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.