<p>Last winter in a huge storm, several garbage men were caught off route buying beer. So the city installed GPS in the trucks. Seemed great on paper, but some of the guys figured how to download and watch porn on them.</p>
<p>On the other hand, citizens can treat garbage men like animals. Leaving nails sticking out of wood, dangerous chemicals and asbestos dumped in residential garbage with no protection. A couple of weeks ago someone had an entire garbage can filled with those litttle decorative rocks. Filled to the top. My husband and his partner together couldn’t lift it and the homeowner went ballistic, screaming that he had dragged it to the curb. My husband told the homeowner that they’re actual human beings because tha seems to have escaped him. There have been multiple cases in the last couple of years of garbagemen run down inthe street. Violence against the garbagemen has become so common that a law is in the works to make assault against them carry the same penalty as against transitworkers.</p>
<p>So a few years ago, I lived in Arizona during the housing boom. Tons of people moving into the state, and far too few people working at the DMV. So, you had a 4 or 5 hour wait to get license plates for your car (!).</p>
<p>Local news station filmed lots of DMV workers hanging out behind the building spending half of their shift goofing off, smoking, eating, etc. All while people like you and me are stuck in a 4 hour line to get their vehicle licensed. </p>
<p>In Arizona, you were mandated by law to register your vehicle upon arriving in the state or risk a fine. Which meant a 4 hour wait in line, while DMV employees were goofing off not helping customers.</p>
Someone redoing landscaping. (We don’t have the planting strip here and a homeowner can be fined for putting out things when it’s not the appointed time, so free things are rarely put out).</p>
<p>Our city workers don’t pick up garbage from either professional construction or professional landscaping (just residential waste), so people go to great lengths to get out of paying for private trash service.</p>
<p>My husband swears that garbage can weighted at least 300 pounds and there was no way they could lift it and tip it into the truck. Also, if a can is too heavy and the garbageman lifts it anyway, if the bottom falls out the garbageman is reprimanded in writing for damaging someone’s property.</p>
<p>Why are they still using humans to lift cans??? Why aren’t they using the cans that are then lifted by that grabber thing??? Are they still using humans instead of machines because unions are requiring that??? </p>
<p>Which meant a 4 hour wait in line, while DMV employees were goofing off not helping customers</p>
<p>Yep! People should take phone pics/videos of DMV workers goofing off while there are long lines and publish them on Facebook, YouTube, etc.</p>
The grabber things are used for some things, but not for regular residential garbage. The grabber things are very expensive to buy and maintain, and they also don’t put the garbage cans back where they are supposed to be and sort garbage from various recycling matters.</p>
<p>My husband has done this job for years and I only learned this past winter that the entire force is responsible for shoveling out houses of worship after snowstorms of more than 4 inches, in addition to the curb cuts.</p>
<p>Also, in the week leading up to the Jewish holidays, 30% of the force from the entire city is deployed to specific neighborhoods, mostly in Brooklyn, to make sure the area is spotless. </p>
<p>We still have garbage men in our city… I am kind of glad, in my aunt’s neighborhood you have to buy the special cans, which are not cheap, and they have to be put out in just a certain way and there’s a lower limit of how much trash you can put out. Seems like a PITA. I would guess that makes it easier to tell if there’s anything hazardous in the cans, too? I dunno.</p>
<p>Haven’t seen a garbage man lift a can in years…all firms use the grab arm…it is NOT that slow,once the driver gets experienced with it…And less costly over time as there are no injuries,disabilities etc from those lifting cans…manpower is reduced also</p>
Maybe “firms” use the grabbers, but all “cities” do not. In NYC, garbage collection and snow removal are areas into which money is not invested. It may be qdogpa that you have different expectations than the great unwashed.</p>
<p>Not surprised those machines are not used in crowded cities, access is terrible… I live in a suburb of a city, and not a single man is used except to drive the truck…and the sole reason is financial…</p>
<p>Zoozer, don’t understand your comment about the great unwashed?</p>
<p>qdog, I’ve never lived in a “crowded city” and there are still always garbage men. I’ve even lived in a fairly upper-class town and still… garbage men (and women). I don’t know anywhere where the use of machines rather than people is the norm.</p>
<p>Romani-- downriver. And I think maybe Oakland County, where I work and am moving. lol. I’ve never actually seen them at it though, so I don’t know how it works… I’ve always seen garbage trucks back up to a dumpster or trash can to dump it, which there obviously isn’t room to do on a residential street. They must have grabbers that grab from the side somehow. </p>
<p>I feel bad that I haven’t been more appreciative of my garbage men. They’ve never been overtly friendly so neither have I… but I didn’t really realize how hard their job is. I guess I didn’t think about it. What thankless work… doing something that back breaking while most of the world is still sleeping and will never see it!</p>
<p>The only place our city uses machines is businesses or other places that have dumpsters.
Btw Zoosermom, I am often having to remind my h not to cram stuff in the garbage can, it doesn’t make it heavier, but I think you would have to shake it rather than just turn it over to get it out. ( our can is a 20 gallon with a 30lb weight limit)</p>
<p>We have garbage, plus recycling pick up, haven’t had a problem. In fact when we lived in the suburbs, we even would have the workers walk down our driveway to get the can if we forgot to put it out.
The city related jobs that are irritating though are the school buses.
Occasionally they will park on the street idling the bus for an hour or more.really didn’t know what that was about, I don’t care if they park there, but runnng the engine?
(also, they occasionally drive way too fast through side streets. Scary)
The combo is always fun.
On garbage day, the truck pretty much blocks the street, if there are cars parked on both sides. So if I see that, I go around the block & come up the other way. One day, a school bus got stuck on my street behind the garbage truck. Bus driver apparently didn’t see the truck or care, so it inched its way down the street waiting for the truck to finish its rounds.
No wonder it can take kids well over an hour to get home from school.</p>
