Taylor's Commercial Grounds Maintenance

About Taylor's Commercial Grounds Maintenance

The office parks along the south side of Columbia empty out by six most winter evenings, parking lots going dark under sodium lights long before the snow that's forecast ever starts to fall, which means Taylor's Commercial Grounds Maintenance does most of its work in those same lots while the buildings are still locked for the night. Clearing a corporate parking lot is a different job than clearing a house's driveway — more square footage, marked fire lanes that have to stay open, handicap spaces that need clearing first and clearing completely — and the crew works those lots on a schedule built around when the first employees badge in. By six in the morning the glass-fronted buildings along the corridor are already reflecting a colorless winter sky over rows of parking spaces scraped down to blacktop. It's invisible work in the sense that almost nobody sees it happen, finished hours before the first car pulls in. The measure of it is simple: a lot that's fully open, lines still visible under a dusting of salt, when the workday starts.