John Paglia, III 

My Worst Nightmare!

I’ve mentioned in recent excerpts that training is an ongoing process. Veterans and rookies can learn something new every day. Applying and sharing experiences makes not only your company safer, reduces insurance cost, but makes our industry as a whole reflect in a positive image. With football season finally upon us, I feel it is fitting to relate my past personal experience as a kicker and relate it to the garbage industry.

Most kickers go unnoticed for a positive track record. I can remember streaks in my career where I couldn’t miss a field goal. No matter what I did and where I played, rain, wind, or snow it didn’t matter what I did, I knew the field goal was going in and it did. I attribute this success to my training and every single day going back to the basics. No matter how redundant basic training became I stuck to a regiment. There were times in my career that this was not the case. During my sophomore year in college during the middle of the season there was a week or two when I had went through the motions. The first of the two weeks I became lucky and nailed a game winner. I was treated as a hero. I was cheered by 60,000 + fans all screaming for joy. The following week (still going through the motions and riding the success of the previous week) I missed a field goal and extra point early in the game and we ended up losing by 1. I was now a zero. Now it was the other team cheering for me. I can still remember the feeling in the locker room, on the plane ride home and the Sunday following the game. The worst part is my team was silent. No one blamed me; oddly enough I wish they would have. I learned something in that low point. Never go through the motions, never forget the basics.

From Football to Waste

You may be asking what does this have to do with the garbage industry? The principles and life lessons learned from football can be directly applied. While I was training a front load driver a few years back, I preached these principles. I trained him to be regimented, develop a rhythm and never take a shortcut. Dump every can the exactly the same, always look for hazards and never rush. I’m a stickler for leaving a container straight on the pad and never pushing a container while entering the pockets with the forks. Like my football career, the driver exceled from the very beginning. After follow up evaluations I reminded him of going back to the basics. He was starting to push containers, he would leave containers crooked, and he was not cleaning up messes around bin enclosures among other basic job requirements. Realizing he was falling into a “going through the motions” routine I decided to surprise him one morning and ride along with him. We quickly corrected his lazy dumping tactics.

Just as I was about to get out of the truck, we approached our last set of containers at an apartment complex. It had a concrete enclosure around it with about 1 foot clearance on the back and sides. He approached it, as he had done at least 100 times before. This time his forks entered the pockets smooth and he applied the parking brake without pushing the container. As he started lifting the container we both looked at each other with a look I cannot describe. In the 1 foot gap behind the container and the wall was a young girl peering through our windshield, her eyes as wide as an owl. If my driver had gone through the motions, she could have easily been crushed between the wall and container. This nightmare was avoided for a number of reasons. The first, I recognized he was not performing to the highest of capabilities and I decided to remind him of this. The second was that he too realized he was in a rut and corrected his minor mishaps. If we both had not recognized the faults at hand and corrected them, God forbid what could have happened to that little girl. After the fact the girl told us she was playing hide and go seek with her brothers while waiting for the bus before school. As we were talking to her, her brother climbed out of the next dumpster 50 yards away.

Staying Firm on Training

It is my hope that you take from this article the importance of staying firm on training, safety practices and constantly monitoring employees. Everyone can monitor. Whether it’s a safety director evaluating employees, or other employees holding each other accountable, all are very important in maintaining a safe work environment. Take the blinders off. Make sure at your company safety meetings you share stories across the industry of unfortunate mishaps. Sharing these will let everyone realize that tragedies do occur and they are not to be taken lightly.

John Paglia III is a 4th generation garbage man. Before he climbed the ranks to become Florida Express Environmental’s General Manager, he had a successful career in college and professional athletics. John has been around the garbage industry since his car seat days. Currently, John is focused on growing his company and offering the highest level of customer service and prolonging the world we live in today. John wakes up every day knowing the impact professional haulers have on their community is far greater than most realize. He can be reached at (352) 629-4349, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.floridaexpress.us. 

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