Dumpster Diving: America's Favorite Pastime

Today at work was definitely a Monday. A Monday that started way to early due to Daylight Savings Time. I had just returned to my desk after lunch to see that horrible red flashing light that I absolutely despise....voicemail awaiting. I hate voicemail, and I hate the people who leave me voicemail (at work at least). I just don't get it. If you call, and I'm not there, send me an email. Guaranteed I will respond to that faster and I will be much happier. Anyway, my hatred of voicemail is not the purpose of this post. As I was saying, I had a voicemail and it was someone else in my company telling me that she had talked to one of our Clients about some samples that had arrived today for her department. The Client had informed her that we were supposed to use the Sample ID handwritten on the Samples and not the Sample ID written on the Sample Submission Form. This is stupid. Why would you fill out the Sample Submission Form, whose soul purpose is to provide the information about the Samples you are submitting, with a different Sample ID than the one you intend to use? Stupid. But I have come to realize that Clients can be just that sometimes. Anyway, she knew that I had also received these samples from this same person so she wanted to give me the heads up. So I walked over to the lab to make sure the people doing the test had kept track of the handwritten ID. They had not. But no worries, the packaging was in the garbage so we could just get it from there. Nope. The janitor had already taken the garbage. I became frantic. I did not want to call this Client and tell him that we had started five of his tests and the data would basically be useless because we wouldn't be able to tell him which results were for which samples. I found one of the Janitor's and she informed me that the person who took my garbage had just left for the day and had dumped his trash in the trash compactor. I hate Monday's. So I ran outside to the huge trash compactor to see if anyone had compacted the trash, hoping my bag of trash might be sitting on top. I could see two very accessible black garbage bags and I thought, surely it must be one of those because he had just left. I was going in. Luckily, at the last second someone suggested I go to the clean room and get a clean room suit. They are basically one of those white onesies that you may remember from E.T. or something like that. This was genius! So I went and got suited up and then made my decent. Into the trash compactor I went. This was not a very easy task because trash compactors were not designed to have people hopping in and out of them very easily. Luckily we had a wood pallet sitting outside that I put into the trash compactor to use as a ladder to help get me down. It took quite the effort to get in without killing myself. Once in I started handing black garbage sacks up to my co-workers so that they could sift through the trash. As I was going to grab my fourth bag I grabbed it from the bottom and nearly everything came spilling out. Right on top of the trash I had spilled sat one of the bags we were looking for. There was much rejoicing! After a few more minutes I was able to recover all five original bags and I am now able to claim I am one of a very short list of successful dumpster divers at Nelson Labs! I love Monday's.

Climbing out of the dumpster: dirty, sweaty, stinky, completely happy....priceless!