The Extra Mile

Above the call of duty. I never thought I would apply this phrase to my garbage man. MY garbage man. I am suddenly extremely possessive. I don't want him to go anywhere else, he needs to stay on this route, on my street, he's my garbage man. Mine.

Albuquerque's Residential Waste Management Department cruises up and down the streets of the Duke City on a regular basis in those big rigs. You don't hear music blaring from the cabs. You don't see trash strewn along the street after they have passed by and collected garbage from the cans left at curbside. You hear them passing, that's about it. Like clockwork.

And this morning I heard MY garbage man passing on the opposite side of the street. Being the procrastinator that I am, with a little OCD to boot, I finished what I was doing, washed my face and forgot that I still had not put my garbage can at the corner. When I heard MY garbage man returning down my side of the street, I started to run outside to drag the can to the street but that was when the OCD kicked in and I turned around to run back into the house and grab the kitchen trash bag (and stopped to dump the bathroom trash in too). AFTER all of this, I ran outside with the now quite full kitchen trash bag, only to discover that a) the trash on my side of the street had already been picked up, and b) MY garbage man was driving by my house on the opposite side of the street and I was too late.

I stood there shaking my head and wondering why I was so damn irritating, even to myself. As I was dumping the stuffed kitchen bag into my very full garbage can that was still sitting by the side of my house instead of by the side of the curb, something rather amazing happened. MY garbage man went above and beyond the call of duty (he had seen me run out of my house) and he started backing up. BACKING UP.

Yes, he backed up to directly across from my house on the opposite side of the street and I DASHED across the street hauling the very full garbage can over to him. He maneuvered those scary arms and lifted the can to dump it into his rig and returned it to the street. I waved and mouthed "Thank you!", he waved and smiled through a nodded "You're welcome".

I heart MY garbage man. I suppose I could just say that MY garbage man went the extra mile today...in reverse. Kudos to him and his department.