Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (25 page)

What really did it for me was one call I made. I went through the routine. The guy listened patiently and he said, “I really would like to help.” He was blind himself! That really got me—the tone of his voice. I could just tell he was a good person. He was willing to help even if he couldn’t read the paper. He was poor, I’m sure of that. It was the worst ghetto area. I apologized and thanked him. That’s when I left for the ladies’ room. I was nauseous. Here I was sitting here telling him a bunch of lies and he was poor and blind and willing to help. Taking his money.

I got sick in the stomach. I prayed a lot as I stayed there in the restroom. I said, “Dear God, there must be something better for me. I never harmed anyone in my life, dear Lord.” I went back to the phone room and I just sat there. I didn’t make any calls. The supervisor called me out and wanted to know why I was sitting there. I told him I wasn’t feeling good, and I went home.

I came back the next day because I didn’t have any other means of employment. I just kept praying and hoping and looking. And then, as if my prayers were answered, I got another job. The one I have now. I love it.

I walked into the bully’s office and told him a few things. I told him I was sick and tired of him. Oh God, I really can’t tell you what I said. (Laughs.) I told him, “I’m not gonna stay here and lie for you. You can take your job and shove it.” (Laughs.) And I walked out. He just stood there. He didn’t say anything. He was surprised. I was very calm, I didn’t shout. Oh, I felt good.

I still work in the same building. I pass him in the hallway every once in a while. He never speaks to me. He looks away. Every time I see him I hold my head very high, very erect, and keep walking.

 

You get just like the milkman’s horse, you get used to it. If you remember the milkman’s horse, all he had to do was whistle and whooshhh! That’s it. He knew just where to stop, didn’t he? You pull up until you finish the alley. Usually thirty homes on each side. You have thirty stops in an alley. I have nineteen alleys a week. They’re called units. Sometimes I can’t finish ‘em, that’s how heavy they are, this bein’ an old neighborhood.

I’ll sit there until they pick up this one stop. You got different thoughts. Maybe you got a problem at home. Maybe one of the children aren’t feeling too good. Like my second one, she’s a problem with homework. Am I doin’ the right thing with her? Pressing her a little bit with math. Or you’ll read the paper. You always daydream.

Some stops, there’s one can, they’ll throw that on, then we proceed to the next can. They signal with a buzzer or a whistle or they’ll yell. The pusher blade pushes the garbage in. A good solid truckload will hold anywhere from eight thousand to twelve thousand pounds. If it’s wet, it weighs more.

Years ago, you had people burning, a lot of people had garbage burners. You would pick up a lot of ashes. Today most of ’em have converted to gas. In place of ashes, you’ve got cardboard boxes, you’ve got wood that people aren’t burning any more. It’s not like years ago, where people used everything. They’re not too economy-wise today. They’ll throw anything away. You’ll see whole packages of meat just thrown into the garbage can without being opened. I don’t know if it’s spoiled from the store or not. When I first started here, I had nearly thirty alleys in this ward. Today I’m down to nineteen. And we got better trucks today. Just the way things are packaged today. Plastic. You see a lot of plastic bottles, cardboard boxes.

We try to give ’em twice-a-week service, but we can’t complete the ward twice a week. Maybe I can go four alleys over. If I had an alley Monday, I might go in that alley Friday. What happens over the weekend? It just lays there.

After you dump your garbage in the hopper, the sweeper blade goes around to sweep it up, and the push blade pushes it in. This is where you get your sound. Does that sound bother you in the morning? (Laughs.) Sometimes it’s irritating to me. If someone comes up to you to talk, and the men are working in the back, and they press the lever, you can’t hear them. It’s aggravating but you get used to it. We come around seven-twenty. Not too many complaints. Usually you’re in the same alley the same day, once a week. The people know that you’re comin’ and it doesn’t bother them that much.

