Out My Window
September 11, 2012, 9:50 am
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Without distracting from everyone’s worries about the U.S. bombing Iran (won’t be today), I want to report a scene from my window.
Two of New York’s Finest sanitation workers were collecting the debris (garbage, bottles, paper) across the street. I watched as two beefy but graceful guys lifted with ease tons of stuff and heaved it into the maw of their giant truck; some of it so heavy each had to pick up one end to lift it. Grunts and groans? Absolutely not; they were synchronized, deft on their feet, quick and graceful in their shoulder movements and arm swings. They reminded me of dancers, Alvin Ailey? Mark Morris? Mummenschanz? Their departure–a swing into the cab of the truck–also synchronized. The Rockettes?
On every morning on which I am out early, I can see the sanitation workers in Paris. As far as I understand, a little truck with an automatic shovel picks up most of the trash, and another truck cleans the pavement with pressurized water. People’s garbage is placed in standardized bins (http://www.paris.fr/pratique/ordures-menageres-tri/organisation-de-la-collecte/poubelles-comment-les-commander-les-reparer-en-changer/rub_5433_stand_10113_port_11679 ) that are picked up by the robotic arm of the garbage truck. The arm lifts up the trash can, turns it over the back of the truck, and shakes it mightily to empty it of anything that might be wedged inside. One person drives, the other rolls the trash can to place it within reach of the robot’s arm. Everything, truck, robot, workers’ uniforms, is bright green.
I hear that the jobs are very competitive, and much higher status than they used to be: reasonable benefits, a clean-looking uniform, and no direct contact with any trash.
Although it does not evoke dancing, I can still admire the impeccable efficiency of the process.
That’s very hard work; it usually makes the list of top ten most dangerous jobs. http://businessinsure.about.com/od/workerscompensation/tp/The-Top-Ten-Riskiest-Jobs.htm
and they have quite a lot of workplace injuries. I really admire sanitation workers.
Aren’t they New York’s Strongest, not the Finest?
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/finest_bravest_strongest_boldest/
Although the Sanitation Dept does have its own police force (the Finest of the Strongest?).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Department_of_Sanitation
My son loves to watch the sanitation trucks out our window.
Yesterday, however, I watched two guys get into an altercation that escalated into the one beating the other with a 2×4, his efforts at violence ultimately being thwarted by his pants falling down around his knees.
Two reactions, one serious, one not so much.
1. Obviously, those guys will never make tennis players if they don’t grunt, groan, moan or make dive bombing noises while they work.
2. As I was going out this morning, I passed a one-man garbage truck, the driver of which had to steer around the slopover into the street (and me) while loading the truck from two sides by hand. It occurred to me that the taxes I was saving (if any) weren’t worth it if they made someone do a job like that and, furthermore, no one should have to spend his day working alone.
PM: The NYPD isn’t looking quite the “Finest”: in recent days: killing innocent bystanders; beating up guys in their kitchen. Are they on steroids?
I did watch one of the Finest of the Strongest the other day galvanize several illegal parkers on behalf of the street cleaning behemoth trying to do its job. He got out of his sanitation police force car with his ticket book held close to his chest, walked down the street, didn’t say a word, eyed the parkers sitting in their cars, the workman loading junk into a battered pick-up; he even gave me an unsmiling glare–and I was standing on the sidewalk! Everyone moved (except me) and the street-cleaner brushed by sending up a wave of dirt and dust. This guy was BIG.
Is this the key to the confusion between the strongest and the finest? The police department has dropped height requirements and there’s a crop of short, over-weight police (both genders), who can’t stare down people, therefore they shoot or punch. Whereas no short, fat guy (not sure women have ever sued to get the job) can become a sanitation worker?
Peggy: So this is how you spend your time now? Isn’t retirement wonderful? Every day is Saturday!
Well……I am only retired from Fordham, not from everything else!
But yes, I have been able to add two minutes to the time I stand looking out the window, usually to count how many cars are parked across the street and if they are well-parked. Meaning: Are there ten? If fewer than that, the cars almost always belong to bad parkers from New Jersey. More than ten, native New Yorkers.
I hope everyone will remember to be generous to them at Christmas time. (Do you tip the trash men in New York? Here in my area a thief was caught two years ago driving around on the days before Christmas stealing the cards taped to the top of the bins with the tips inside.)
Margaret: please tell us more about what you see out your window! Very enjoyable. I am beginning to like you even though you deleted one of my comments once.
Me? Delete? Must have been Grant.
