On The Range, In Yonkers

Marcelli Bellinger lives in Yonkers and is almost maniacally dedicated to improving himself, which eventually landed him in a job where he supervises people all trying to do the exact same thing. Okay, all right, thank you very much for talking to I appreciate it. Thank you so much for me for this episode. I had the pleasure of talking with Marcelli Marcelly Bellinger. He was fifty seven when I interviewed him back in March. Birthday comes next month on April,

which I would turn fifty eight. He's a very sprite fifty eight, and he's a very busy guy. Are you talking to me in the middle of a workday right now? Yes? I am. As a matter of fact, yes, I am and uh. Marcelli was born and raised in Yonkers, where he works now as a Grayston Ranger, and his job is to take out the trash to make sure that yonkerstays as clean as we need to make it, no

question about it. Okay. So the Grayston Rangers is a really amazing transitional workforce program designed to keep Yonkers clean. Grayston is actually a bakery founded in nine two with the goal of hiring anyone who wanted to work, no background checks, no resumes, and in the two thousands they started programs like the Rangers to create more jobs and make Yonkers a better place to live. My job title

is Rangers Development Program Manager. I've been a manager right now for exactly four months, but prior to that, I was an actual worker for eight years. As a manager, Marcelli oversees the Rangers as they spread out through the city, drive routes and clean up the streets. A lot of people sometimes see us and the first thing that goes through their mind is this is such an easy job. But I'm here to tell everyone it is not an

easy job. I never assumed trash collection was an easy job, but the way that Marcelli describes it, his job is like a big game of chess, with the street maps being his board. You need to be strategic about your routes. You need to have some serious hustle, and you're battling the elements all the time. You have to be a quick thinker. Every day is a different day. It's not the same routine. It may be the same route, but

it's never the same routine. A big part of this is that the Rangers, in their fluorescent vests, have become a huge part of the Yonkers landscape. They're constantly interacting with the community, getting people involved, talking with them and spreading the ethos that Grayston and the Rangers are founded on, and believe it or not, they start to catch onto it as they see as work in every day and

the Grayston Rangers. It's a truly immersive program that helps workers to get to a place of self sufficiency in every part of their lives. So in addition to cleaning the streets, Marcelli is always helping his workers out with housing issues, putting together resumes, and finding other work. So the Rangers is a place you go when you want to get on your feet work and you need a hand to get that started. And whatever the situation is, we're gonna assess that and we're gonna try our best

to work a solution now for you. Marcelli is infectiously positive and exudes Grayston's mission of teaching self improvement, upward mobility, and second chances. He's even got one of those inspirational office posters behind him in the interview, I'm going to read it to you. My story is continuing, no punctuation. After talking with Marcelli for a bit, it feels like he's always been an inspirational poster in human form. Again. He grew up in Yonkers. His parents were both really

hard workers. That was a mechanic. So I was well on my way to being that type of worker, you know, because I saw my father working hard every day. I saw him doing the things that he had to do to take care of his family, and I adopted that. Also. In high school, he was a very serious athlete, pushed himself hard. He ended up going into the Army after seeing their commercials about bettering yourself and thought boot camp

might be challenging. I wanted to work out be the best that could be, So it wasn't like a patriotism, Go America. Oh nah, you wanted to do push ups? You wanted to That's all I wanted to do was make myself better. That's that's that's the only thing it was about. He quickly moved up the ranks in the army, then got out in worked at a T and T as an operator. Then he switched gears to do a

more physical job with his uncle's business. And I started doing moving, being a relocation engineer, because that's what they called them now. They're just not a mover, and that's exactly who I am. You know, you want to pick up that a little bit. So I became a relocation engineer, and I got good at it. I got very good at it. I got so good at it that I did it for twenty years. He got married, had two kids. In the early two thousand's, he got a job at

the local power plan. He and his wife had just had their third child, and the night before MARCELLI was going to start this new job, there baby passed away in his sleep. It was obviously an unspeakably horrible moment, and Marcelly remembers how his new boss at the power plant was human. He cried I cried, and he said, Marcel listened, Go take care of your business. He said, do what you have to do. Your job is still here. Do not worry about your job. Don't you even think

about this job. They sent flowers to the funeral, give him as much time as he needed. Before he even started, Marceli was being treated as more than an employee. I caught a lesson from that that you have to treat people in a certain way. When you show your kindness and you show your heartfelt loyalty to somebody, you always get a back. And from that day that's what I planned to do. I said, I'm going to treat every

person with respect and dignity. He worked there for a while, then he was a concrete inspector, then back to relocation engineering. He liked moving around and doing new stuff, so into thousand and fourteen, his friend told him about a program that Grayston put together for veterans. He was telling me about a range of program and I said, oh, you mean the bakery, and they're like yeah, I said, yeah, I used to work there. I used to do a

little part time over there. Of course he did. Marcelli went into Grayston to hear about the job and found that it was a trash collection program, and in the interview he was asked if he had any problems cleaning up the streets, but he said he wanted to work. He needed to feed his family. He wanted to be physical and outside. And he thought about this question with the mantra that his dad imparted to him early on whatever job you do, be the best at what you do,

because people are going to see you. He said. It may seem like the lowliest job in the world, he said, but I guarantee you someone's going to see you. When we come back from the break, Marcelli gets seen a strong work ethic, takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details. This is the kind of person you need. Express Employment professionals can help. Finding the best people requires more than sorting through applications. You need to

