I walked into Frank for breakfast as I usually do and greeted the person at the register who swiped me in. Our conversation went like this:

Her: “Good morning”

Me: “Hi. How are you today?”

Her: “Doing just fine how about you?”

Me: “I’m just really loving all the snow.”

Her: “It’s nice when you don’t have to shovel it.”

I had never thought of that. Whereas I roll out of bed and walk along paths that are at least somewhat plowed for me, all the people who are employees instead of students have to endure the effort of shoveling snow, to get themselves here on time, to do their jobs, which benefit me.

It wouldn’t be reasonable (at least by our socially accepted safety standards) for Colgate to ask us to go to class without shoveling the sidewalks, so I suppose it’s somewhat natural that we take it for granted. However, this makes me wonder how many other invisible labors happen on our campus.

For example, in many classes, we’re asked to move the desks into a circle or semicircle for discussion purposes. Yet, in many classes, we are not asked to move the desks back. Presumably, building services sets up each classroom back in the designated rows each and every day.

There are always forks and spoons and knives and plates when we need them at Frank, but we don’t consider that every utensil or dish has to be washed by a person.

Our bathrooms are cleaned regularly, and while some of us do know the name of our janitor, we easily forget that our bathrooms are a product of their consistent efforts.

We hop on and off cruisers, without realizing how the drivers monotonously drive the same routes over and over for hours in order to reach our stops at precisely the right moments.

The surely excessive amount of trash produced by our campus magically finds its way out of the trash cans and gets sent on its way to who knows where.

The paper trays in the printer are consistently refilled.

The list goes on…

These kinds of invisible labors happen at any institution, but I think that college students should be particularly aware of them. First, these are the same tasks that we’ll soon have to do for ourselves when we exit this transitory place between adolescence and true adulthood. Second, we’re probably the group of people who complains the most about the little things that maybe aren’t quite as nice as we’re used to, and this makes us seem horribly unappreciative. Third, we’d certainly all show more compassion and consideration for both the superheroes who carry out these invisible labors, as well as for each other, if we’d just remember that all our actions have consequences and that nothing we do is done unsupported.

While I wrote this article, I tried to imagine a typical day in my life on this campus in order to procure examples of invisible labor. This was the first time I gave this subject any deep thought, and I plan to continue to do so because I’m sure I missed numerous examples. I encourage you to conduct the same thought experiment for a day, and I guarantee you’ll see our campus in a new light.