My Job

I am a worker at the department of streets and sanitation. We take care of the streets, and the sewers, too. I go to work at midnight and I work for 8 hours. It took me a while to get used to working at night, but now I’m used to it. 

Most people work during the day. They can get their job done then. Their workplace closes at night. That’s called business hours. They don’t have to be there to take care of things. Sewer workers have to be available 24 hours a day. You can’t close our office, because someone always has to be on duty. If a sewer breaks in the middle of the night, we have to fix it then. If we don’t fix it right away, the problem will get worse. 

One night I was on duty and there was a problem in a community. I got a call from a homeowner, and she said that the sewer was broken. I asked her how she knew. She said there was dirty water coming back up into their street. 

I didn’t go to fix the problem. That’s not my job. My job is to identify a problem and then figure out how to solve it. She told me about the problem. Then I looked at the map on the computer. It showed that she was right. We have sensors under the street that tell us when there is a leak. They show where it is. 

I sent a team to fix the problem. Some of them were on duty. Others were off duty. I called them at home and asked them to meet the team at her street. They had to close the street for several hours while they fixed it. First they dug a hole to get to the sewer. Then they found the leak. After that they had to replace a part of the pipeline. That took a lot of work, but they got it done. 

Most nights it is not that difficult to do my job. But when we have problem, we have to get it solved right away. So that’s why I’m on night duty.

My wife is a police officer. She works nights, too. She and I both know it’s important to have people on duty 24 hours every day. We make sure that when you wake up in the morning the city is safe and healthy.