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pros dot com to find a location near you. Back to Marseli story. He went into interview at Grayston for the Rangers job, but the interviewer was late. Marcelli was patient, and after two hours the guy shows up pretty surprised that Marcelli was still there. When he brought me into office, he asked me about myself. I told him a little bit about myself and he stopped me in the middle of it and said, you really stayed for two hours. I said, yes, sir, when you want what you want,

you have to stay and wait for it. I said, you can't lose your discipline. I said, I'm a very disciplined person. And he said, you know what, you got the job just like that. Just like anything he'd done till then, he wanted to go above and beyond, move up in the ranks and be challenged, and he definitely found that challenge coming into this job. Yonker's avenue at that time was drop off garbage City of the Capitol, mattresses,

old furniture. This that which did it was a mess that's why the Rangers was put together a few years earlier. So he immediately went at it with his team and says, the streets looked completely different in two weeks, cleaned everything pristine to where now two weeks. In two weeks kind of taken care of to where now we can just do our usual cleaning and it's not a problem. The Younker's landscape changed quickly, and Marcelli was noticeably the guy

out on the streets making that change. One day, he was out on one of his routes and a car pulled up. Guess who's in the car. The Mayor of Yankrews rolls down his window and he says, listen, I just want to tell you you're doing a phenomenal job. What's your name, Marcelli Bellinger. He said, I'll be seeing you soon, rolled up his window, went right on about his business. A week later, Marcelli gets invited to city Hall.

The mayor shakes his hand in front of the assembly and as him a letter of accommodation, and he tells me, because of you, I'm gonna make this a job with the city. Because of you, the Grace and Rangers have been funded by grants to start out. Now, the mayor agreed to fund the program through the city. Marcelli picked up more routes on the other side of the city where he lived, so everybody seeing me everywhere. Somebody would

see me even aren't you the guy that clean? Yes, I am, that is me, you know, and he was like, Wow, you do a damn good job, man, I see you, I see you. Eventually he became supervisor, the position he still holds today. And all I kept doing every day was making our routes better. How can I do this to make this more effective? Have my community see that it's clean, and how can I involve them in the

clean up. As he and his team go around, they talk to people say, if you can clean your storefront or in front of your apartment, we can spend more time cleaning the parks in the streets, to the point where now it's part of the community routine that everyone does their part. So those are the things, like I said before, that when you put a hundred percent into it and you get involved with that community, those are the things that happened. Those are the results that happened.

Those are the things that happened, because after you do a great cleaning for them. They want to see it clean all the time. Marcelli has simply helped make Yonkers a better place to live. The community has pride in the Rangers and what they do in cleaner streets, bring in more business, get people out and about more. We had little children that came up every day and said, listen, can I use your picker? Can I Can I help you with the picker? Cannot. So it wasn't a thing

that we were like, hey, can't get out of here. Now, you don't know. We turned right around and I would bring extra pickers. Listen, here you go right before you go to school. Come on, do you think by bringing in the kids to what Grayston and the Rangers are doing with the foundation, they brought the parents in two families all got to know Marcelli by name, and he got to find out more about their lives, what they needed, if their housing was okay, if they needed work or

help putting together resumes. I speak with everyone. I talked to him, ask them how they're doing, still working, not working? What are you doing? Oh? I'm not doing anything. Listen, you need to come to twenty one Park Avenue and come see me listen, we got jobs. Everything up. They come see me. Since I've been the manager, we have created at least thirty jobs. We have thirty people working right now. How does it feel now that you have transformed the space that you grew up in? It feels great.

It feels that I've accomplished what I needed to accomplish, but I know I still got more road to go. Marcelli doesn't really have an off button for his self improvement drive, and that's what he's passed on to the people he works with. Every day before work, he has meetings with his team and he asked them what can he do for them? Their family? They're my family, and I want to make sure that when they go out,

there's nothing on their minds to inhibit their work. A happy worker is a great worker at worker that has no problems. It's one of the best worker you're going to ever see because there's nothing on his mind but the work itself. And at the end of every day, he makes sure to tell everyone he's working with one thing.

I say thank you. I'm so appreciative of their work because I've been there so many times nobody told me thank you, So every day I make it a point to tell every one of my people, thank you so much for just doing what you do. You make me. I don't make you, you make me. Marcelli might seem like one of those cheesy inspirational posters in human form, but that's because he actually operates by the mantras that

most people pretend to live by. And it makes a difference when you come across someone who actually lives their lives like that or does their daily job with that ethos, no matter what it is they do. And if anyone thinks that sounds cheesy or unrealistic, or questions that one person thinking like that can make a difference, just walk down Yonkers Avenue and take a look around. Ask the mayor.

I think there's a stigma against people who have worked as many different jobs and careers as someone like Marcelli has, like they can't lock down one or stay the course, always in transition. But why stay a course? Marcelli has transitioned so many times because he's never wanted to stop growing, despite any hardships that you assume would stop him or anyone us right in their tracks. And the workers he supervises at Grayston are people just like him. Humans in transition,

just trying to be better. And if that means that one of his workers finds other opportunities and moves on from the Rangers, he's proud of them. Listen, don't think that because you whin it got a better job, that I'm feeling mad at you, that I'm some sort of hater. I don't drink hate to ration. I don't drink hate to raid. I don't do any of that. What I do is I'm proud of you for taking another step towards your goal. There's no roof. Don't make a roof.

There's no roof. Whenever you think that you hit the ceiling, guess what, it's some more and more wrungs that you gotta go up in. This season all about the great transformation we're going through. That's what I took away from MARCELLI. Lean in and keep transforming. It's literally all we can do. Stick to the goal of just being better her for ourselves,

and just keep going. Once you lay the blueprint, just follow the blueprint, and it'll all makes sense to you at the end of the day because you will receive the prize that you need to receive. You know, no punctuation, No punctuation. That's it for on the job. I'm a discray. To learn more about Grayston and the Rangers program, go to Grayston dot org. Thank you for listening.