Some people will throw, will literally throw garbage out of the window—right in the alley. We have finished an alley in the morning and that same afternoon it will look like it wasn’t even done. They might have a cardboard carton in the can and garbage all over the alley. People are just not takin’ care of it. You get some people that takes care of their property, they’ll come out and sweep around their cans. Other people just don’t care or maybe they don’t know any better.

Some days it’s real nice. Other days, when you get off that truck you’re tired, that’s it! You say all you do is drive all day, but driving can be pretty tiresome—especially when the kids are out of school. They’ll run through a gangway into the alley. This is what you have to watch for. Sitting in that cab, you have a lot of blind spots around the truck. This is what gets you. You watch out that you don’t hit any of them.

At times you get aggravated, like your truck breaks down and you get a junk as a replacement. This, believe me, you could take home with you. Otherwise, working here, if there’s something on your mind, you don’t hold anything in. You discuss anything with these guys. Golf, whatever. One of my laborers just bought a new home and I helped him move some of his small stuff. He’s helped me around my house, plumbing and painting.

We’ve got spotters now. It’s new. (Laughs.) They’re riding around in unmarked cars. They’ll turn you in for stopping for coffee. I can’t see that. If you have a coffee break in the alley, it’s just using a little psychology. You’ll get more out of them. But if you’re watched continually, you’re gonna lay down. There’s definitely more watching today, because there was a lot of layin’ down on the job. Truthfully, I’d just as soon put in my eight hours a day as easy as possible. It’s hard enough comin’ to work. I got a good crew, we get along together, but we have our days.

If you’re driving all day, you get tired. By the time you get home, fighting the traffic, you’d just like to relax a little bit. But there’s always something around the house. You can get home one night and you’ll find your kid threw something in the toilet and you gotta shut your mind and take the toilet apart. (Laughs.) My wife drives, so she does most of the shopping. That was my biggest complaint. So now this job is off my hands. I look forward to my weekends. I get in a little golf.

People ask me what I do, I say, “I drive a garbage truck for the city.” They call you G-man, or, “How’s business, picking up?” Just the standard . . . Or sanitary engineer. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I put in my eight hours. We make a pretty good salary. I feel I earn my money. I can go any place I want. I conduct myself as a gentleman any place I go. My wife is happy, this is the big thing. She doesn’t look down at me. I think that’s more important than the white-collar guy looking down at me.

They made a crack to my children in school. My kids would just love to see me do something else. I tell ‘em, “Honey, this is a good job. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re not stealin’ the money. You have everything you need.”

I don’t like to have my salary compared to anybody else’s. I don’t like to hear that we’re makin’ more than a schoolteacher. I earn my money just as well as they do. A teacher should get more money, but don’t take it away from me.

They call us truck loaders, that’s what the union did. We’re just laborers, that’s all we are. What the devil, there’s no glamour to it. Just bouncin’ heavy cans around all day. I’m givin’ the city a fair day’s work. I don’t want to lean on anyone else. Regardless if I was working here or elsewhere, I put in my day. We’re the ones that pick up the cans, dump ’em in the hopper, and do the manual end of the job. There’s nothing complex about it.

 

 

In this particular neighborhood, the kids are a little snotty. They’re let run a little too loose. They’re not held down the way they should. It’s getting a little wild around here. I live in the neighborhood and you have to put up with it. They’ll yell while you’re riding from one alley to another, “Garbage picker!” The little ones usually give you a highball, seem to enjoy it, and you wave back at ’em. When they get a little bigger, they’re liable to call you most anything on the truck. (Laughs.) They’re just too stupid to realize the necessity of the job.

I’ve been outside for seven years and I feel more free. I don’t take the job home with me. When I worked in the office, my wife would say, “What was the matter with you last night? You laid there and your fingers were drumming the mattress.” That’s when I worked in the office. The bookkeeping and everything else, it was starting to play on my nerves. Yeah, I prefer laboring to bookkeeping. For one thing, a bookkeeping job doesn’t pay anything. I was the lowest paid man there.

