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...