7 00 eastern. This week on q a, author and New York University professor robin nagle. Her new book entitled picking up on the streets with the sanitation workers of new york city. Robin nagle, why did you want to drive a garbage truck . I was curious about sanitation in new york. Also around the world, but i was here. After some time hanging out with sanitation workers, getting interviews, classic anthropological interviews, i realized i could not understand to be depths i wanted unless i was qualified to do the job. I was hired. The first time i drove the truck by myself, i have to say, it was terrifying and exhilarating. I was one of the most powerful vehicles on the road. Not the biggest truck. But i was the one no one wanted to be stuck behind or next to. Where did this interest come from . I was 11 or 10 as my dad took me camping in the adirondack mountains. This is when the questions of environmental awareness and integrity were really part of the National Conversation for the first time. So, dad took me into the forest. We were hiking for a long time in the pristine wilderness areas behind our leanto is a dump where campers have been too lazy to take out what they have brought in. My childhood idealism, my sense of how justice and new world works and how adults were responsible my sense of the order of the world came crashing down. This atrocity could be left behind a leanto in this utopian forest, one of the last great wilderness areas in the eastern part of the united states, even then. And the question of the moment was, who on earth did they think would clean up after them . Who was going to carry all the stuff out . And the possibility of just letting go of stuff and assuming someone would then pick it up, that question would succeed and it stayed with me from that moment. I guess i could say it composted a little bit. [laughter] it grew into the larger questions that pervade the book. Where does trash, garbage in manhattan, go . How far away from the city . Trash from manhattan does not go that far away. It crosses the hudson river to a Waste Energy Facility near newark. It becomes energy that is sold to the communities adjacent to the facility. If you want to know about trash from other parts of new york, other boroughs, it does go far afield. Some goes by train. Some goes by truck. It goes to pennsylvania, ohio, virginia. One of the carolinas. It goes very far away. Why . We have nowhere to put it inside our own border. Inside the border of the city. It had to go somewhere. It has to go somewhere. The somewhere had to be outside new york. Why do the other states allow the garbage to come to them . They make a lot of money. We have to pay a hefty cost for transportation, but in terms of the host community, they charge a fee. In fact, some communities, the money has made a real difference in the economic base of the town. I know stories of towns in pennsylvania where because of the landfill they agreed to open and the trash they were paid to receive, they were able to buy new fire trucks and higher more teachers and paint the town hall. It is a little bit of a doubles devils poshard bargain, because you are taking this stuff that is not the commodity of choice if you are looking for a solid engine for your town, but it does have some upside. So, i got up this morning, early. I went out on the street. I took pictures of garbage bags. And i want to show you what i found. For instance, there is one. What are we looking at . Sausage bags. Body bags. That is another name for them. Those are 120gallon garbage bags outside complexes. That is like a big apartment complex right there. Because of what is behind that, i am going to say that is commercial waste. I do not know if that is residential. It is near 76th street and broadway. That is an avis rental car right behind them. Yes. Having read your book and having heard you talk about mongo, i wonder if those mattresses would be mongo. Mongo probably those mattresses would not be mongo because of the bedbug scare. Mongo is an object put out for the trash, put out for collection, but someone decides should be rescued. You can think of it like object adoption. When you are on the garbage truck, did you pick up things i will show you some baskets, also, that are on the streets. Is that the responsibility of the sanitation workers . There is one right there. Yes. This is an interesting dilemma. Not dilemma. Just different city functions are divided bureaucratically. I would not have picked up that basket because that has the parks symbol on it. There are people in the Parks Department who process garbage inside the parks. They would have collected that. That one, i would have picked that up. That is the city basket on the streets. Its a different set of workers for the parks. I would have to see the exact corner to know the jurisdiction or why one the parks one is right next to the regular basket the recycling basket. This is a new initiative to try to help people follow recycling protocols while theyre on the street. Instead of throwing your empty water bottle into the garbage, you can now drop it into the bottles and cans only bin. Why should someone watching this in california or colorado or texas care about this book . The actual challenge of Waste Management is a national concern. And simultaneously a very local concern. Any city, any town, any municipality, you have to answer the question, who is picking up trash and where does it go . It is not so different than other parts of the world. Parts, laborers, organizing routes. Chicago just went through a radical transformation and how they organize the collection routes for the city. It used to be based on an award situation. Now they set up a grid. They had to do this with a lot of consultation. It sounds successful, but those problems they are hardly unique to new york. Where did you grow up . Saranac lake, new york. How did you get to new york city . That was the nearest big city. I came here to be an actor originally. What year . 