By John Greer
âBack in the truck, Casanova.â
Matt flashed a smile at the girl. âDonât mind him. Heâs just hating because heâs âhappilyâ married.â
My partner Matt Murphy was a smooth-talker who made us late almost as often as we were on time. But for all his shenanigans, he made a long day at work feel a little shorter. Itâs important that your coworker is someone you can stand, especially if you spend more time with him than your own wife.
Weâd always laugh at the euphemisms people came up with for our job. âSolid waste workerâ, âwaste management professionalâ, or the best one: âsanitation engineerâ. Engineer? Thereâs no engineering going on here. We pick up the garbage. Call us garbage men, itâs okay. Unless my wife is around. Then you can call me a sanitation engineer, haha. Weâre not the type of guys that care about all that politically correct stuff.
The jobâs not for everyone. Theyâre always trying to get more women CEOs and astronauts, but you donât hear about them trying to get more women in garbage or logging. My brotherâs a logger. You get a beer in him and he wonât shut up about how loggingâs actually the most dangerous profession in America, but cops and firefighters get all the credit. I looked it up once and us garbage men are at number five. Way above cops at eighteen and firefighters at twenty-four, but I donât care about the credit. Iâd rather pick up the trash than deal with drunks and junkies or run into burning buildings.
Everyone always imagines the smell is the worst thing. That you get used to. Itâs the toll it takes on your body. Running up driveways. Dragging trash up and down everywhere. But it pays well, and I get benefits.
Things change. We used to have to worry about hitting kids that were out riding their bike or kicking a soccer ball. Now we have to worry about hitting one strapped into a VR headset or crashing their drone into the truck. The old timers thought they were safe from the job cuts. After all, garbage has been a constant since the beginning of civilization. Matt even told me about some ancient Egyptian trash heap they had found and studied. He joked about an âEgyptian Matt and Jakeâ. I wonder how much they got paid. Probably a better gig than hauling rock for the pyramids. Anyway, we knew better than to think we couldnât get replaced. Matt and I were lucky our town couldnât afford the fancy trucks they only needed one guy to drive, with no one for the back. Californiaâs had driverless trucks for months now.
I loved the job because I wasnât cooped up inside somewhere. I ran a paper route with my mom when I was a kid and nothinâ beat that feeling of running around in the early morning before the rest of the world woke up. We used to get donuts after our work for the day was done. Now I do the same with my boy when I get home.
A lot of guys liked looking for stuff worth keeping. I think itâs that former junkie mentality. Always looking out for a score or some angle. Some guys I work with go metal detecting every weekend. Done it for years and never found more than some quarters, broken jewelry, and rusty nails. A waste of time if you ask me. It is crazy some of the things people throw away. Matt found one of those cool neon beer signs. The thing still works; itâs lighting up his garage right now. My wife said no to mongo (thatâs the stuff you ârescueâ from the garbage) a long time ago. Debra âdoesnât do clutterâ. At least my house is clean.
You learn a lot about people when you pick up their trash every week. Little clues to their existence. A box for a crib falls out, someone had a baby. A pinata, a birthday. Rich people recycle and compost more. Poor people have more frozen food boxes. Thereâs something spiritual about it really, watching the contents of someoneâs life spill out.
Weâd get to know a few people over the years. Sweet kids who liked seeing the big truck. Young college girls that Matt would flirt with. Bikers with more junk on the lawn than in their can. One of the people we got to know the best was this sweet old lady named Helen. Weâd catch each other every few weeks.
âWhere you off to, Shirley MacLaine?â
As usual, I was doing the heavy lifting while Matt was running his smooth mouth.
âVisiting my brother in Florida. If your girlfriend isnât careful, I may just ask you to come along with meâŠâ she said, smiling coyly. âYou boys stay safe now!â
Sheâd bring out a glass of lemonade for us, and not that mix stuff either, hand-squeezed every time.
âJake, I need a man to help me hang this up.â Hanging the planter put us behind schedule again, but I tell you, I looked forward to seeing the flowers in it every week.
You couldnât shut her up about music. Sheâd send us home with CDs to listen to. âHelen, you donât need CDs. You can just stream all theseâŠâ
âIâll never get rid of my collection. They sound better. Trust me.â
âThey said the same thing about recordsâŠâ
Neither one of us owned a CD player but weâd look up the album on Spotify and play it in the truck.
That was all before the virus of course. Two weeks after it started, we pulled up to a box on top of her bin. The note stuck to it read:
You boys stay safe.
Love, Helen
The woman was sweeter than pecan pie. I opened the box expecting more CDs but inside were hand sewn masks. After that, you couldnât catch us out without one on.
It had been a few weeks since sheâd had a can out. We were a little worried, but sheâd gone to Florida to see her brother before. To tell you the truth, so much was going on I didnât think much about Helen or anyone else. Debra was furloughed. Luckily, we were essential of course. The garbage must flow.
The company updated our app to show big red Xs on houses that were confirmed positive. Oh, believe me, we still picked up their trash. Officially, we were supposed to take more precautions but what could we do? Thereâs only so much protective gear and trust me, they werenât saving it for garbage men. Although if I had to guess, I donât think their trash was any more dangerous than any of the other nasty stuff we run into.
A few weeks went by.
âJČč°ì±đ.â
âWhat? What is it?â
He held up the iPad and showed me the big X over Helenâs house.
âOh no.â
We knew her chances werenât good, but she was a tough lady, after all.
Another couple of weeks went by and still no sign of life from the house. Then I saw it.
âHer canâs out, Matt.â
âItâs overflowing too. Looks like sheâs been making up for lost time.â
âWe should get her some flowers or something, man. Whatever old ladies like.â
âHaha, yeah right. Are you going to show up in a face mask and one of those ruffled tuxes?â
Like I said, taking out the trash is a spiritual job. It all spills out eventually. A box for a crib. A pinata. I lifted Helenâs can in the air, feeling the weight of it. I tipped it over the edge of the
hopper and watched her life spill out in front of me. Some clothes, a nightstand, unopened cans of beans.
A lovely ladyâs collection of old CDs. Theyâre sitting on my desk now, the only mongo Debra let me keep. | WA
John Greer spends most of his time manically writing about optimization, risk reduction, and why people should care more about life extension. He likes crafting a good story and coming up with a new personal experiment to try. John can be reached at (510) 987-6225, e-mail [email protected] or visit johncgreer.com.