A Dirty Job, but . . . : Calabasas Landfill’s Only Female Employee Gains Colleagues’ Respect by Handling Hefty Load of Work

It’s dirty, smelly and sometimes feels hotter or colder than any place has a right to be. Men with hats advertising their favorite beer amble from dump trucks to shoot the breeze or swing a discarded golf club at an empty can.

Into this world of stink and sweat comes Vernice May, 25, whose parents thought she was going to be a nun, and who set out to be a nurse.

A dump is a long way from a convent or a hospital desk, but that’s where May wound up, the only female employee of the Calabasas Landfill.

When a supervisor suggests she take a tractor and push cement blocks and debris onto a pile, May complies with a smile. Never mind that she has never done it before. If it needs to be done, she’ll do it.

“She has done just about every job up here,” says her boss, Jerry Godsey. “She’s crawled underneath machines and changed oil and greased them. You name it and she’s done it.”

Dressed in the traditional blue work shirt, dark blue pants and sporting a pair of well-worn leather gloves, May climbs each morning into her dusty Ford truck and traverses the bumpy roads surrounding the 512-acre landfill. Stopping at strategic points, May unloads the six or so laborers to remove trash that has blown from the pile.

The men seem to respond well to her, carrying out her orders without complaint, and by all indications her 32 male co-workers view her as just part of the team.

No stranger to a hard day’s work, May, the youngest of six siblings, lives with her parents on eight acres in Littlerock, where she often spends days helping her father, Russ, around the house. Whether it is building fences, installing sprinklers or repairing the roof, May can be counted on to get the job done. Even more so than her two brothers.

“Russ would always get the girls to work harder than the boys,” says Margaret, May’s mother.

But Margaret May never thought such jobs would lead to work at a landfill for her youngest daughter, despite her husband’s 26 years with the Los Angeles Sanitation District, including 18 at the Calabasas Landfill.

“We thought she was going to be a nun for a long time,” she says, explaining that there are several priests and nuns on Russ’ side of the family. “She said, ‘No Mom, I want to have a family.’ ”

Before following in her father’s footsteps, May had hopes of becoming a nurse. She became a certified nursing assistant and went to work at the Lancaster Convalescent Hospital. She spent two years caring for the elderly, often single-handedly lifting them into their wheelchairs.

But the desire to work outside combined with a little spontaneity drove May from the hospital to the Calabasas Landfill, a place where only one woman had worked before.