Community Happenings

Garbage Men & Women Doing Good in the Community

Here you will find a selection of our stories from the communities we serve and the environmental heroes who are part of the Meridian Waste team.

Team Missouri's Friday Lunch Bunch

featured in Team

Happy Birthday to dispatcher Stephanie Simms! We hope you have a great day!

Stephanie Simms

In addition to birthday festivities, the team took time to enjoy lunch together today from Valenti's Delicatessen and Marketplace. The team has lunch together once a week, compliments of management.

Salad

According to Business News today, there are some good reasons to hang out at the group table:

You get to take a break and relax. Of course, you can do this on your own, but you will take a better break away from your desk – no email notifications pinging, no desk phones ringing. Drake Baer elaborates on this in a Fast Company article: If you are constantly in "worker bee" mode, you are much more likely to get burned out. You do better work when you focus on work when working and disengage when not working, not when trying to straddle working and eating at once. If you feel like you have to eat at your desk, you will build up resentment that can carry over into the rest of your day, dragging down your performance.
You'll build social relationships. If you only talk to your co-workers about work, you don't get to know them. Lunchtime is the perfect opportunity to trade chitchat about families, hobbies and interests. It is also the best time to find out what they know that you want to know about office politics, personalities, etc.
Social interaction brings the team closer together. Personal connections make working together not only more pleasant, but easier and more productive. This is certainly one of the reasons that some companies provide free or subsidized food to employees. Some companies go the healthy route, while others offer what the workers prefer, healthy or otherwise.
It's a great networking opportunity. Get to know the finance analyst, for instance, or be there when the boss drops by the lunch table. Practice your elevator speech on the intern if you must, but stick to non-work topics for the most part.

Main Photo: Stephanie Sims, Dispatcher, Morgan Turner, Dispatcher, Jim Kane, Area Controller, Mark Gene, Mechanic, Daniel Anderson, Mechanic, Aaron Coffin, Area Sales Manager.