MONROE — A woman at the Evergreen State Fair threw a napkin into the trash cart as the two 16-year-olds wheeled it past her.
The woman smiled from behind her sunglasses. Glen Carnes and Danielle Edwards smiled back.
“It’s gotta go somewhere,” said Danielle, of Gold Bar. “At least it’s not going on the ground.”
The 101st annual Evergreen State Fair, which opened for its 12-day run on Thursday, counts Glen and Danielle among its green team. Guests will see the mostly-teenaged crew wearing bright green shirts as it sweeps, wipes, lugs and carts trash away.
Without them, the fair would stink.
The fair generates enough trash every day to fill about six 40-yard containers, each weighing roughly 7,000 to 14,000 pounds, fairgrounds manager Mark Campbell said.
The green team deals with that. Made up of about 110 people, the team is split into tiny divisions of workers.
Crews of 14- and 15-year-olds wander the grounds, sweeping up stray French fries as they walk through the greasy and sweet-smelling air.
Older teens and adults have tougher jobs, wheeling their way back and forth over the same stretch for eight hours, seeing the same blinking rides or the same super-sized plush animals, stopping to pull out big black garbage bags and haul them away again and again.
Glen and Danielle were covering an area near the Comcast Courtyard Stage. At times, they would glimpse an act performing. At other times, fair employees would tell them to quiet down; the clatter of the cart was disruptive.
The teens conceded that they were doing important work — “I guess if we weren’t here, there’d be problems,” Glen said — but they also knew they had a thankless job.
When Danielle was a sweeper last year boys would drop food in front of her, call her “garbage girl” and tell her to sweep it up. She remembered her pre-fair training. She said, “Thank you, I’ll pick that up.”
And when people saw the teens’ trash cart this year, they sometimes threw in wrappers but didn’t always have the best aim, occasionally hitting the teens with a stray napkin.
“People don’t really respect us,” Glen said.
Still, it’s a paycheck. Danielle plans to use the roughly $700 she makes to buy a Toshiba laptop. Glen, who got his driver’s license this summer, will use his money on car insurance and gas.
While both are glad to have their jobs, they have aspirations beyond the work. Glen would like to write screenplays or become an astronomer. Danielle wants to be a nutritionist or fitness trainer.
They have time to consider the options in the coming days, as they toil with trash under the summer sun.
“This is just my start,” Danielle said.
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