1981. Why did you want to be an actor . I had done theater in my hometown and really liked it. I did not realize that theater in new york was a different thing. I did not realize that my talents would be better used backstage. In this city, you know, i was a young woman, one of hundreds and hundreds of any cattle casting call. I do not think i had any talent that elevated me above anyone in that field. But you have a lot of education. Go through the many degrees you have. I flunked out or walked away from college a couple times, two or three times until i settled in to finish my ba at nyu and was given a scholarship to columbia for my graduate work in anthropology. I can say the degrees if you want what kind of degrees . Ba, ma, phd. In what . Anthropology. All of it. What is anthropology . Anthropology im so glad you asked that question. One of my missions of life is to help everyone understand how amazing anthropology is as an umbrella to understand a frame by which you can understand all kinds of questions about who are we as human beings. It includes archaeology, linguistics, physical anthropology which looks at things like how did we evolve . Molecular anthropology where it looks at things like mitochondrial dna, how it changed over centuries and we can trace that back to a potential ancestor, that famous mitochondrial eve from central africa. Im forgetting one of the four fields. My professors would be very upset with me. Inside of anthropology if you have a question about how does the religious structure or tradition work or how was kinship understood in different parts of the world, or howl is an Economic System and forcing some forms of power and discounting other forms of power and how is that like a different era in time or different people in a different part of the world its both a way of learning about celebrating difference, and to learn a way to learn about and celebrate commonality. To me, it is where you can have the most fun really questioning where our species and all of its glory and ridiculousness, i really, really like being an anthropologist. What do you do fulltime . I direct a Masters Program at New York University. Its an interdisciplinary Masters Program. I teach. And there is a field im trying to kickstart call discard studies. The book was one project. There are three others we have got rolling. We are organizing archives of the department. When i started my research, it was very hard to find records in one place that was well organized. There are a few. But i want my successors and anyone with questions like mine to have a place to find information and details and historic data and whatnot. So, that is the archive project. Then there is the oral history project. That is rolling forward. The next jump will be in the fall. And then there is the museum, which im trying to have someone help me with the paperwork for the notforprofit corporation so the museum can take place. In sanitation workers, are we talking about manhattan or all of the boroughs of new york . All five boroughs. How many . There are approximately 7000 uniformed sanitation personnel and 2000 civilians. Roughly 9000 and change. Of the uniformed force, there are 196 women across all ranks. So, very few. How many women apply . I dont know. When the announcement goes out for tests, there will be between 75,000 and 80,000 that apply. I have not asked how many are female. I would be the only woman or one of two present. I came back in at 2005. I did not have to start the process over. I had to brush up on the truck a little bit. Would you be accepted no matter what . Oh, no. I had to take the test is like anyone else. There was no secret back door for me. Frankly, there would be no secret backdoor for you or anyone else. That is one way the Civil Service has a great deal of integrity. You clear a mountain of medical tests send verifications that you have the physical competence, including psychological tests, and then you learn to drive the truck and you passed the road test. If you successfully walked past all of those markers and are certified, verify, proven to be of the competence they require, then you can be hired. But no one will help you cheat any piece of that along the way. Which union and do they all belong . Teamsters local 281. The uniform Mens Association it is still the Mens Association. That is a sore point among some of the women. Yes, you belong. Once you are promoted to the level of supervisor and superintendent, you belong to a different union. I will just use the word how long can you be a garbage man . Tell me sanitation worker. San man. What about san woman . I would rather you said san man as a gloss for the job rather than garbage man. Well you pick up garbage and you throw it in a truck. How long . As far as the shift or the career . For career. If you want the pension, you have to stay for 22 years. If you do not go the supervisor role or Something Like that, how much money can you make after 22 years . If you are behind the truck, and you are on plow in the winter if you have a good year with overtime, you are going to make in the 90,000 range. What kind of benefits do you get . There are excellent benefits. Sanitation workers get Better Benefits than i do through New York University. Medical coverage for yourself and your family. I do not remember the exact details, but it is tremendous security if you want to start a family, if you want to make sure your kids maybe they are special needs. They take care of all that. When you are going through the testing and, what was the toughest part . I became very quickly impatient with the number of times i had to go through these different medical procedures and the number of forms. Im not great with paperwork, although im in administrator at nyu. I should not say that. It almost felt like they were intentionally trying to wear us down so we would walk away and reduce the number of people they had to process. Thats not true. Thats not what they were doing at all. For me, personally was the worst part was keeping track of the forms and sitting through the morning filling out more forms. The written test was not difficult. The physical test was it was demanding, but it was not unreasonably demanding. What did you have to do . You work against time on a series of tasks. With them involves baskets. What baskets . The baskets that you should pictures off. You are required to drag them into the back of a truck. You are required to