Don't ignore the janitor

One thing is not to be an asshole and respect people, but other is that janitors seem to not understand that when people who sit in the office after hours probably are doing unpaid overtime (in some companies you can at least take those hours back) and would prefer to finish their tasks as fast as possible and go home.

I used to work 9 to 5 (sometimes 9 to 8) and sure, I can greet the janitor, have some small talk, but I dont have the time to listen to their life story. And some janitors really liked to talk a lot, while I just wanted to finish my job and go home. (If they started at 6pm they were fresh at the beginning of their shift, while I should have already left 1 hour earlier).

So I understand why my colleagues (especially ones who had kids) ignored the janitors. If you leave 15 minutes earlier, you have 15 more minutes for your kid. If you are late the kid will be asleep.

And yes I talked with janitors, but I remember that one lady who thought that everyone can talk with her for 30 minutes at 7pm and just wouldnt take a clue to move on.

She didnt understand that the team was stuck at work after hours to finish something important, it was an abnormal situation.

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The weird part for me is that people don't say good morning for instance. I can see small-talk not being appropriate in many situations, and it's just stealing peoples time. It's the lack of acknowledgement I find weird. As you say, just a smile and or nod, that's fine.

I'd have to force myself pretty hard to ignore anyone when coming into the office in the morning. It's not forced politeness or insincere, is it what you do. Then if people need to talk, and you have the time, which most of us honestly do, take a few minutes to listen. To me that's at absolute baseline for decent behavior.

For some people just being proficient and comfortable in the local language can be a huge advantage. But it can be very hard to get any kind of real world experience, especially in countries with a high proficiency in English.

Just like you I often stay late in the office to get into the zone, and I became friends with one of the janitors. We even started going to the gym together. I met his family. In just half a year his Norwegian improved so much that we went from trying to make conversations to actually discussing things. Then covid happened and everyones lives got turned upside down.

I’ve always made a point of not just being respectful, but of actively cultivating relationships, with “lower-echelon” folks.

There’s personal reasons for this, which aren’t really relevant (for example, I am mostly self-taught, and have been treated like crap for most of my life by those with formal schooling), but I’ve often found these folks to be interesting, appreciative of the respect, great sources of information (when you are invisible, people say stuff around you), and, quite often, able to be very helpful.

At my previous company, I made friends with the service techs, down in the basement. They provided my department with thousands of dollars worth of utility kit (like cables and batteries), and often fixed my stuff, very quickly.