One Man's Trash

Caroline and I had a date planned for a Friday evening.  She called me up earlier in the day to let me know that she'd either have to cancel or hold it earlier, before 4 o'clock.  Holding it earlier was fine by me, and I told her that.  Instead of meeting at the restaurant, however, she asked that I meet her at her office building.

She met up with me in the lobby and asked me if I'd accompany her into the building.  I figured that she had wanted to take me on a tour of her office.

We arrived in the sub-basement trash facility.  She led me through a few sets of swinging metal doors and we stopped in a big room that had two trash compactors.  She turned to me and asked, "Ready?"

You see, Caroline was in the marketing department for an educational supply company.  The prior day, she had accidentally mismatched two client files, and a folder with some very important contract information was apparently thrown away.  It wasn't yet garbage day, so that meant that the missing folder had to be inside one of the two compactors.

The two of us stood before the large metal machines.  Caroline, having explained the above to me, asked me if I had any questions.

"Yes," I said, "You're asking me to jump into a compactor and help you locate your file?"

She nodded.  "I'll get in huge trouble if I don't find it.  Do you mind?  I wouldn't ask you unless it was really, really important.  I'm really sorry."

I inquired further, "Why not ask someone from here at work, or a friend, instead of me, who you only just met?"

She said, "No one at work can find out!  And none of my friends are around at this time of day.  And besides, it would be too embarrassing.  You going to help?  Because we don't have a lot of time."

It was a bit miffed that she hadn't mentioned any of this before I had arrived, but that was besides the point.  She needed help.  I was dressed in a nice shirt and slacks.  I supposed that I could always visit a washing machine afterward and, I have to be honest, the idea of saving a nice young lady's job was appealing to me.

I asked the final, and likely most important question.  "Any chance that these will start compacting while we're inside of them?"

She said, "They can only be operated from the switch near the open hatch.  The person operating it will be able to see inside, and we can yell for them to stop.  I don't think that anyone's going to be coming down here until after most of us are out of the building, though."

While Caroline stripped off her outer clothes without a second thought, I opted to climb into the other compactor with my clothes on.  I couldn't help but notice a bruise on her thigh.

"From earlier today," she explained, "I hit myself climbing out.  Be careful."

Like Scrooge McDuck into a vault of gold coins, I waded my way into wet paper towels, gummy foodstuffs, and one sack that smelled a bit like old diapers.  If I didn't hug the sloping sides of the interior, the pile would have easily been up to my neck.  The smell became too rancid to bear, I switched to mouth-breathing, and forged on.

There was nothing for it but to tear open bag after bag, sift through the contents, and find that file folder.  Once or twice, I heard a "Shit!" or a, "Damn it!" from the direction of Caroline's compactor.  I went on.  It had to be there somewhere.

It was.  A little over half an hour later, I pulled a bent file folder out of a trash bag.  It was spattered in coffee grinds and some red fluid, but it was definitely what she was looking for.

I jumped out of my compactor and alerted her.  She screamed in joy, and I helped her climb out.  We were both a bit of a sight, but she looked far worse for wear.  My clothes were in a sorry state, but the look on her face made it completely worthwhile.

She asked if I could run and grab some paper towels and cups of water from the maintenance area, which I did.  She washed herself off as best as she could, pulled her clothes back on, and took the file.

She said that she wanted to repay me, and asked if I would wait for her to return the file upstairs.  I waited for a little bit on a bench near the maintenance area, and sure enough, she returned.

We agreed to clean ourselves up before anything else, so we went to our respective homes, showered, changed, and she took me out to dinner.

While being more-than-friends didn't work out, we're still friends, and I'll never forget how I met her in the first place.