Woman won't quit collecting ... trash

By Janine Anderson

Thursday, November 2, 2006 2:10 AM CST

RACINE - Throwing things away is the hardest thing Vanessa Johnson has ever done.

It's a hard thing for anyone to do, but Johnson's view is a bit unique. She is believed to be the first woman to work on the garbage trucks for the city of Racine.

"I've never done anything this hard before in my life," she said. "Everyone thought I was gonna fail. They were taking bets, I heard. I'm still here."

Johnson spends two days a week on a garbage truck. Half of each shift is spent dumping trash into the back of the truck; the other half she drives. The other three days she works at the city's Pearl Street Facility, where people can drop off solid waste.

This is Johnson's eighth year working for the city. She started as a seasonal employee with the Parks Department when she was a sociology student at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. After she graduated, she kept her seasonal gig with the city, cutting grass and helping take care of city parks.

At one point she had a job at a group home, she said, but it closed.

"I figured the city wouldn't close, so I stuck with it, and here I am," she said.

She also worked at a local factory during the winter, but didn't like that as much as her job with the city.

"It was like a coin toss. What do I want to do with my life?" she said. "I couldn't be trapped in a factory after being out here."

With that, Johnson gestured to her surroundings at the Pearl Street Facility. The piles of old tires, large dumpsters and tangle of branches. But she was out in the sun, on an unseasonably warm late October day. It's the out-of-doors, and not the garbage, that got her hooked on working for the city's Parks and Public Works departments.

"Every day is an adventure," she said. "You never know what's next. Sometimes there's dead animals. You open up a can, and there it is. Sometimes they're not dead and they're jumping out at you. I've screamed back there before."

Jeff Fidler, superintendent of public works, like most of the people Johnson told about her career shift, was surprised that she put in for the job.

"It's not one of those jobs you really think a woman would want to do," he said. "We had absolutely no problem with giving her a try and hoping she could make it. That was certainly a concern, with the physicality of the job, because it's not just lifing one bag. It's lifting tons of garbage over the course of the day."

He said she had to work hard once she started throwing garbage.

"At first it was a struggle. It was not easy for her," Fidler said. "She's gotten better as she's went along. She's improved. Now she's finishing her route. When she first started she was having trouble. We've had male employees who couldn't finish the route, when they do too much too early."

Johnson worried about the lifting component when she started garbage collectors repeatedly lift cans weighing 50 pounds but believed she could do it.

"I thought it would be really hard, just about impossible," she said. "Once you get used to it, it becomes easier. I turn obstacles into opportunities."

Fidler said Johnson will be on the trucks through Nov. 18, when seasonal employment ends. She is sixth in line to get a full-time job with the department, he said.

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