As a grocery cashier I have a lot of folks in uniform come through my checkout – firefighters from the nearby fire hall, postal workers, UPS drivers, paramedic students from Conestoga College…and the occasional san worker. The first one I had was a woman driver (which, to use a phrase from my 90s upbringing, is totally awesome) from Waste Management and I told her about the ridealong I did for an experiential journalism article and who my driver was (she knew him) and it was all very light-hearted and pleasant.

Yesterday it was a younger guy, also from Waste Management, around 5pm buying pizza. And it was rough. He would not make eye contact. While I processed his order he stood there squirming. I would have said something to lighten the mood but his discomfort was making me nervous and uncomfortable. When I am nervous and uncomfortable I have a tendency to become a klutz and to blurt out things that I later regret. So I just held my breath and waited for this ordeal to be over.

Now I could be way off on this, but the vibe I got from his unusual behaviour was that he was ashamed. He just finished a long day of work, he was probably concerned about his appearance and smell (if so, he needn’t have worried). I wasn’t thinking the kind of things about him that some people would, but because I could tell he thought that I was thinking those things, I found myself thinking them anyway. Somehow I recognized him – he probably had serviced my own curb in the past. I could have taken the opportunity to thank him in person (a la Mierle Laderman Ukeles) but with the tension on his part and mine, it just didn’t feel right. The whole thing was just so awkward.

And I wish it weren’t so.

In our present times, when gay couples are getting married and women are doing what are traditionally men’s jobs (see above) and racism is going down and tolerance is going up, why do we still have this unfair stereotype of san workers (uneducated, lazy, dumb, they’re dirty, they smell)? Many of them are great, down-to-earth people with a great sense of humour, and the stereotype is simply wrong. Bottom line: no one should have to be ashamed of what they do for a living. Even more when it is something as vital as garbage collection.

Why there’s no DS like DSNY

Now that I have a follower who is involved with the DSNY, I feel (at least somewhat) compelled to

1, Always say nice things about New York’s Dept. of Sanitation

2, Always use slang like “mongo” and “getting it up” accurately and in their proper context.

Hence, the subject of this post, Why there’s no DS like DSNY. There are many things that make this city-run sanitation organization unique, but I will only list a few of my favourite reasons (at least the ones known to me).

* The largest D of S in the world

* They cleaned up 9/11. They had one of the hardest (and, as usual, least noticed) jobs involved in this tragedy. Someone’s gotta do it, and someone did.

*They are the only D of S with a resident anthropologist (Dr. Robin Nagle).

* They also have a resident artist (Mierle Laderman Ukeles).

* They have cool slang words/phrases that show a wicked sense of humour (“air mail” is what they call garbage that people toss from apartment windows).

* They have their own merchandise (though it’s noticeably a smaller collection than the merch belonging to FDNY and NYPD). I myself am the proud owner and frequent wearer of a DSNY hoodie

* They are the only D of S I know of that has been “stalked” by a writer & photographer team (Lisa Dowda & Liz Ligon). Their web site, chasingsanitation.com is beautiful, moving and as human as it gets

* They have personally cleaned up for me following my visit to NYC last April

Molson on the curb

I just read something somewhere (I read all the time, can’t keep track what comes from where) about whether you should tip your garbage man and if so, how. I have done this for a few years now, in the humble form of a Christmas card and a modestly loaded Tim card (the guys love their Timmy’s). Here I thought I was doing something radical, extending the Christmas spirit beyond friends and family.

But according to what I read, some people leave lottery tickets, money or even a 6-pack of beer. And come to think of it, this was reflected last year when I spent a day on a garbage truck (for a feature story for the school paper). It was two days before Christmas, and Manny, the driver, was getting showered with gifts from people. It was great to see (of course, there were also the people who were less than kind and did not even bother with a “Hello,” “How are you?” or “Have a nice day” – never mind the driver who flipped the bird at the big truck).

Of course, there is the flipside of the argument: Waterloo Region residents pay roughly $100 in property taxes every year for garbage collection, so why spend more on a tip? So what if it’s the holidays? It’s a legit point, but I would argue it’s also another way to say, “I’m cheap.”

Tip or don’t tip – I don’t care what you decide to do. Just know that it’s an option, and that it goes for other public servants as well.

Megamalls kill – sort of

As if New Jersey itself wasn’t enough of an eyesore.

This is old news by now, but it’s worth mentioning if you haven’t heard it yet: an enormous mall is being built in the home of Springsteen and Bon Jovi. It will be the new largest mall on earth (sorry, West Edmonton): 700,000 sq. ft. of new stuff churned out in sweatshops overseas for our perverse pleasure.

Oh yeah, and they’re building it on top of a wetland.

The brains behind it are calling it “The American Dream.” If this is the American dream, I’m more glad than I’ve ever been to be a Canadian. A columnist near the building site has called the idea of a mall this size “downright blasphemy.” It’s greed at its most blatant, and it’s disgusting. I would not stand outside this mall and protest, simply because I could not stand to be even anywhere near this monstrosity (wow, I don’t think I’ve ever used that word before – I guess that’s how strongly I feel about it). Just the thought of a mall like this makes me as angry as watching someone sit in an idling car – maybe more.

If everyone in the world lived as disgustingly comfortably as us North Americans, and if we had unlimited resources, I wouldn’t have a problem with this megamall. No problem whatsoever. But this isn’t the case. When I know that children in poverty on the other side of the planet are collapsing on dusty roads from dehydration and malnutrition, that workers who make the stuff we buy are treated like slaves, and that our resources are not unlimited and we are squandering them, I just can’t stomach the thought of this mall, and the money spent on its construction and sales.

Money is power. They’re building this enormous mall because there’s a demand for it: far too many people have an addiction to throw away money on stuff they don’t need (I have to laugh every time I see a book about “de-cluttering and getting your life back”). Collectively, we have the power to make life better for people who don’t have the luxury of shopping at the mall – if they even know what a mall is. I was at the Holiday Festival on Ice at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium on Sunday and visited the World Vision booth. Everyone who passed by had an excuse not to sponsor a child, even though they had $50 to buy tickets for the skating show. I would sponsor a child if my mom and my bank account would allow me – and I look forward to the day that I can.

Feed the people – not the corporations.