User:Stush/Janitor-Guide

Introduction

Heya there! I'm Zooblar! Skrippus, Space Station 13's Idol, Famous Janitor, and so on, some of you have probably seen me on Main (Or on RP, more recently), running around in the party princess dress or as a catgirl maid, either silently mopping up the latest disaster, fixing hull breaches, or snitching over the radio, i’ve done a lot of cleaning over the last few months and i’ve run into enough rookie Janitors that need help that I figured it’d be good to write up a guide to help people on their way.

Being a janitor is a good job to try out when you get started, but that doesn’t mean it’s an especially simple job, it might seem inconsequential at times but trust me, once people start slipping in pools of blood or doctors can’t find the medicine they just dropped because there’s empty syringes all over the place, it can very quickly become an actual life or death situation, and it’s also bad for morale for every part of the station to be covered in vomit and bloody footsteps, and bad morale can make all the difference.

In this guide i’m going to cover all the different pieces of equipment we have available, how to use them, and how to deal with certain situations that might arise, hopefully it can be helpful in your journey to become a great asset to this wonderful station.

Your gear

Clothing and PPE

Outfit

This is the part where you’ll always have the most freedom, it can be nice to stick with the Janitor’s overalls just for recognition purposes, but I’m a dipshit who runs around in a goddamn blue princess dress all day and people still know i’m a janitor, so trust me, wear whatever you want, Maid outfit, a nice suit, rainbow overalls, suspenders and nothing else, go wild!

Galoshes

The Galoshes are boots that ignore any tile that would cause you to slip, except for space lube and tiles that have had oil splashed on them, every janitor starts with a pair and it can be remarkably difficult to get another pair, Horizon has a few extra pairs in lockers, and there’s some floating in space on some maps.

I cannot overstate how important these are, as a janitor you will constantly be on the frontlines of messes, and I often forget how powerful the Galoshes are, but then when i don’t have them i’m slipping on my butt over and over and i just want to start screaming, these shoes are a vital part of any janitor’s gear and you must protect them, other people will desire them and try take them from you.

Gloves

These should be in the locker when you start, functionally they’re the same as an engineer’s insulated gloves, which means you won’t get shocked by stuff you touch, great if you decide to repair doors and stuff while you clean, you can get extra from the Janitech machine.

Headwear

Another place where you have plenty of freedom, If you stick with it long enough you’ll get the lovely Head of Sanitation beret, which is what i usually rock, but you have total freedom here.

Mask

You’ll usually want some kind of breathing mask, you’re going to have plenty of situations where you’re going into depressurised rooms or clouds of dangerous chemicals, getting a gas mask can make such a difference in your survivability for a shift, there’s usually plenty in maintenance corridors and tool rooms.

Containers

Backpack

With how many tools you need to carry around to be effective, you’ll usually want to hang onto this, not much to say, it’s a backpack.

Tool Belt/Fanny Pack

If you have the change, it’s always a good idea to pick up one of these, it’ll give you so much more flexibility, you can load a bunch of your tools into it, or if you want to be like me and go the Janitor/Repairman route, you can fill them up with all the tools you’ll need to fix any busted doors you see, dismantle any annoying walls people put up across the hallways, and whatever other totally legal things you want to do with them, if you can’t find any of these, a doctor’s belt is a good alternative, use your medbay access to your advantage!

Boxes

Boxes are amazing if you want to do more than just clean, i use them to put all my spare medical gear in, as well as my credits and my cleaning spray bottle.

Cybernetics

Cyber-Appendix

I’d say this is a must-have for any janitor, miasma can really creep up on you and become a problem, a cyber-appendix can nearly completely nullify it, it’s one of the easiest surgeries to do, i make it a part of my shift-start routine to give myself one, it also heals a lot of other damage you take slowly over time, you’ll still need to visit medbay occasionally but you won’t be going into crit nearly as much.

Your tools

The Four Heavenly Kings

Sponge

The sponge is going to be your primary tool for cleaning up messes, because it just uses water and can clean up pretty much anything, just click it on a sink to fill it up with water, and then you can click on messes directly to clean them at a cost of some of the water in the sponge, or you can click on a tile and put down a pool of water, similarly to the mop, but then you can soak up the water again so you don’t lose any, the nice thing here is that unlike the mop, you don’t need space cleaner in there.

Mop

Your mop is primarily for cleaning up liquid spills and simple messes like vomit and blood, it can be a little fiddly to get used to at first, but it can clean basically any tile-based mess (With the proper application of space cleaner), and it can soak up gigantic spills in seconds, essential on the underwater maps (But if people aren’t plugging up hull breaches it can be a real losing battle, to use you just wet the mop in a bucket, then click on a tile to put down a pool of the water you wet the mop with, and then click on the pool again to mop it up, once you get used to the rhythm it can be fairly quick and easy to use, comes in blue, with an orange variant available as a job reward.

