It's Good to be a Wastie

It’s funny how quickly the outside world disappears. I have been gone from home for less then 3 weeks and it feels like it could have been months, and after only a few days here it feels hard to believe that there is a world out there without bunny boots and radios, a place where you pay for your gas and go grocery shopping. Once you’re here this is what’s normal and it’s hard to remember that anything else ever was.

One of the most common questions I get back home is “What do you do in Antarctica?” and I say “I’m a solid waste tech” and that doesn’t really seem to answer their question, I guess it kind of goes back to that thing about what's normal, you tell somebody here that you're a Wastie and they know what you mean...but for those of you in the outside world, a day in my life as a wastie:

I get up in the mornings and put on long underwear, pants and a t-shirt, then carhart insulated bib overalls, plus my insulated waste hoodie, safety steel toe insulated work boots, carhart parka, hat, neck gator, gloves, and then my pager and radio…yeah it’s a lot, and it weighs a lot but we are constantly opening the waste barn doors and go from hot to cold to hot all day long so layers are good…and you never know when you‘ll be working outside for the day so it’s good to always be prepared. After the long process of getting dressed and eating breakfast I head up to the waste barn which is up a big hill, one of the longest commutes in town…and on a windy, uhg, it’s not fun...not that walking up a big hill is fun in the first place.


Up at the barn we check all the vehicles every morning (fuel, transmission, oil etc.); we have the loaders (Terminator and Sarah Jane), the Pickle (Mental Case) which is an old military style forklift, and a skid loader (otherwise known as Skid Mark. Yeah we're just super classy like that up at the Waste Barn). We move all the vehicles out of the barn and do a morning stretch and then it’s time for town walk, which means one of us techs takes the lower half of town, and one takes the upper half and we check all the waste bins to see what needs emptying. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour and can be a nice morning stroll or a freezing cold trudge, depending on weather. After we submit what bins need emptying to the EO’s (Equipment Operators) our job is pretty reactionary. The EO’s bring us full bins (glass, food waste, plastic, etc.) and we empty them, sort them, band them up, and move stuff where it needs to go (full waste in milvans or out back, empty bins back on the line). There’s a lot of triwall building, banding, compacting of paper towels or plastic bags, and various driving of forks, with the aid of a good sound system and a pretty nice break shack, so all in all it’s some fun work. I’m not that great with the forks yet, I’ve never been the most intuitive person when it comes to driving heavy machinery but I think that after a few weeks it will be no problem at all, and in the mean time I haven’t broken, smashed, stabbed, or maimed anything or anyone so I figure I’m doing pretty good…it’s just that, as I always like to say, I lack grace.

As far as life outside of work, well to be honest I don’t have much of one, by choice. I’m pretty sure this might end up being a pretty anti social year for me. So far I’ve avoided all the bars, all parties, and go to bed at 9:30 or 10 every night. Maybe things will change when I am less tired but for right now I’m just fine with going to work, doing my wastie thing, socializing a little at meals, and hang out in my room.