The Garbage Man

Many moons ago when I lived in Ft. Smith, AR I went out to the golf course to play a round.  At Ben Geren if you do this they tend to group singles together.  This works out nicely for several reasons.  It keeps the pace of play better.  You can get more folks on the golf course.  Singles are not frustrated waiting on foursomes.  It also has the added benefit of allowing you to play with folks with which you might not otherwise share a round of golf. 

On this particular day they paired me with a young man, a twenty something.  He was obviously working class.  I put myself in that category, but white collar.  There is a reason that offices full of IT workers are called shops, much like the term machine shop. 

As we played, we visited.  It turned out this young was a trash man, a garbage collector.  Basically, he rode around hanging onto the back of garbage truck.  He would jump off every few feet to dump trash cans and throw garbage bags into the bowels of this  smelly, compressive beast. 

Now this may not be the worst job in the world, but to my way of thinking it is close to it.  Let’s start with the total lack of status.  It is not a job that most folks aspire to have. It is hard, physical labor.  It is smelly.  You are dealing in other peoples refuse.  You are expected to do this in all types of weather.  I can only imagine that the coworkers would not be the most intellectually stimulating, self actualizing folks. 

This young man loved his job.  He loved being outdoors.  On the whole he did not mind the weather.  He enjoyed the physical labor.  He felt like he was doing a community service hauling off garbage.  In many ways he felt like he was at a garage sale or flea market everyday.  He talked about the “treasures” he had found on the route.  What is the old George Carlan line, “One man’s sh** is another man’s stuff.” 

Most importantly, he felt like the folks on his route appreciated him.  I can only assume he was unknowing practitioner of Zen.  When he was collecting garbage, he was collecting garbage. I imagine that he put the cans back on the curb, made sure the lids were with the cans, and picked up any spilled debris.  He talked about how the folks on his route would leave him nice notes, and at Christmas time several of them gave him cards with nice gratuities enclosed.    He seemed like a happy, contented man at peace with his function in life.  

I left the course that day pondering all that.  I felt a wee bit more enlightened for having played a round of golf with this individual.  This is one of the fringe benefits of golfing; I have met many interesting individuals on the course.  With the right mindset, many of these folks are “teachers”. 

Now let’s fast forward 3 or 4 years, again at Ben Geren Golf Course in Ft. Smith.  I ran into this young again, both of us wanting to play a round of golf and paired up by the club house.   I remembered him and the afternoon we spent together.  I remembered how he had given me many things to ponder.

From the best I could gathered his wife was bothered by saying her husband was a garbage man.  She had also been pushing for him to make more money.  He had managed to get himself promoted to a supervisory position. He was making more money, he had better status. He was a miserable individual who hated his job. 

His job now entailed driving around in a pickup truck, making sure the various crews on the trucks did their jobs.  I do not imagine that many of his subordinates were practicing Zen.  I imagine it was a constant struggle to get them to do the job as assigned.   From positive interactions with clients along his route, he was in the middle between management and the folks actually doing the work.  Having been in this type of position, you basically catch from both sides, and there is very little positive coming your way.  He also had to deal with customer complaints, rather than kudos. 

Again he gave me something to ponder over.  I have my own list of what these two random meeting have taught me.  I will leave it to the reader to come up with their own list. 

I can only hope this fellow somehow learned to apply his Zen-ness to his new position.