do that from different distances and around different obstacles. Some you could drag. Others you had to carry. The other component was just bags, like the pictures you showed. Moving them similarly around different obstacles, dragging them into this imaginary truck. What is the most poundage you had to pick up yourself alone . In the test, you mean . When you became a garbage excuse me, san worker . Its a tough habit to break. I picked up my share, but i dont know at any one time, what is the most weight you have to pick up . Whatever is out there. No, i understand. But you say those bags are 120 pounds. Is that the most poundage you have to pick up . No, your partner would help you do that unless you want to really wreck your back. Some people are fit enough. Some men do that. Some women as well. They have a lot of muscle. They will take some pride in hefting one of those bags themselves. As far as the weight limit, if someone puts a bag that is 600 pounds that is legal household trash, we have to figure out how to get it back in the truck. Theres is not a weight limit per se. What was your initial salary and benefits . 31,000 . How long does that last . You reach top pay within five years. It is low50s. I dont remember. It changes. How long did you work as a san person . In title . Several months. Everyday . Yes. I was broom qualified. You know the street sweepers . I was trained how to operate one of those. You do not drive those. You operate them. I am very proud. I also worked behind the truck and plowed snow. I felt like i got a pretty good sense of the job overall, which was part of my goal. Late in your book you talk about someone named, who we actually interviewed a couple years ago, in 2011. Steve goldsmith. He used to be the mayor of indianapolis, the mayor of new york. Lets watch a clip of that. You can put it in context. We had the sixth largest snow in new york city. Lots of things went wrong. We learn from our mistakes. Why did it go wrong . There are a lot of lessons, some are about snow. Some are generalized. There is the very deliberate way you approach a job. Lets say snowplows. You execute that the same way. For snow, the timing is extraordinary. The amount is extraordinary. The wind is extraordinary. Fill in the blank. What we found this time was we have to have really uptodate second by second management data. The reports were off a little bit. There were mistakes made by others. 1000 buses got stuck. You look at that, and you declare an emergency, but the people who met made a goodfaith decision that turned out not to be right. The point of the story is it is easy to do monday morning quarterbacking here. I think we realized realtime management data coupled with a little bit more in terms of Delivery Systems would have helped a lot. What would you add . It seems to me he is 100 correct in his assessment of that storm. I would add there has been a trend in managerial style within City Government over the past, i dont know, 15 or 20 years, to make centralized decisions on behalf of the entire city for that particular agency. For example in sanitation, when the plows are first deployed, the plow is always kept to the right. There will come a moment when you should tilting your plow to the left because the conditions have changed and how much you have already cleared. Deploying salt, using salt on the streets. That is a decision that is key at some moment in storm response. Those decisions are made centrally. But the way that the storm is slamming Staten Island may be very different from the way it is being felt in the northern bronx. I am going to bet this is the same for other key agencies that have a similar style. I think it would strengthen the department to trust the acumen and the experience of the field officers who maybe are not ready to start salting or want to start salting for the Central Agency is ready to declare time. In other words, when you have a system of promotion and youre confident the people you have promoted into managerial decisions are skilled and competent, give the men the power to call the shots at the local level in ways that are immediately relevant to that district rather than have all of that central, especially when you have information lag. We will never face a storm like that again, not because we wont have a storm that big. Im sure we well. But because there are now in place very sophisticated data gathering mechanisms like gps and all the trucks for a start, that will help the department understand and respond in a much more nimble way than was possible. I think that can make a significant difference. What time did you have to be at your truck . When did you get your assignments . Go on from there. You have to be at work the day starts at 6 a. M. , meaning you are in uniform and ready to go. Most people will arrive at 5 20 or 5 30. Enough time to have a cup of coffee and not rush. 6 00 roll call, you will get your assignment. Here are your assignments, your special conditions that are different from a normal day. Then you claim your truck. Then you are on the street. Depending on your garage location, your route may start a few blocks away were many miles away. For example, the manhattan eight district in new york, the east side from 59th street to 90 street, Central Park East to the east river. The garage for that district is at 215th street up at the top of the islands, and if you are trying to get from there to the start of your routes at 6 00 it is not quite rushhour traffic, but it is picking up, so to speak. It can take you an hour to get to 59th street. Then you are against the clock because your route must be cleaned by the end of your shift. That route is the heaviest in all of new york because it has the most high density housing in the whole city. So, it has the heaviest route. When is your route over . It is an eight hour day, so depending on where your garage is, there is a cutoff in which you are allowed to drive back to the garage to shower and change. Or if your route is clean, you will drive the truck to new jersey to dump it and bring it back. That by itself though can take hours. What is more common is you fill the truck and it takes your shift, and then the next shift we call this ru