Vacuum

The vacuum is great and i'm always sad when i see janitors leaving them in the lockers, they're much more convenient than a garbage bag, and you can use them to suck up miasma, super easy to empty too, just click them on a garbage chute or a sink to clear them out. You can suck things off tables at a distance if you need to.

Spray Bottle (With space cleaner)

Ever tried to clean a bloody box or backpack (Or the dreaded bible) with a sponge only to have it eat up your poor sponge? That’s what the spray bottle is for, you can spray it onto a tile and it’ll clean up any containers on that tile, backpacks, belts, boxes, wall cabinets, it also cleans up any messes on any tile, at a cost of a few units of space cleaner each time you spray.

Other must-haves

Buckets

As a cleaner you’ll always want some method of wetting your cleaning tools, either a regular small bucket or one of the big blue mop buckets, each has advantages and disadvantages. Small Bucket

Regular buckets are available in every janitor closet, can be ordered from the Janitech machine, and one of your job rewards is a lovely red bucket, they have a relatively small capacity but make up for this with the ability to place them in your pocket, this is the choice if you want high mobility, but you will be giving up an inventory slot for it.

I'd suggest not using your bucket to re-wet your sponge, the sponge will instantly use all the water in there, you should save that for mop use, just find a sink, they're all over the place.

Mop Bucket

This is what i always used until recently, much larger capacity, but the downside is that you have to drag it around with you and babysit it, and no matter how much you try to dodge people, they WILL run into it and absolutely refuse to stop or adjust their direction slightly until they’ve taken it to the entire other end of the hallway. I still think it’s an incredible tool but since i moved to the smaller buckets i’ve loved my increased agility.

Garbage Bags

Even though garbage disposal chutes are all over the station, people love just dropping anything they don’t need anymore directly onto the floor, most of these don’t actually pose any threat to people, other than banana peels, but keeping the station tidy is part of your job, garbage bags are great for this, you have limited inventory space, and you can stick a garbage bag in your pocket, fill it up with random rubbish and then dump it into the chute, once the garbage bag has anything in it, it can’t be returned to your pocket, though, so keep that in mind, if you accidentally grab it you’ll need to empty it by holding the bag in one hand and clicking on it with an empty hand, one thing at a time, garbage bags are also great for moving really bulky items or things you want to move around in secret, they can contain large items and still hang on your pocket.

There’s two types, regular black ones and red hazardous material bags, functionally they’re the same, if you want to roleplay the red ones would be for syringes and bodyparts and stuff, but you can really just use any of them.

Handy Stuff

Cleaning Grenades

Great for taking the initiative, sometimes mess will build up to a level where you just can’t respond fast enough, this is what cleaning grenades are for, use them when all of medbay is a mess of blood and vomit, try to warn people ahead of time, as it will make them slip, but these things can really save your sanity.

Flashlight/PDA Flashlight upgrade

You’ll probably be travelling through maintenance corridors a lot, so having some extra light is really handy, part of your job is replacing broken lightbulbs, too, so you’ll want the extra light while doing that, if you want to install a PDA flashlight upgrade you’ll need a screwdriver and a crowbar.

Replacement Light Tube/Bulb boxes

There’s a few of these in each Janitor closet, and usually a few boxes laying around the station, and you can make more at a general manufacturer, a big part of your job is keeping the station as safe as possible, and a dimly lit area is one where bad stuff is much more likely to happen, whenever you replace a light, you’ll end up with a broken one, you can stuff those into your garbage bag but i usually just stick it back into the box, that way when you’ve used up the box you can shove it into a garbage bag and only fill one slot rather than fill an entire bag.

Mechanic Tools

A crowbar is a must, you’ll constantly need to open fire barriers, and you’ll want to be able to pry up floor tiles for replacement after they get damaged, and it’s incredibly handy to be able to just grab a few floor tiles to quickly mend a hull breach, the other tools aren’t as vital, i like having a full set just because I enjoy fixing doors and being able to clear up barriers.

Fire Extinguisher

These are all over the station, learn how to use them, you’ll be extinguishing burning people all the time, remember, as a janitor you’ll often be a first responder to an emergency just due to the fact that you’re constantly moving all over the station, also it’s good for bonking people over the head with it if you need to.

Chems

Space Cleaner

Your workhorse chem, comes in 50 unit bottles, if you’re going to use the mop, you’ll always want some of this in the water, i usually put 20 units in a regular bucket, and 50+ in a mop bucket, usually aim for a quarter of the mix to be space cleaner.

Recipe (1) Ammonia + (1) Ethanol + (1) Water -> (3) Space Cleaner

Acetone

This stuff is good for cleaning up after someone goes to town on the floor with a marker or a box of stickers. I’ll usually add 10-20 units of it to any chem mix i’m using with a mop.

Recipe (1) Oil + (1) Welding Fuel + (1) Oxygen -> (3) Acetone

Fluorosurfactant

This is the stuff that’s in cleaning grenades! When it comes in contact with water it bubbles up and spreads everything in the mix into a big area, you can do some fun stuff with it but it can be hard to use well.

