Trash

As I checked in to the hotel the woman above checked me in. I had to give her my tribal identification and my credit card. When I explained that the conference was paying for my hotel, she didn't have it showing that in front of her. I said I would take care of it the next day and was on my way.

Once I hung my clothes, put everything else where it belonged, and went for ice, I returned to my truck to park it. After parking my truck, and returning to the hotel lobby I was tired and thought I would sit down and rest.

It was nice and cool in the lobby of the hotel. Soon a friend stopped by to chat, and the woman who helped me check in came over and informed me that everything was taken care of. The conference was covering my stay.

I noticed about this same time that there was a piece of plastic on the floor and people appeared to be going out of their way to avoid it. I mentioned this to my friend and we had some fun watching that happen. Rather than pick it up people were going way around it both when walking to the bank of elevators and when leaving the building.

There must have been close to 100 people that walked by that piece of trash before it was picked up. She did it so quickly that I didn't have time to take a photo until after she picked it up and placed it in the trash. The hotel was full and I am not sure what the capacity was.

I told her that it reminded me of when I visited Chicago, not that long ago. There was trash all over the place. The hotel we stayed in had garbage receptacles on both sides of the entrance and still, there was garbage out on the entryway. We picked garbage up on the way in and on the way out of that building.

We picked garbage up wherever we went. We talked about how great it was that we got some exercise in Chicago!

Then last week, I was going to an art gallery in a city close by and a man was out with a leaf blower, blowing garbage off of his sidewalk to the neighboring storefronts.

I just laughed and couldn't help but tell the people at the art gallery I was going into about the man with the leaf blower.

I thought it was just Chicago. Like only big cities? I don't ever remember this being so noticeable. Is it just me?

In my 20s and 30s when my children were little we used to do things for others without getting found out as if we were found out we would have to do something else.

Picking up trash was something we could do and rarely get found out. My children passed that on as my 15-year-old grandson knew exactly what to do when we saw someone's fast food garbage on the road we turned onto. There was a car a long distance off that we could see.

I said, "Let's pick this up and not get found out." He quickly jumped out of the car and picked up the trash closest to him as I was getting the other stuff and quickly jumped back into the car.

I then said, "Did they see us?" He replied, "Nope, we are done with our good deed for the day!" He had a huge smile on his face! Wouldn't it be nice if everyone would do this little exercise with their children?

And isn't important for hotel workers to get recognized when they do a little extra without being asked to do it or told that they have to do it?