Aspirations in waste management

Our next door neighbor grows a beautiful flower garden every summer. Around this time of year she usually gifts our family a bright bouquet of all kinds of colorful blooms. My favorite are her sunflowers, that fully saturated yellow makes it difficult to feel depressed. Some of them grow so tall I can see one or two over the privacy fence that separates our backyards. As the summer ends the heads of the tallest sunflowers grow too heavy to continue following the sun and they flop down between the leaves giving the plants a friendly muppet-like appearance. The small flowers in the vase do the same. We keep the bouquet outside on our patio table because our daughter is too allergic to have them inside. I’ve been monitoring their progress each morning when I go out for fresh air and whatever sun I can muster. The center of a sunflower is about a million smaller flowers all tightly packed together in a thick mass. As the fall nears, each of those teeny flowers tightens and dries up to become a seed. I never noticed that before. How have I grown to be 41 years old without ever knowing how sunflower seeds come to be? It’s amazing how many things I don’t know. I often worry about it. I wish I knew everything.

The bouquet is dying as bouquets do. I’m leaving it for a while so the small birds and critters that like almost sunflower seeds can come grab an easy snack, like nature’s equivalent of a fruit cup. I don’t like leaving the flowers to decay somewhere in my small backyard. I know that’s probably best for the environment, but it makes me feel guilty to look at them rotting away behind an azalea, so far from their garden family. Once they’ve been picked clean I’ll wrap them up with our outgoing trash.

I recently talked with my therapist about my desire to collect trash for a living. While I’m transitioning to a more artistic life, I’ve needed to keep up with my freelance design business to pay the bills. I’ve been doing it for a couple decades now and it’s hollowing me out by the spoonful. I’m considering alternative money-makers. I told him I think I’d enjoy being a garbage person. He asked me what’s appealing about hauling garbage and I said I’d like that each day’s route has definitive start and end, I’d get to spend most of my time outdoors, and when I return home after a day emptying trash cans no one would expect me to keep thinking about other people’s garbage in my off hours. He suggested I try it out and then write about the experience. That’s honestly not a bad idea.

I understand that there are undesirable job requirements that accompany a career in waste management. It’s an early day, I’d get dirty, I imagine I would not enjoy the smell, but adjustments to my sleep schedule, a dedicated clothes hamper, and a hot shower could fix all that. Lifting the cans would get old quickly. It looks like a good workout. My arms and back would probably benefit. There are probably arguments about who has to go up to the house with the vicious dog in the yard. The trash still needs collecting even in bad weather. But I’d get to watch the machine crunch everything up. It would probably be a long time before I got tired of that. I definitely want to be one of the ones who gets to hang of the back. I mean, don’t waste my time as the driver. I know what it’s like to drive, but swinging off the back from that big handle seems pretty fun. I could look at all the houses and gardens as we passed. I could wave to the friendly dogs. I don’t see how my job is that much better is all I’m saying. Everybody’s always hating on the garbage life.

I’ve only been awake early enough to see my own trash people once that I can remember. I was up at dawn one summer morning and I just happened to look out the window to see one of the men on the back of the trash truck holding our push broom and driving away. I was incredulous. I dashed outside in my bare feet, braless boobs akimbo as I chased them down in front of my neighbors’ house. I yelled that that was my broom! They both laughed a little with each other and then the one holding the broom gave it back to me and apologized, giving a weak excuse about believing I had left it out as trash (it was leaning against the RV). I took my broom and watched them as they continued their work down the street. I didn’t feel mad. Maybe I should have but there was no harm done, I got my broom back. The two young men looked like they were having a blast hanging off the back of a truck driving around town early in the morning. I felt jealous.

That moment is probably what sparked the idea for the dream job I shared with my therapist. Those young men looked happier smelling stinky trash then I felt at my well-paying, make-your-own-hours desk job. I’m grateful for my wage and my freedom, and I don’t think I have to become a garbage person and start stealing brooms to feel happy at work, but I do believe it’s practical to think outside of the box. A big part of my jealousy was their partnership. They worked as a team. Aside from the occasional zoom call, I spend my work day alone. A creative life should be filled with other people, and at least one trusted sounding board. Every artist needs someone brave enough to say “I understand what you’re going for, but don’t put that on the internet.” I need a guy to hang from the other handle who’ll give me a heads up when the old white lady’s coming for her broom. The clarity of the job is appealing, too. The job is to collect garbage. You don’t have to navigate, or drive, or run any of the complicated compactor equipment, you empty cans of trash into the back. You feed the machine. That’s it.

Now, I’m sure there are nuances to a career in waste management that I have no way of parsing through from my driveway. I’d have to ride on the truck awhile to really understand what it means to be a garbage person. I know that I have respect for those who work in the field. Every Monday night I set out my can filled with empty ice cream tubs, and used qtips, and rotting bouquets and by Tuesday morning the sanitation team has come by to take it all off my hands, sight unseen. It’s a thankless job but a necessary one. Imagine what our world would look like without garbage people. I am grateful they show up every week to do the hard work that everyone else looks down on. I could learn a lot spending time keeping the streets clean. And who knows? Maybe I’d find some material for art.