As Bill Rizzo walks out of the seventh-floor East wing lounge in Ernie Davis Hall, something catches his eye. It’s not something most people would notice.

He sets his ladder up, reaches up and fixes a stop in a window of the lounge. Rizzo then gets off the ladder and carries on with his check-up of Syracuse University’s youngest dorm.

“You just see things,” said the 35-year veteran of SU.

The 54-year-old Syracuse native is a maintenance mechanic for FIXit, the organization in charge of fixing maintenance problems across the university. The summer and early fall are the busiest times for FIXit, with required checkups in each room and SU students moving back into dorms. But for FIXit employees, having students around brings joy to the tedious jobs.

Rizzo is doing a normal walkthrough of Ernie, checking each floor for unhinged curtains, light bulbs that are out and anything else that might need fixing.

Separate groups of FIXit employees, including maintenance, electricians and housekeeping, go through every room on the SU campus to ensure that when students get back to the Salt City, they have a comfortable environment to live in.

The few months of particularly tough work are complete, but move-in and the beginning of the semester present some challenges for the FIXit staff.

“It’s hectic because you’re tired,” Rizzo said of move-in. “You’re dealing with parents, too. With kids, you can go to their room, they’re happy you fixed something, but some of the parents expect them to be at the Taj Mahal. You have to be realistic about it.

“They want the room to be very nice for their kid. They want everything clean, they want everything working in the room, so they’re just asking simple things. Whatever they ask, we try and do.”

***

In all hours of the day and night, FIXit employees are directed to areas across the SU campus to solve problems.

The 145 FIXit employees are dispatched from the Carriage House, located on South Campus, and are given work orders in addition to the routine checks. Rizzo said employees get the work ticket, are told where they need to go, “and then you just go fix it.”

FIXit documented more than 20,000 work orders in the 2014-15 fiscal year.

It’s not very often that among the 145 employees, someone isn’t able to fix an issue, Rizzo said. He credits that to the experience of his co-workers and the fact that if one employee can’t fix something, they can call someone who can.

“We help each other out,” Rizzo said, explaining that because many of the employees have been at SU for so long, they know each other’s specialties.

***

While Rizzo and other FIXit workers say they like being behind the scenes, being able to interact with students is something that gives the sometimes-mundane job meaning.

“When they call you to the room or wherever to fix something, you go out of your way to do it,” Rizzo said. “We’re the first responders. We’ll go out of our way and do anything we can to make it right.”

JD Tessier, the director of housing and food services maintenance, said in an email that the knowledge held by FIXit employees “is difficult to underestimate.”

He added that because many of the staff members have been at SU for so long, they have “seen it all,” which allows for quicker repairs.

That seeing it all ranges from the Labor Day derecho and ice storm of 1998 to a crooked air vent protector in a side staircase in Ernie.

What allows for the success of FIXit, Tessier said, is what he called “the secret sauce”: the engagement of the workers.

“They love SU, they enjoy the students and they like to fix and clean things,” he said. “We are ‘Mothers and Fathers taking care of other people’s Sons and Daughters.’”

Mary Davoli, who works in housekeeping, said that one of her favorite parts of the job is developing relationships with students.

“You have to take care of the students’ needs, maintaining the buildings, cleaning up after them, but also they’re away from their parents, so they interact with us on a daily basis,” Davoli said. “It’s just nice having that type of relationship with them where you can interact with them.”

***

Now on the fourth floor of Ernie, Rizzo is walking into a lounge when a FIXit housekeeper stops him.

“Guess what?” the female worker asks him before sharing news that she is becoming a homeowner.

“It’s like a little family,” Rizzo said with a smile.

But for him, the university really is. Rizzo’s father worked at SU for more than 20 years and two of his three children went to school on the hill. Despite being the only one of five children not to go to college, Rizzo remembers spending time on campus with his dad.

So, despite opportunities to leave the university with other job offers, Rizzo has stayed at the place he loves.

“It’s just one of those things where I’m a natural at it. I like doing it,” Rizzo said. “Whatever happens, there’s always some sort of fix.”

Published on September 2, 2015 at 12:18 am

Contact Justin: jmatting@syr.edu | @jmattingly306