(1) Fluorine + (1) Oil + (1) Sulfuric Acid -> (3) Fluorosurfactant

Disposals

As the Janitor, Disposals is your domain, it's usually right next to your office, and as the person who'll be interacting with the disposals chutes the most, it's in your best interest to keep the system running smoothly and accident-free, so here's a few little tips.

Learn how Garbage Chutes work

They have a very simple interface, but the terms can be slightly confusing at first, Eject will make all the items in the chute appear in the same tile as the chute, so you can retrieve them, flush will send them down the tubes towards disposals.

Keep the grinder door closed

It can be tempting to leave the system open so that you don't need to worry about it at all, but there's a few advantages to leaving the door closed.

Firstly, sometimes people end up in there, sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's unintentional, they'll probably be wounded, if the door's open they don't have a chance, it's very unlikely that anyone being thrown into a disposal chute unannounced is in there for a legitimate reason.

Secondly, digging through peoples trash is great, people throw away good stuff all the time, you can also find evidence that people wanted to get rid of, money, you can see if someone's being a jackass and dumping all the metal and glass into the trash and rescue it and be the hero of the station, that's what being a janitor is all about.

Garbage Carts are your friend

Sometimes people decide that every single square inch of the hallway needs to have 30 pieces of cheese on it, don't let this break you and send you into a crushing spiral of despair, you can fix it, outside your office there's usually two garbage carts, go and grab one, drag it up to each pile of stuff, open it, then close it again, this way you can very quickly load up hundreds of objects to get rid of, then drag it back to where you found it, place it over the top of the garbage chute in the floor, and drag from the cart into the chute, then flush the chute, problem sorted!

How to clean up anything

Pools of Fluid

This is what the mop is best at, anytime you see a puddle of liquid, just grab your mop and click on it, and it'll vanish into the void, who knows where all that liquid goes, you can also mop pools of liquid up with the sponge but once the sponge is full, you'll need to wring it out.

Blood Stains and Vomit

The most common thing you'll find, usually pretty easy to deal with, a sponge or a mop on the tile will usually convert it into a pool of fluid you can soak up, some of the more intense stains might require you a fresh dose of the space cleaner/water mix from your bucket, so dip your mop in if you're struggling with one, you can also clean wall stains with the mop but you won't be able to retrieve the water you use, a wet sponge is probably best for this.

Writing

This can be a little tougher to clear out with the mop, mixing some acetone in with your water can help, but if that doesn't work, sponge and spray bottle always work, one frustrating thing is that often the letter won't line up exactly with what tile it's actually on, so if it's not working try cleaning the tiles around it, of course you can always click directly on the text itself with a wet sponge.

Clothing and Objects

Ever walk into medbay and see tools covered in blood all over the place? It doesn't really affect how well they work, but don't you feel an intense need to clean them? Well, I do, and here's how you can do it, As usual, wet sponge with a direct click should do it, or you can pick it up in one hand and spray it with a spray bottle in the other hand, remember to put it back in a tray or somewhere that makes sense, don't just dump it on the floor again, you can also do the same with your galoshes anytime you walk through a pool of blood, so you don't track bloody footprints everywhere, just click directly on them with a spray bottle or sponge in your hand.

People

Doesn't it drive you nuts when you see the barman preparing drinks looking like he just climbed out of a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Cleaning all of a person's outfit is incredibly quick and easy, just click on them with a clean sponge or a bottle of space cleaner, make sure you ask first though, people don't really like being sprayed with a bottle out of nowhere, and make sure it’s a clean sponge, don’t try do it on someone with a sponge full of phlog or sarin.

Dead Monkeys

People on SS13 love killing monkeys, and after they do, the monkeys love spreading clouds of miasma, which is honestly way worse than it seems, i've had so many times when i've had a medic tell me that i'm incredibly poisoned just from all the miasma i've been walking through (Although this has been less of a problem since i discovered the joy of a cyber-appendix), so make sure to clean them up, use Grab intent, click on them twice to pick them up, drag them over to the nearest disposals chute and click on it to dump them in, now, don't forget to flush the chute afterwards by clicking on it and hitting "Flush" on the interface.

Dead Animals (Pests/Pets)

Any tool that can do butchery will allow you to turn these corpses into meat that can be disposed of, i’ve found the easiest one to get a hold of is the plastic knife from the snack vending machines.

Common Issues and how to resolve them

My Mop isn't cleaning anything!

Sometimes a mop will get filled with blood or welder fuel or plain water and won't be able to clean anything, i've found when this happens, it can be best to put down a puddle from your mop, then soak it up with your sponge, and then dip your mop in the bucket to reset it to something that can actually clean.

I cleaned someone and it didn't work!

It seems to require their sprite to need an update, so if they're sitting down and not moving they may look bloody for a while afterwards, but they will be clean, don't need to keep spraying them.