At 1:44 PM, there are ten cars parked across the street, and a cabbie in front of the hydrant eating his lunch. Otherwise, all is quiet.
A couple of years ago I decided not to comment any more on your threads because you had deleted a comment of mine, and now it turns out it wasn’t you? Oh dear.
Garbage men here come twice a day, morning (around 6am) and evening. Outside recycling, the city provides the people with trash cans with a capacity of 10 liters (2.6 gallons) per person in the building. How about New York City?
Grant,
Look out the window. There’s a barge crossing the Hudson right now. Also, could you pick me up some milk when you go downstairs.
Claire –
Garbage pick-up twice a day? Wow! No wonder Paris is lovely. Shame on the rest of us. Do other French cities have that service? I”m still waiting for them to pick up my trash from Isaac, but the storm did cause a lot of mess.
But I love that cabbie in NY having lunch by the hydrant. Rules have only so much value. :-)
The last time I saw Paris
she was in the middle of a garbage collectors’strike.
Drippy bags of garbage piled high everywhere.
Still, her heart was warm and gay,
I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café.
MOS–
So, does that mean it wasn’t you who deleted my delightful comment on your deodorant thread?
You must be referring to your snide comment.
Snide: derogatory in a nasty, insinuating manner.
I’m sorry you found the comment snide, it was meant to be light-hearted.
Slow news day, folks?
We don’t have garbage out here in the Bay Area. Just pre-used recyclable assets.
Although it’s been many years since I’ve had to earn my living doing it, I agree that manual laborers develop strength and grace that is suited to their jobs in ways that gym memberships can’t. I spent one summer grinding flash off drop-forged piston rods and gear blanks. My forearms were like Popeye’s.
Tom B – the contractor who collects our garbage and recyclables also uses one-person crews on their trucks. The steering wheel is on the passenger side. He leans out the open cab, or climbs down if necessary, and tosses bags into a dumpster-sized receptacle affixed to the front of the truck. The entire operations takes seconds; he can do our block in less than two minutes. I suspect that some of them do it without even stopping the truck – even when they have to hop out of the cab. I’d hit a half-dozen parked (or moving) cars on every block.
When I lived on the North Side of Chicago, there were two guys riding on the back of the Streets and Sanitation trucks. I think there was just one guy in the cab (this would have been during the 1980s), although the common wisdom is that trucks in Chicago always used four man crews. It being Chicago, it may be that there was a four man crew but that at least one was out sick or on vacation or off screwing around somewhere at any given time. In my observation, the main duty of the two guys on the back seemed to be to ogle and harass attractive female pedestrians.
The next door neighbor of my wife’s parents was a sanitation worker who worked on a truck crew for 20 years. His Teamster benefits allowed him to retire before he turned 50. He tried doing nothing for a year, couldn’t stand it, and ended up as a sanitation worker for another suburb. I’ve reached the stage of life where I can appreciate the possibility of retiring on union benefits while the health is good and the kids are young.
Jim, Are you complaining about some waste (and cost to you) implicit in having crews so large that someone can get sick or screw around without being missed? See, I’d worry about the one man in a one-man crew getting sick or on vacation. What would happen to our street then? Having seen the schools of remoras CEOs need to get from their office to their limousine, I can appreciate the value of overmanning an operation. And I still don’t think people should have to work alone.
Tom – no, I wasn’t complaining, just stream-of-consciousing.
There are a lot of solitary jobs, and driving a truck would be at or near the top of the list. I wouldn’t be well-suited for that kind of work because I’m a social animal, but there are people who prefer not working with other people.
A four man truck crew for collecting garbage is overkill. Those guys were patronage workers. I have no qualms about complaining about that.
What a delightful celebration of physical labor and the dignity of work. In a world that often despises – or, at least, looks down upon – those who work with their bodies, it is important to see not only the dignity but the “art” of their work.
Sanitation workers do have a utilitarian worth, but their work is more than that. And they should be celebrated.
Here in a small city in western Honduras I always greet the street-sweepers, mostly women, because their work – important as it is – is often not recognized and they are “invisible.”
Let’s have more to celebrate the physical workers of this world.
Still with me?
This morning out the window two guys and a jackhammer ripping up the street. Why aren’t they wearing sound mufflers on their ears? A guy thing?
Maybe they’re deaf already?
Now there’s six of them. Can they all be deaf?
