peacefully. I also want to be able to change my mind.”

Her plans for retirement are simple, she stated.

“Oh lord. I want about a month’s rest. Then I want to travel and retire with my grandkids,” Harris asserts.

Doris Harris expects to move back to North Carolina, returning to her childhood home of Raleigh. She wants to live near her daughter, who is married and has three children.

“It’s a really nice place to live,” she says. “You can get lost now though-they built it up.”

Though Harris divorced her husband in 1991, “we still talk; we’re still friends. He got married again. I didn’t,” she explained.

Did her job strain her marriage?

“No,” Harris replied. “He sometimes had to work nights also.”

As for her remaining nights, Doris Harris remains focused on continuing her routine.

“I get home around 7:30 a.m., have breakfast and coffee, and relax for a couple hours,” she explained. “Between 10 and 11 I go to sleep until five p.m. when I wake up and head to work.”

It fits that she is retiring in June, Harris says, because that’s when the students will leave too.

“I see a lot of different faces, but sometimes the same faces,” she stated, smiling softly. “I enjoy seeing the students and when school is closed it gets lonely.”