Dealing with Garbage at Work

So I had a meeting at work today. Exciting, huh? Well we meet in all different places at work - sometimes conference rooms, team rooms, sometimes people's cubes. Today we met at a particularly small cube that there was definitely not space for 5 people in so I kept trying to roll my chair around to scoot out of the way of one thing or another. Once the meeting was over I got up to leave and couldn't find my cell phone which had been in my pocket. Everyone always asks, "Are you sure you had it with you?" I was POSITIVE. I had talked to Mom on my walk over to that building - I knew I had it. But we looked everywhere and couldn't find it. A cell phone can't just disappear!

And then I realized - with all my scooting around and knocking into things, I think my cell phone fell out of my pocket and into the garbage that I was sitting right next to. So I check the garbage, and its empty :( But then I realize that while we were having our meeting one of the maintenance guys came around to empty trashes. NOT GOOD. Especially because we were sitting in the first row of cubes and that was probably 30 minutes ago! Gross! But I have to look for it, right?

So I go looking around the whole building trying to find the trash guy thinking that I have no idea where to go if I can't find him and how many millions of garbage bags do they go through everyday? What do I do if I can't find my phone? I don't memorize people's numbers anymore... And with Nick being out of town I don't even have another phone to call from to activate a new one... But I find the maintenance guy in the last row of cubes...

I told him that I needed to go through the trash because I'm pretty sure I threw my cell phone away, and he is one of those people that knows exactly what was in every trash that he emptied and he knows what bag its in so he starts to help me go through it. But he's looking for a white cup that he knows was in the trash that he emptied. Thing number 1 - do you know how many white Styrofoam cups people go through each day? I think half of the trashes had one in them. Thing number 2 - if he was paying such good attention to what was in people's trashes wouldn't he have seen a cell phone in one? Well, that was his point exactly. He was convinced that I hadn't thrown it away and that I was wasting his time. And we got to a certain point in the garbage and he said he knew it wasn't in the rest of it because it was that full when he got to the cube that we were at.

Now we had been going through the garbage for about 20 minutes at this point and I felt really awful making this guy do this. I did offer to do it myself, but he wouldn't let me. So I was sort of ready to give up because I felt so bad and he was insisting it wasn't in there. But I KNEW it was in there! And I thought back to a conversation that Nick and I had about a week ago and Nick was saying that there's been a lot of situations where he's gone against his better judgement just to be nice, and then it ends up seriously inconveniencing him. He said that as uncomfortable as it is to insist on things, sometimes you just have to when you know you are right.

So I can tell this guy is not happy with me, but I am not going to give up! I am thinking, "dude, I will take that garbage bag and run - I am getting my cell phone back!" So I finally start digging in - no gloves or anything, and let me tell you - there are a lot of bananas in there - I hate bananas! And so the guy sees I'm not going to give up so he finally hands me a pair of gloves and backs off. So I'm going through the trash with him in the background saying "it's not in there, its not in there..." And it took some digging, but 3 minutes later I emerge victorious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I FOUND MY CELL PHONE!

And the guy couldn't believe it. He was seriously shocked.

And I was happy to have proved him wrong, but even if I didn't at least I wouldn't have doubted myself and been wondering "if I had just dug a little further?" And my cell phone is nothing special, but I really was not looking forward to dealing with losing one! It was less of a hassle to go elbow deep in my co-workers garbage (what, like that's something new?) than to have to get a new cell phone.

So - long story, but happy ending to a lot of crap :)