FEMINISM | EQUALITY | WOMEN

‘Women Can’t Do What Men Can Do’

They called me ‘Dumpster Dolly’

Within a week of getting hired at Waste Connections, I was pulled off route and called into the HR office.

“Katy, we need to talk to you about something important,” the HR representative said.

“OK.”

“It’s a sensitive subject,” he said.

Shit. Am I fired? Did I fuck up already?

“There are some photos. You didn’t do anything wrong. You weren’t dressed inappropriately or anything.”

What the fuck? If I lose this job to some social media photos, I’m gonna be pissed.

“We want you to know we’ve already taken steps to deal with the problem.”

“Will you just tell me already?” I said. “I have no idea what you’re alluding to.”

“You didn’t see them? No one told you?” the man asked.

“See what?”

He showed me a photo of myself, looking away from the camera, wearing my work uniform. I was confused.

“We want you to know that we are taking this very seriously. The driver who took these photos of you is being suspended for three days,” my boss said.

“Billy took these pictures of you without your consent, using a company cell phone, and he sent the pictures to his friends saying that — um — that he thinks you’re attractive,” the HR man said.

“Oh, well, I appreciate you being so protective of me, but I’m not offended by that. I guess it depends on whether he was vulgar or not. But this won’t cause any drama on my end. I’m here to work. That’s it,” I said.

“Great. We appreciate your attitude, Katy,” my boss said. “You’re welcome to come to us anytime with concerns. We support you.”

Later, I found out my boss didn’t just suspend Billy. He fired him.

I felt awful and awkward that my presence at the male-dominated workplace was causing drama within the first week of being there. We were short-handed on drivers, which made it even worse.

Everyone is going to hate me now.

Shockingly, no one did. People were glad to see Billy go. I found out he had a court-ordered tracking device on his ankle for sexually abusing his underage stepdaughter. Drivers told me stories about working with him in school zones.

“You got two minutes to get that trash and get your ass back in the truck or this damn thing on my leg is gonna go off!” Billy would say.

After learning Billy was a pedophile and a rapist, I was proud he lost his job because of me. I was hired to dispose of trash. Billy was trash, and I had taken him out.

Fourteen hour days

Working at Waste Connections was like being forced through a meat grinder. Think about how your body suffers from a seven-hour car ride.

Seven hours was only half of my Monday.

Fourteen-hour shifts were common, and I averaged sixty to sixty-five hours a week. Some men didn’t last a week at that job, saying they didn’t want to work that much overtime. I lasted three years.

The spine crusher

Some of the trucks I drove were unbearable.

One truck, in particular, had too much play in the air-ride seat. I had to memorize the bumps and dips in the highway — features you wouldn’t feel riding in a regular car. If I didn’t slow down in time, the seat would attempt to crush my vertebrae and claim my teeth through a series of violent launches followed by slams to the floor.

It was called a “cab-over” truck, meaning the cab sat directly over the engine with only a thin metal plate for a barrier that radiated heat so effectively that it would burn my arm on contact.

I joked about being a slow-roasted chicken when I drove that truck because, on brutal summer days when temperatures were well over 100 degrees, it was even hotter in the cab.

Some men refused to drive the Spine Crusher, but when my truck was down for repairs, I did what had to be done.

Trash throwing maniac

It seemed like our company was always on life support. Trash throwers, otherwise known as helpers, dropped like flies, and rightfully so. Would you want to throw trash for fourteen hours a day, dodging needles, smelling rancid diapers, and getting chased by dogs?

One of my helpers didn’t last a day because he was vomiting non-stop at the sight of maggots. Those maggots had parties. The healthy bastards were everywhere. Big ones. Small ones. Fast ones.

Another helper didn’t even make it a half-day. After lunch, he sat in the cab of the truck while I drove twenty feet, dumped several toters, drove twenty more feet, dumped more toters, and so on.

Many drivers refused to throw trash when the company needed help.

I threw trash like a maniac which impressed the public, being that I am a petite woman. Lifting anything is all about technique, and one of the helpers taught me how to use my knee to launch a toter into the hopper of the truck.

It was fun to feed the hopper couches and watch it crush and explode old box TVs. In the fall, I’d smash rotten pumpkins. I’d kick furniture apart making Bruce Lee noises. I’d jump on mattresses like they were trampolines before throwing them in.

Throwing trash in the Texas summer heat was brutal, as the possibility of a heat stroke was a constant threat. Our supervisors warned us about helpers dying of heat strokes at other garbage companies.

On dangerously hot days, I prioritized my safety by taking extra breaks and drinking more water, but I still did the job.

By the end of the shift, the amalgam of odors I had absorbed was something only a dog could appreciate. Hell, my dog was jealous that I got to play with trash all day.

Dumpster dolly

It was common for me to attract curious looks as a garbage lady, but retired men were the most shocked to see me driving a big truck.

One time, an old man in a golf cart followed me for a few blocks. I figured he had trash to throw in the hopper, but when I stopped the truck to greet him, he hobbled over to me excitedly and asked, “Can I take your picture?”

Lupe, my helper, was about to tell him off until I smiled and said, “Sure.”