Physically, I was able to do more around the house. Now I’m too tired to pitch into anything heavy. I’ll mow the lawn and I’ll go upstairs and maybe catch a TV program or two, and I’ll hit the hay. In the winter months, it’s so much worse. After being outside all day and walkin’ into a warm house, I can cork off in a minute. (Laughs.) The driver has some protection, he has the cab of the truck. We’re out in the cold.

You get it in the shoulders and the arms. You have an ache here and an ache there. Approximately four years ago, I put my back into spasms. The city took care of it, put me in a hospital for a week. That one year, it happened twice to me—because of continual lifting. The way one doctor explained it to me, I may be goin’ thirty days and it’s already started. It’s just on the last day, whenever it’s gonna hit, it just turns you upside down. You can’t walk, you can’t move, you can’t get up.

I wear a belt, sort of a girdle. You can buy them in any orthopedic place. This is primarily to hold me in. This one doctor says I’m fairly long-legged and I’m overlifting. The men I work with are average height. I’m six three, I was six four when I went in the army but I think I’ve come down a little bit. It’s my own fault. I probably make it harder on myself with my way of lifting. I’ve been fairly well protected during the past four years. I haven’t had any days off because of it. I wouldn’t want to face it again, I’ll tell you that.

It’s a fifty-gallon drum you lift. I’d say anywhere from eighty pounds to several hundred pounds, depending on what they’re loaded with. We lift maybe close to two hundred cans a day. I never attempted to count them. They surprise you every once in a while. They’ll load it with something very heavy, like plaster. (Laughs.)

I always said you can read in a garbage can how a person lives. We have this Mexican and Puerto Rican movement in this area. You find a lot of rice and a good many TV dinners. They don’t seem to care about cooking too much. I can’t say that every family is like that. I never lived with ’em.

I wear an apron over this. By the time you get two or three days in these clothes they’re ready for the washer. Working behind the truck, you never know what might shoot out from behind there—liquid or glass or plastic. There is no safety features on the truck. When these blades in the hopper catch it and bring it forward, it spurts out like a bullet. Two years ago, I was struck in the face with a piece of wood. Cut the flesh above the eye and broke my glasses. When I got to the doctor, he put a stitch in it. I had the prettiest shiner you ever seen. (Laughs.) It can be dangerous. You never know what people throw out. I’ve seen acid thrown out.

They tell you stay away from the rear of the truck when the blade’s in motion, but if you did that throughout a day, you’d lose too much time. By the time the blade’s goin’, you’re getting the next can ready to dump.

You don’t talk much. You might just mention something fell out of the can or a word or two. Maybe we’ll pull in an alley and they’ll take five minutes for a cigarette break. We might chew the fat about various things —current events, who murdered who (laughs), sensational stories. Maybe one of the fellas read an article about something that happened over in Europe. Oh, once in a while, talk about the war. It has never been a heated discussion with me.

I’m pretty well exhausted by the time I get through in the day. I’ve complained at times when the work was getting a little too heavy. My wife says, “Well, get something else.” Where the devil is a man my age gonna get something else? You just don’t walk from job to job.

She says I should go to sixty-two if I can. I have some Social Security comin’. The pension from the city won’t amount to anything. I don’t have that much service. Another four years, I’ll have only eleven years, and that won’t build up a city pension for me by any means.

It’ll be just day to day. Same thing as bowling. You bowl each frame, that’s right. If you look ahead, you know what you’re getting into. So why aggravate yourself? You know what we call bad stops. A mess to clean up in a certain alley. Why look ahead to it? The devil. As long as my health holds out, I want to work.

I have a daughter in college. If she goes through to June, she’ll have her master’s degree. She’s in medicine. For her, it’ll be either teaching or research. As she teaches, she can work for her doctorate. She’s so far ahead of me, I couldn’t . . .