Trash Talking

I try to talk about my friend Wiley whenever I train equipment operators who work at solid waste facilities. It's not easy, because I feel tremendous guilt about his tragic death. But I don't want anyone to make the same mistake I made, so I put it out there as often as I can. Years after I left the company, he slipped and fell one day getting out of a tractor while working at a landfill in California. He was horribly killed. Skip watched it happen. I remember the first time I talked to Skip after it happened. Shook up doesn't even begin to describe it. I respected his grief too much to have asked him for details. To the best of my knowledge, Wiley was exiting the dozer, and it went into reverse, and he slipped on the tracks, and got carried underneath. How many times had I seen him jump down off of the tracks of a dozer? I spoke to him about it, sure, but he didn't work for me. He worked for one of the corporate big-shots, and never hesitated to bring it up. Neverthel...

As a reward for all our hard work in Puerto Rico evaluating our client's environmental performance, Jeff Schleider and I treated ourselves to a visit to El Yunque National Park. Truly an amazing place. It was a last minute decision I am so glad we made. What a perfect ending to a very successful trip. Hopefully the first of many.

Kevin, the General Manager, came to my desk and told me we were going to go do some volunteer work at the Chamber of Commerce. “When?” I asked. “Now. Get your coat”. Kevin had bright smiling green eyes, and always with a ready laugh, but his smart and serious character made him one of the best bosses I ever worked for. On the way we talked about the beautiful new yellow iron just delivered at the site. We didn’t know it at the time, but Caterpillar was putting out some of the best waste handling equipment it ever produced in the early 1990’s. The 826C Compactor is still a favorite among old school landfill operators. We got to the small chamber of commerce office and the secretary showed us into the conference room. I guess I was expecting a bigger crowd. It was just me and Kevin. After the secretary showed us the mailing that needed to be sent out, I arranged the stacks of fliers in order and got down to business. Kevin’s eyes went wide and he smiled broadly when I started ra...

When he realized that I would be getting to Costa Rica a few days ahead of Skip, the man who hired me to work there told me to wait until Skip arrived to go out to the site and introduce myself. When he told me that I should wait for Skip, I felt a little hesitation. Why? Didn’t he trust his partners there? Yes, of course, he said, it’s just that Skip has a lot of experience with these guys and he will keep the pressure off of you. Being the only North American hired to work in Costa Rica permanently for the company, which was owned by a waste services firm headquartered in New Jersey, would require diplomacy and tact. He called me from his hotel and asked me where I would like to pick him up. Knowing I didn’t know my way around there yet, he offered to meet me at the airport. Tall, straight and strong, jeans, boots, and a button down long sleeve denim shirt, baseball cap, mustache and cigarette, he was the epitome of a construction manager. One of the first things he said about the Ti...