Trash Duty

Well today I had a very good service experience. And it goes like this. My two guys friends from Arkansas get extra credit in one of their BYU classes if they help clean up the football stadium after football games. They get even more extra credit if they bribe girls with a free dinner to help them. Well anything that has to do with the word "free", I am all about it. Even better if "free" goes along with "food". So me, my roommate Emma, these two girls from downstairs, and the Arkansas boys went to the football and had a great time. Laughing, cheering, slurping down blue raspberry snowies, and even meeting Cosmo! BYU beat San Diego by a lot (I dont remember the score because, lets be honest, I don't really understand the game and only clap or cheer when everyone else does). We had to stay for the whooooole game. Something I have never done because I always leave early. But when you are on trash duty you must stay till everyone leaves.

Well the crowds left the stadium and left behind a whole lot of trash! The 6 of us went up to our side of the stadium and geared up to starting picking up all of that wonderful trash. However we were not alone. There were probably 25 people cleaning for each section of the stadium. I put a smile on my face and everytime I got a whif of nacho cheese or half eaten hot dogs, I thought to myself, "CPK, CPK, free dinner, free dinner." The process of cleaning the bleachers first starts with the brooms. Each row gets swept clean of all the trash. The trash then congregates at the middle of the bleachers on the stairs. Then the trash is pushed into garbage bags one stair at a time. After all the trash is picked up, the stairs and bleachers are fire hosed down to get the peanut shells and sticky soda off. This process went on for about an hour and a half. We decided our shift was finished when Nathan got nachos thrown on his shirt instead of the garbage bag. Yummy.

Although this was a grueling process I do have to admit I felt good about it afterward. Service really does make people happy. And being treated to California Pizza Kitchen afterwards makes it all the better.