What is Waste?

[Gabriel Sandler]

I applied for a position at Waste Management yesterday. My first impression of the process is that it was rather inviting, but with some grave stipulations that one must consider first. If you are not familiar with the company, Waste Management (NYSE:WM), is a "Fortune 500" waste removal company, and one of the largest waste management companies in the world. The position for which I applied is "Residential Driver." During the online application process, I was asked several important questions that I have never really thought about before; the most relevant is "can you wake up at 5am every morning and drive a garbage truck for up to twelve hours straight in extreme weather conditions?" I must make it clear that this is the reality of our job market in America, and by America, I am specifically referring to the United States of America (this clarification is for you Wikipedians, because there are many ambiguations of America, such as the "Rock band" America, whose hit song "A Horse With No Name" probably has its own Wikipedia article). The employment situation in the region where I live is so bleak that I have not seen a "Now Hiring" sign in years, and the Job Opportunities section of our local newspaper was prominently featured in the newspaper's own obituary when the paper went bankrupt in 2008. I know that people view the nation in which I was born (America) as being flawed, and often times, we are perceived to be a self-righteous bully - a self-proclaimed superpower in world politics, economics and influence. However, I do not our proverbial nation this way; I view us as a very scared and insecure place. I have never met an American who viewed themselves as being irrational or impractical, so perhaps our definition of "liberty" is merely a psychological complex whereby we are raised with an innate denial of our own cognitive dissonance when it comes to suppressing the idealism of our hearts in favor of ideas within our heads. We are perhaps prone to a form of situational ethics that has put a priority on justifying our actions instead of predictively indexing the implications of our actions, and therefore, we are perhaps ignoring the empiricists and utilitarians who founded our modern ideology of post-Cartesian rationalism. Maybe we have entered a nascent period of irrationalism, which will dominate our ideologies for a prolonged period of time. In many ways, existentialism was not that far off from the calibration of our true north on the moral compass, and it is a very irrational ideology by which to live. Regardless, there is no question that we, as Americans, have lionized the wealthy and idealized a dream that implies that our success depends on our superiority to others in material, corporeal and ephemeral possessions. We seek these golden calves for confidence, security and pride. This is the American Dream. So I await word back from Waste Management, one of the only companies hiring in America, to see if I might be considered for the opportunity to wake up every day at 5am, to drive a massive gas-guzzling truck through scorching heat and humidity in the summer to torrential rains in the fall and spring, and a maelstrom of snow, ice and sleet in the winter, to pick up trash cans and dumpsters for a wage that is just above our definition of "poverty". The saddest thing about this is not my own despair about the bleak reality we face in Detroit, Michigan (and isurrounding suburbs) with regards to our economy and job prospects in 2012, but the fact that in the Waste Management Corporation's informational video for all "Residential Driver" applicants, they slipped in the fact that there is a strong possibility that there are people in the dumpsters, cans and bins. Living, breathing people. Our population has become so destitute that we have a million empty houses in the city of Detroit, but human beings are being forced to sleep in Waste Management dumpsters to survive. If you fail to identify that the dumpster you are about to lift and compact is actually a residence for somebody, or even a whole family, then they will be crushed to death by giant steel beams and blades. This actually happens much more often than you would ever think; it's a reality of the job that you must be willing to accept, or you are not fit for employment at Waste Management. One man's trash is another man. Sadly, I am lost. What is this word "waste" and why do we use it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3krwLpoXlw&feature=related