Our family built a parking-lot cleanup business that remains AI-proof

As a child I watched my parents take on extra work to keep food on the table, and by my teens I was helping them. My dad would wake us at the crack of dawn to clean trash from business parking lots. I found those mornings peaceful — watching the sunrise and getting a lot ready for customers — and I liked being with him.

My father, Joseph Winch, was a World War II refugee from Poland who had done many kinds of work after arriving in Calgary. When he died suddenly, I was 21 and set out on my own, offering cleanup services and founding Winch Janitorial Services, which later became Winch Enterprises and now Clean Lots.

In a tech-fueled world, the work has stayed AI-proof; a robot still can’t scour every bush and hard-to-reach place for every cigarette butt. My two twin brothers joined a few years in, one helping with cleanup and forklift work, the other handling project bidding and outreach.

Canada, Calgary

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