Prim Sanitation Engineer

Remember! — Do not EVER refer to slim, trim Fib Barfetz as a debris hauler! And put out of your mind any such phrases as ‘trash man’, ‘waste collector’, ‘dumpster dipper’, ‘crap courier’, ‘ garbage guy’, ‘crud carrier’, or even ‘single-stream recycling professional’. For Fib is technically a Sanitation Engineer (S.E.), and it is only by the title of Sanitation Engineer — or perhaps The Honorable Mr. Fibulon S. Barfetz, S.E. — that he will deign to be referred, whether in public or private.

For Fib is what you might call prim and fastidious and monomaniacal about his chosen profession. (Do not under any circumstance call it his ‘job’.) Hence, the always buttoned formal white tuxedo, the tightly tied black silk bow tie, and the imported short-wristed white Egyptian cotton gloves, the kind you might last have seen upon the hands of that fetchingly freckled and buxom upstairs maid on a rerun of an old PBS episode of The McDonaghues of West Waverly Place.

Mr. B shows up daily at the town dump in this same garb, white tux all spanking sparkling white with crisp creases, spiffy Italian shoes spit-shined, hair gleaming and razor-cut, though he must spend a veritable fortune on daily dry cleaning bills. And his personal valet must be perpetually exhausted! Luckily, Fib is independently wealthy, due to the shockingly untimely demise of his billionaire uncle, the great oligarch and self-professed King of Pork Rind Futures, Sid ‘Snackage’ Barfetz, late of the Hampton Barfetz’s.

Here we see foppish Fib in typical mid-shift stance, assessing the ripe redolence of today’s particular refuse pile. He has a uniquely rare olfactory aptitude, by which he can begin the process of sorting and evaluating the daily heap of dross with just a few substantial sequential sniffs. (I don’t know quite why he assumes this seemingly idolatory pose, as if this were a religious ritual, but perhaps to him it is.)

It is Fib’s good fortune to have at last found a career so ideally suited to his peculiar personality (and vice versa). He was exceedingly unhappy — some say clinically depressed — throughout the entire duration of his stint as leading man in a string of a half dozen blockbuster rom-coms with the likes of Kirsten Dunst, Jessica Alba and Scarlett Johannson. His sell-out concerts at Madison Square and the Hollywood Bowl left him unfulfilled and aimless. Arbitrage and IPOs and swaps and mergers seemed to suit him just as poorly (though his fellow associates at the Dewey, Cheatham & Howe Fund sure didn’t mind the $437 million in fees he was able to draw to the firm during his five months there.) No amount of NASCAR wins seemed to satisfy poor Fib. And though he had a virtual lock on the Governorship of New Jersey in the next election cycle, he seemed to find the junkyards, toxic waste dumps and refineries of The ‘Garden’ State preferable to the genteel colonnaded portico of Princeton’s Drumthwacket.

Thank God he is at last calf-deep in slimy muck and slippery mire! Ain’t life beautiful?!