Dumpster Diving At Its Best

Yesterday was a fun day for me. I got to rent a car and drive down to another part of the province where I had five meetings lined up with employees of a large manufacturing plant that is in the process of closing down. I’m their career transition consultant. My job is to help them get ready to find new work.

I’ve only worked with these people for a few weeks, but from day one, I knew they were ‘good people’, as we say here in the Maritimes.

Yesterday I was witness to a true demonstration of the helpfulness of one individual and I will be forever grateful.

You see, I packed my lunch, as I often do when I’ll be away from home for a full day, and when I arrived, I put my lunch in the refrigerator in the staff cafeteria.

After my third meeting of the day, I headed downstairs to the fridge to grab my plastic bag with my lunch. It was gone. In fact, everything in the fridge was gone.

So I headed upstairs to find someone to ask if they might help me locate my lunch. Turns out, the person I found knew that the manager had deemed it fridge cleaning day! My lunch was now in a big plastic bag, in a dumpster across the parking lot from the office building. I figured it was a lost cause and I prepared myself for driving to the local fast food outlet.

But instead, I had an offer of help from this guy to take me to the dumpster and find that bag, with my lunch in it. And so he did. He performed dumpster diving at its best and not only found my lunch, in- tact and still cold and quite edible but found a few treasures for his own collection.

So, thanks to the helpful nature of another… I got not only my lunch, but a lesson in how a simple act of helpfulness makes ones day!