Some ear plugs are really small – how many stories up are you, Margaret? :-)
We have the quietest five-man garbage crew that works like a precision drill team, one driving and two on each side of the street, no garbage cans are ever left overturned. They’re all built like the proverbial brick outhouse, and it gladdens an old lady’s heart to see them. They work for a private company and service four or five surrounding villages on a contract basis. I hope they get paid what they’re worth.
Why aren’t they wearing sound mufflers on their ears?
Maybe they’re temporary hires working under shady conditions, who do not know that they are entitled to that kind of protection, and whose employer doesn’t care because they will soon be replaced by others.
Margaret’s ruminations about what is really going on out on the street reminds me of an interesting interview over at A & E: Can a photograph be true or false? It’s about simple presence at an event and how simple presence doesn’t necessarily reveal the history enfolding there. It’s kind of long-winded, but the photographer/interviewee, whose life has been a search for “truth”, makes some interesting points.
http://www.publicbooks.org/interviews/errol-morris-forensic-epistemologist
Errol Morris, the subject of the interview, is a pretty fascinating character. Did you see his interview-documentary of Robert McNamara? And he did a provocative analysis of the photos from Abu Ghrab (Iraq War!) showing the U.S. military and their prisoners.
Yes, Morris is fascinating. He seems torn between his need to find truth and the necessity to criticize our always imperfect grasp of it. No, I haven’t seen those two works, but have heard of the McNamara one. I would hate to be in his sights if I were McNamara!
Mrs. S., when you were a child did you want to be a detective? Sounds like you might have. (Good quality in a journalist :-)
Many years ago the garbage collection service in Oakland, CA, was run by a tightly knit, legacy Italian firm. It was sold about 15 years ago to Waste Management. Each employee (virtually all were of Italian ancestry) was given one equal share of the sale proceeds. There is now a large cadre of very, very well-to-do people enjoying a very nice retirement. They worked hard, passed these prize jobs to their sons (sorry, ladies … this was a man job … except for the office workers) and saw a very handsome payoff for performing a very dirty, tough job.
No one should begrudge them their wealth. I wouldn’t have done that job no matter WHAT the economic benefits were projected to be.
BUT, if I would have been smart when younger, I would have foresworn college and become a plumber. Out here they get $95 per hour — portal to portal!!
HEre are the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2006 are job fatalities figures. The second figure is the fatalities per 100,000 employees. I can’t believe fishers lead the list. Garbage men are 5th, followed by farmers and ranchers!
Job Fatalities
Fatalities per
100,000 employees
Fishermen 53 152.0
Pilots 104 70.6
Timber cutter 66 93.5
Structural metal workers 36 61.0
Waste collectors 37 29.8
Farmers and ranchers 292 42.5
Power-line workers 38 34.9
Miners 156 37.0
Roofers 81 32.4
Truck drivers 957 23.0
All occupations 5,840 4.0
[edit]
Ann, I’ve heard fishermen have a really high mortality rate. But amazing that so many other occupations top mining. Highever, I’m guessing these are on the job fatalities; mining kills you real slow so that by the time you’re dying of lung disease, you can’t lay it at the company’s door.
Jimmy, define “portal.” :-)
I second Claire’s motion that Margaret keep posting stuff she sees out her window. From fireflies to garbagemen, always interesting.
And why would anybody delete Claire’s posts??
Just to be clear: I don’t see the Finest Strongest out of the same window as the fireflies. The fireflies I see in the wild off a porch attached to a cabin. The fireflies are long gone, but tree frogs have been audible.
And FYI: Out my window, there are ten cars parked across the street. If a few of them were smaller, there could be eleven–with careful parking.
Ann Olivier: When I was a child, I expected to go on being a child. I was very good at it and never gave much thought to being anything else. Life goes on and when I wasn’t a child anymore, I was in college. That’s where the inklings of being a journalist crept into my consciousness. My friends and I worked on the Loyola (University, Chicago) News, a weekly. And we caused a great deal of turmoil. That was such a great adventure that I stuck with it. As Jean Raber might appreciate, being a journalist requires serious editing skills usually exercised on self. At the core, I suspect I was always an editor, getting things straight even as a child. And what’s wrong with that?
Ms. S. –
May I ask what turmoil you and your friends caused? (Don’t leave the story hanging there!)
Ann: this thread might suggest answers to your question, http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=4416 – unfortunately the link to the memoir is broken.
Claire –
I remember the memoire and was hoping there might be more. I have a thing about the older generation telling the younger ones what the past was really like. Without those stories the culture dies.
P. S. Not that I’m younger than Margaret — I gather I’m older than everybody else here, but I’m sure her “turmoil” story would be instructive for all :-)