In the family business, juggling garbage and family

Joe Pesi is a 38-year-old Italian-American who lives in Douglaston, Queens. He laughs in response to the question of how old he was when he started as a garbage-man.

“Me…? Seven,” he says. “Nah, but it feels like it, though.”

Pesi, a short well-built man with olive skin and slicked-back wavy black hair, started working for City Waste Services Inc. of New York City at the age of 16 and has done so ever since. The private sanitation company is a family-run business that started over 100 years ago.

“I’m fourth generation,” says Pesi. “My great-grandfather started with horse and wagon. Used to pick up the ashes when they used to burn the garbage in the buildings. They would take the ashes, cart them away, and bring them to the cinder block companies.”

His father now runs the firm. Their clients include JFK and LaGuardia airports, Amtrak, and Columbia University, as well as smaller clients with whom the firm has been doing business for as long as Pesi can remember.

Pesi started by driving the trucks, but within a few years, he had moved into sales. He still often drives for the company though — in fact, he prefers it.

“Some days I’m getting my hands dirty,” he says. “It keeps it interesting. And fun. When you’re in a truck, you’re in your own world. You do a day’s work and then you go home. Every day, you don’t know what the day’s going to bring and you could be all over the place before you know it.”

This leads to what Pesi refers to as “wacky hours,” which are largely governed by the needs of clients. Sometimes he starts at 6 p.m. and works all night; other times he’ll start at 2 a.m. and work through the day. Working on a Saturday (as he is today) is not unusual. This morning, he cleared out the estate of an old woman who had died, and during the week he worked shifts every single night.

“The phone rings,” he says, “and we go. It’s a tough job, let me tell you that. I mean these guys have no lives. My workday never ends.“

Three years ago Pesi got married, and he now has a two–year-old daughter.  “Lot of fun… lot of fun,” he says. “Always keeps you busy.”  But he finds himself facing the same dilemma his father faced: finding time for both work and family. In the sanitation business, this isn’t the easiest balancing act.

“Aw, forget it!” Pesi says, exasperated, before adding, “But I always make sure I have dinner with them, you know? Whatever time I get home, I always tell my wife: come wake me up when dinner’s ready.”

Pesi explains that this is an important ritual that he remembers from his own childhood. “My dad would wake up at 5:30 p.m. and have dinner with us, so we would see him. So if he didn’t get up for dinner, we’d never see him. So now, I have to see my daughter at least once a day. You want to be there. Always be there. Or try to at least.” The food was less important than the gathering: Pesi sums up his mother’s cooking with a fond, “Ah, forget it.”

Before he was married, Pesi ate out almost every night. Now that he’s married, his wife, who doesn’t work, cooks dinner. “For the most part we eat healthy at night. She usually cooks some kind of chicken, fish, salmon,” he says. “Basically all the food groups, without always making pasta like normal. You know stereotypical Italians make pasta every night, eh?”

Pesi says that she doesn’t have a signature dish. But, as with his childhood dinners, the food is less important than catching up with his family. “You try and build your family with some kind of values,” he says.

Though Pesi always tries to have dinner at home, he buys most of his other meals, as dictated by his work hours. Over the years he’s built up a compendium of regular dining spots.

“There’s a few pizzerias that make excellent salads,” he says. “Great meals – like home-cooked stuff, that’s not junk food. I stay out of McDonald’s. Fast food isn’t for me.”

Today Pesi grabbed a sandwich and small salad from a butcher and deli on Francis Lewis Blvd. in Bayside, Queens.

“Robert’s Meat Market,” he says, opening the wrapped sandwich on the table in his office. “They’ve been in business more than 40 years. [The owner’s] dad had the place as long as I can remember.”

Pesi rhapsodizes about the deli between bites of his sandwich: “Top quality. Top of the line.  A full line of meat. All kinds of meat. Real good food. The best.”

The sandwich he’s eating today, the Must Have, is a hero with soppressata, prosciutto, capicola, roasted peppers, basil and provolone cheese, with oil and vinegar dressing. Pesi also has the Hoboken kale salad — baby kale, carrots, radicchio, Brussels sprouts, sunflower seeds, honey mustard, and mayonnaise.

Robert’s is the kind of place Pesi means when he speaks of “places where you know you’re going to eat good,” and it reflects his preference for home-cooked food. Pesi mentions that this sometimes seeps into his work-life. He did a snow removal job recently for a client who’s a wholesaler to meat markets in three of the boroughs.  

“So instead of paying me, I tell him: make me a box, give me all different kinds of meats,” Pesi says. “So he gave me a dozen rib-eyes which were out of this world, some skirt steak, some sausage, chicken, lamb chops.” He opens the freezer in his office to reveal what almost looks like the back room of a butcher’s shop. “That’s not even half of it,” he says.

Pesi’s love for his work appears to transcend his intention to “keep the legacy of the family business going.” Despite the constant juggling of work, family, and everything in between, he speaks with an air of genuine contentment.

“You’ve got to love what you do when you work,” he says, “If you don’t love what you do, you got no passion, then what’s the point in doing it, you know?”

Tags: #Deli food, #Garbageman, #lunch, #sanitation, Food, Queens