Mr. Clean by Adam Mac

Lonnie's problem is that he has OCD, and he has intense anxiety working with human waste. Every day is like exposure therapy. He wears personal protective equipment from head to toe to prevent infection from biohazards and airborne particulate matter. At the end of each day, he showers in the company change room, then goes home and takes a long shower with a fresh bar of Ivory soap. He keeps a quart-sized container of hand sanitizer in his truck and a smaller bottle in his pocket.

The worst part of the job is vacuuming the waste out of the toilets into the truck's waste disposal tank, because the four-inch hose often gets clogged, and he has to clear the blockage. He gets five disposable tyvek suits each week and is reimbursed for each one he returns unused. He's never returned one.

It's an unpleasant job, but there are no other available jobs he's qualified for that pay as well.

Today he had a catastrophic accident. The pump siphoning the waste reversed flow and spewed raw sewage over a 2,500 square foot area including the management and engineering trailers. "What the hell have you done, you idiot!" yelled one of the engineers peering out of one of the brown-stained trailers. Lonnie, not knowing how it had happened, answered "I didn't do anything. It must have been a faulty valve or a malfunction in the pump motor."

This was the biggest spill Lonnie had ever seen, and he threw up several times before he could collect himself and call his supervisor. He taped off the area and told the guys in the trailers to stay put until the area could be cleaned and decontaminated. In this kind of emergency, Lonnie acquired a great deal of importance, because he knew the protocols better than anyone. Even his supervisor let him run the show, repeating "it's your disaster Lonnie. You make the call."

It took three trucks till past midnight to vacuum up the waste, sanitize the ground and buildings, and deodorize the worksite.

When he got home, his grandmother, who lived with him, asked, "Why are you so late tonight?" He said, "There was an accident, Nana, and I had to supervise the cleanup."

"Supervise?" she asked. "Since when are you a supervisor."

"Well, I was already on site and knew what had to be done."

"So, what does this mean? Are you going to get a promotion or a raise or something?"

"Well, the regional manager showed up just as we were finishing, and he thanked me for doing such a fine job coordinating everything. He said "We need more supervisors like you. There's an opening in the new subdivision on the east side. Would you be interested?""

"What did you say?"

"What else could I say? I said ""Sure. Do I get a company car?""

"Will you have to wear those clothes and that mask thing?"

"No, being a supervisor is hands-off. Oh, remind me to book a hepatitis shot with Dr. Graham's office. I'm going to take a shower and go straight to bed. It's been a long day."

After he'd showered and dressed for bed, he started ruminating about how the sewage flow could have been reversed. Then he remembered. But he could never admit to that. Come to think of it, there was this guy hanging around the truck. Maybe— It's possible. It happened to one of their trucks out west a few years back. A tree-hugger had sabotaged the truck at the construction site of a ritzy condominium where acres of old forest had been cleared. That could have happened here, too. After all, there were protestors in the early days. One of them must have come back and tampered with the truck equipment, switching the mode from vacuuming to pumping. That's what happened. Now, could he sleep?