The old man took my photo, got back in his golf cart, and drove away.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Lupe asked.

“No. He wasn’t rude. He seemed nice,” I said.

However, there was a different old guy that flagged my truck down, who did piss me off by saying in a childish tone, as if he was talking to a five-year-old, “Now, what are you doing driving that truck?”

Something about the mannerisms of that man bothered me. He was leaning a little too close, invading my space.

“Making money,” I said.

He could tell I was irritated and probably assumed it was because of my period, so he fucked off to let me resume working.

One time, I was eating my packed lunch in a parking lot when an old man started shuffling toward me from afar. His feet moved slowly, inch by inch. His back was painfully hunched.

He must have an important trash-related inquiry to be expending this much effort to come over here.

When he finally arrived, I rolled down my window.

“Has anyone ever called you Dumpster Dolly before?” he asked with beady, unblinking eyes.

I died laughing and said, “Nope. You’re the first to call me that.”

He scampered away with a smirk on his face.

A lot of men wanted to drive my dumpster delivery truck but weren’t allowed to, because they sucked at it. I was damn good at dumpster delivery. That truck was mine.

Some of the dumpsters were in such poor shape that the bottoms fell off when the route driver tried to dump them, spilling large amounts of loose trash onto the ground. I’d shovel the spilled contents into the new dumpster I had delivered.

One time a busted dumpster spilled nothing but broken windows.

I shoveled glass shards for an hour in one hundred-degree weather, being careful not to stand downwind of it. I was wearing a hat, safety glasses, and a bandana on my face, but still had to hold my breath and shut my eyes each time my shovel went over the tall edge of the new dumpster.

When I talked about cleaning up messes like that, many drivers scoffed and said they would have refused to do it.

Tonya Harding

One of the perks of driving the dumpster delivery truck was being sent on metal-hauling missions in which I would take a dumpster filled with iron scraps to the metal yard and cash it in for the company.

One time, after parking on the metal scale, the guy in the office signaled for me to drive forward.

“Woah, woah, woah!” a man from across the yard yelled. I stopped and saw he was running toward me, waving his arms. He came up to my window and asked in a condescending voice, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I was going to drop this metal in the usual spot unless you want me to put it somewhere else,” I said.

He pointed at the crane that was parked at the end of the scales and said, “Don’t you think someone should move that crane for you first?”

I scrutinized the space between the crane and the scales, shrugged, and said, “No.”

He looked at me like I was stupid.

“Sir, do you see the name on the side of this truck?”

“Tonya?” he asked.

“And, do you know who the American hero, Tonya Harding, is?” I said.

“Um, yeah, I was always more of a Nancy Carrigan man myself,” he said, confused.

“Sir, I named this truck after Tonya, because she has the turn radius of a figure ice skater, not because of a morbid fascination with violence,” I said.

He stared blankly at me.

“Check this out,” I said, popping the air brake loose. He backed away. I drove off the scales without a problem, with a foot of room to spare on all sides. I knew my truck and her capabilities.

When I got out of the truck I said, “I would never abuse Tonya. She’s been through enough.”

He shook his head and walked away.

‘Women can’t do what men can do’

Before delivering a dumpster, I had to call the customer to ask them where they would like me to place it.

“Hello, this is Katy with Waste Connections. I’m delivering your dumpster today. Where would you like me to set it?”

“Katy, tell your driver when he gets here to set it anywhere outside of the gate.”

Even though I told them I was delivering the dumpster, they always assumed I was a secretary instead. I never corrected them because I simply didn’t care to. But, if the customer was home when I arrived, they’d usually make a big deal out of seeing me driving.

I’d hop out of the truck to undo the ratchet straps, and they’d say, “Wow! A woman driver? Wow!”

I know, I know. My vagina always bumps into the steering wheel and forces me off the road. It’s a miracle I made it here at all.

One time, I complained to my boss, “Every time I call, the customers assume I’m an office lady. It’s so annoying!”

“The old boss refused to hire women,” he said. “The customers are still getting used to you.”

“So that’s why I never got an interview in the past! I applied for years before I finally got a call!” I said.

One time I met the old boss. He had been demoted for almost running the company into the ground and was transferred to another yard but sometimes stopped by to say, “Hi,” to old friends.

Someone pointed and said, “That’s him. That’s the guy who refused to hire you because he thinks, ‘Women can’t do what men can do.’”

The obese man ambled over and introduced himself. He was winded from trekking the short distance from his truck to the office.

Well, at least I can walk across a parking lot without struggling to breathe.

Why women can’t do what men can do

Some coworkers called me “Dumpster Dolly.” Some called me “Katy the Trash Lady.” Some probably called me a “bitch” for not letting them smoke cigarettes in my truck. The label didn’t matter. Anyone who saw my work was forced to admit that I was anything but weak, incapable, or unwilling.

Sometimes, the only reason women can’t do what men can do is because we are denied access.

Thanks for reading!

Katy Langston is the owner of Seen and Green, a lifestyle blog. Her writing covers a wide range of topics: sobriety, addiction, codependency, emotional trauma, health, fitness, nutrition, environment, sustainability, DIY/Natural beauty, art, horror fiction, humor, and more.