Comedian Theo Von invited a New York City garbageman to talk on his show This Past Weekend last week. It’s an incredible three-hour look into the inner-workings of life as a refuse picker upper. You probably don’t spend much of your week thinking about your trash service people, save that moment when you lay down at 11 o’clock on Tuesday night and remember you have pickup on Wednesday mornings so you have to go roll the cans out in your bathrobe. Wayne Owen goes deep into detail on the not-so-trash life that it is to be a garbage man.
As part of the discussion, Von pulled out a few of the best bits of the conversation, as Owen discusses some of his biggest pet peeves from his time as a refuse remover. I’m sure you can imagine what most of them are, but in case you can’t here’s a short list.
- Don’t say “I pay your salary”
- Don’t load up the sidewalk with your “whole apartment”
- Say ‘thank you’ or offer a bottle of water
- Acknowledge that your garbage person is a person
- Don’t get mad that you’re stuck behind the sanitation truck
- Don’t park so tight that the garbage man can’t get through
- Nobody acknowledges the garbage man unless they’re an inconvenience
- Don’t light things on fire and throw them in the back of the truck
- Make prior arrangements if you’re throwing away everything from a renovation demolition
- What are we fighting over garbage for?
This is an extremely New York kind of conversation, and sanitation works a little differently in a city of 8.5 million people. The whole thing boils down to “don’t be an asshole” and everyone gets along just fine.