janitorial

The labor — waitressing, janitorial — was physically demanding, the wages terrible, the treatment by bosses and customers often worse.

An investigator for California’s Employment Development Department testified the state paid out $19,000 to Stinson, whose unemployment claim stated he lost his job as a “janitorial assistant” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coming and going during the day felt like being backstage in a theater, where a legion of deliverymen and janitorial staff making poverty wages handled the logistics that would let customers escape their own worldly concerns when it got dark.

Two decades later, that idea has morphed into a Glendale company called ServiceTitan, which last year served some 8,000 plumbing, HVAC, janitorial and other firms with a soup-to-nuts software suite — and now plans to go public on Nasdaq under the ticker “TTAN.”

As days went by and dirt, dog waste and grime piled up in the Produce Hotel in Skid Row, Jermaine Staley broke into the janitorial closet.