I threw my food in the work refrigerator and I planned on having "dinner" more than halfway through my shift. I come back out to get a swig of the Coke ... and I didn't see it there. Then I remembered: Mondays the cleaning crew comes through and, around 5 p.m., they clean out all the contents of one of two fridges in each of the two break rooms in the building I work in. There are signs on the door of the fridge that will be cleaned out that upcoming Monday. And the fridge I threw my stuff in apparently was the one that was getting cleaned out this Monday. Want to be pissed, but I can't blame anybody. This was all my fault (although, and I'm just saying this, there was a bottle of store-bought cold brew that was still in the fridge that I remembered was there when I stopped by earlier to take a swig of my Vanilla Coke -- so why didn't the cleaning crew toss that bottle, but still, all my fault).
I could have let it go. Nah! Jersey Mike's is hella expensive. I paid, like, six-and-a-half bucks for their small sub. I want that back! So I hunted down the cleaning crew, and after going back to the first person I encountered, she said that she threw all the food in the fridge into a bag, and then that bag into the trash receptacle next to the recycling bin.
OK, so it must be done. I knew there might be people who could see me and thus judge me on what I was going to do, but I was going to do it, and if they see and judge, so be it. I went into the break room, opened up the lid of that trash can (for the second time, actually; the first time I looked in but didn't have the heart to do more than that) and pulled out a bag. It was my bag. And after tossing aside a couple empty food containers, I saw my Jersey Mike's sub, still in the bag. (I also saw my cup from the Hawaiian ice vendor from whom I bought a cup of ice at a parking lot at Maplewood Mall over the summer. They said that if I kept the cup and brought it back for another ice, for example at the Minnesota State Fair, where they're a vendor, I could get some bucks knocked off. That seems kind of silly, keeping around a plastic container until the Fair rolls around, and seeing it touched by actual trash convinced me to take both that cup and that bag home and throw them into our recycling bin.)
You goddamn right I fished it out of the bag. And you goddamn right I ate it. I made sure I washed my hands after I opened up the bag and then opened the wrapper in which the sub was rolled, though. And I smelled the sub, too -- and I couldn't detect a whiff of trash smell. Now, I'm no aficionado. Maybe people slag on Jersey Mike's. But I have always liked them, and frankly, eating that sandwich last night made me so glad that I looked for it and that I took it out of the trash to eat, because last night, Jersey Mike's tasted sooooooooooooo goooooooooooooooood. No regrets ... assuming I don't get sick from going through trash.
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Aside: I was lucky to have found my sub in the trash. The four-person cleaning crew split up to cover the whole building. One couple tosses the fridge's contents into the trash can; the second takes the trash from the can to the dumpster in the back of the building. Usually it goes in that order. Last night, for some reason, they did it the other way. So, in a sense, I was lucky, because that sub should have gone to the dumpster.
And I will confess: If they had told me that my sub was in the dumpster, I would have asked them if I could go to the dumpster to see if I could get it out of there. Fucking Christ, I spent six-and-a-half bucks for it!!!
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Oh, speaking of the Vanilla Coke: I didn't see it in the bag. So, naturally, I looked in the recycling bin right next to the trash receptacle. And on top there were two empty bottles. One of them was Vanilla Coke. The other was Cherry Vanilla Coke, and I brought with me, in the plastic bag, a bottle of Cherry Vanilla Coke that I had finished while at WC (I had the Cherry Vanilla, I bought the Vanilla, I went to the Castle, I drank the rest of the Cherry Vanilla, and I started drinking some of the Vanilla).
I grabbed them out of the bin. This was around the time where I noticed someone walking across the break room. I wouldn't have minded anyway, like I said, but I don't think anyone saw me as I dove through the trash bin, and thank Buddha for that, because the recycling bin is a bit ... cleaner than the garbage can, right?
I planned on scanning the codes underneath the caps of both Cokes as soon as I got done drinking all of the Vanilla (I didn't have time to do the one underneath the Cherry Vanilla before I had to go to work). But since both were empty, and I already had decided I was going to take the bag and the Hawaiian ice cup home to recycle, I figured I should take some stuff off my hands, scan the codes for both Cokes at work, and then, ironically, throw them back into the recycling bin.
I planned on doing those scans during my second break after I ate the sub. I looked at both Cokes, both of which still had caps screwed on them. The guy who cleaned out the fridge dumped the contents of the Vanilla Coke into the sink, most likely. However, there was a miniscule, miniscule amount of Coke in both bottles. Now, I was thinking the first part of my night at work at how fat I felt. It probably was due to the White Castle and the spaghetti serving as my lunches. But drinking Coke virtually daily isn't good for my health, either, and with every swig I took yesterday I could feel my waistline expanding.
And yet, I felt kind of screwed that the, oh, half-bottle of Vanilla Coke went down the drain. That's, like, $1.15 that was wasted. (Again, I'm not blaming the cleaning guy; this was my fault for not putting my stuff in the refrigerator that wasn't going to be cleaned last evening.) Plus, you know the adage that you don't know what you got till it's gone? My ballooning stomach due to the sugar in the Cokes was the farthest thing from my mind. I. Needed. Coke. So you goddamn right I went bottoms up on both Cokes in order to consume every last milliliter! Who cares, the liquid didn't touch the recyclables!
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