>

I've applied for to be a garbage man... I think it's a dream job! They get paid tons of money. It's a union job with benefits. 
Whoever says anything bad about them just doesn't know these things.
Depends on where you're from, the shift in mentality in my country was pretty fast once we saw the salary. >

What country? >

If you can get into a unionized position, it's one of the few jobs left with a retirement pension plan.  
To be honest, I have tremendous respect for them. They're out in shitty weather dealing with unknown waste hazards.  Sometimes they're at risk of being hit by vehicles. >

Mhm! They deserve utmost respect >

Honestly yeah, none of us want to live in a world where we have to deal with our own rubbish. It's a service we all benefit from yet people have the audacity to look down on those providing it. >

Don't they make decent money?
It's one of those secret jobs that everyone thinks is bad but is actually good? >

52k where I live >

You'll make 100k+ near me with the right company. Blue collar jobs are talked down in high school but can easily make as much or more than a job with a degree without student debt. You just have to be willing to do physical labor. >

Thing is mental jobs you can do well into your 70s, physical jobs your body is shot by 55 >

You should be a manager of some type by then or else you’ve kinda failed at it >

I wanted the job, like really bad. It's actually fun, may stink a little in the summer, you think it's raining, no it's just maggots dropping on your skin.
The pay isn't bad, where I'm from and you can start work early and be done early. Most people I met there are also fun guys. You are all over your city, always eating somewhere else, always doing your break on the outside. It's a pretty good job to have, imo. >

Ewwww they do deserve more respect than they’re given because I definitely would not want that. I hate bad smells and those type of worms. >

Yeah, I can understand that. I don't care about the smell, you only see maggots during the summer and if you are on a certain tour let's say, you don't see them in paper or plastic trash. >

When I was a kid I wanted to be a garbage man when I grew up! I thought they were the coolest dudes. >

They get to ride on the OUTSIDE of a moving vehicle. How kickass is that? >

The exact reason I thought they were so cool. From ages 4-6 I would hang off the sides of things, pretending to be hanging onto a garbage truck. >

My mom used to take me to the grocery store and I’d hang off the side of the shopping cart and pretend the groceries we put in the cart was garbage we were picking up. >

I was a garbage man once, for three years. Garbage men are treated amazing by their customers. We'd also get treats and drinks. Lots of friendly conversations. Get to see boobs once in a while. Around Christmas you'd get all kinds of gifts and money. People would give you stuff all the time. >

Sorry love, no time for the ol' in-out.  Just hear to empty the bin. >

It seems like wherever you are, people just suck >

You could even say: they are treated like garbage. 😬 >

That's rubbish >

Easy now, no need for trash talk >

I "refuse" to stop >


People go around saying "you will end up like them, collecting garbage" I hate this because who wants to collect nasty garbage, not many people want to do the garbage.

...yes, that's exactly what the people you're complaining about are saying. It's a job most people don't want to do, and they're warning their audience to change their habits or wine up having to do an unpleasant job due to a lack of other options. >

People who are insecure about making a shit salary (40k or less a year) need a reason to feel better than others. Little do these ignorant people know that garbage collectors in NYC can make upwards of 100k >

Feel like that stigma is gone now to be completely honest. It’s pretty universally known now that they make fat stacks of money. Dirty for sure but great pay. >

No. Their pay is not amazing. At best your making 52k/year.
There are many many jobs where the baseline is better than that >

I guess I only know the pay ranges from where I’ve seen. California and Arizona easily start at around 100k >

In my area it's still around 52k. People still disrespect garbage men >

You’re very stubborn and relentless ☺️ >

What you’re failing to take away from this thread is that the company your city has a contract with sucks, pay-wise. Overall, the average is higher for pay. People revere waste management employees, as we would literally be lost without them (that happened in my city last year, the new company is treated like a godsend). 
I know a dude who literally left his job as a truck driver for a $28,000 salary increase to be a supervisor for the new waste management company. I have no clue how much he makes, but I know the company he worked for started out at $21/hour, so well above 52k. That’s also important to remember- that’s the starting. You can always move up. >

If garbage men are treated so terribly, why do I see  so many posts on Reddit each week trying to promote the occupation as a career while telling people with advanced degrees they’re the ultimate evil? >

Because people online are different than ones irl >

Ignoring you using garbage collectors specifically, here is nothing wrong with telling people especially children that there are jobs that they are not going to want to do (even if someone has to do it). I know little about garbage collectors but in general I would avoid (and suggest people) avoid jobs that are difficult and pay little. Talking down to someone who has that job is obviously not nice but that is not the same as suggesting some jobs suck worse than others. >

In California you have homeless living and shitting on the streets. You want to scare your kid into doing their homework you dont need to point at garbagemen, point at the homeless >

That is true. >

You're right, they are looked down upon by most people.... Myself, i have lots of respect for them because i couldn't do their job without gagging/puking.... >

Or needing back surgery >

People say things. Who cares? They are up, and done working before most people roll out of bed. You barely see them. They get paid well in most cities. They go home, short up, and you don't know what they do. >

My city, they are treated like trash and paid like trash >

My town switched to automated pick up years ago. The driver never leaves the cab. >

i don't think this unpopular >

I agree this always rubbed me the wrong way, they do the work no one wants to do but is essential to a functioning society, without them we’d be over filled in our own trash. And it’s not like they’re swimming in trash they’re collecting it from container to container it’s not as bad as everyone makes it out to be >

Its a great union job. Big city trash collectors make great money. Non union.... Hit or miss. Republic services in Florida is a joke, corrupt, and totally full of shit. They use a labor hall for the "helpers". The helpers get paid 8 bucks an hour for 12 hour days of back breaking, outdoor (summer in Florida is brutal) while paying the labor hall 16-24 bucks an hour for staffing requirements. RS say they will hire the ones who show up and bust ass for full time staff positions. They don't. They won't. It's a scam to bypass paying benefits. All they care about is CDL drivers filling seats, everyone else is just meat. >

Depends on where you are. Here garbage collector is a good, well paid job. Very respectable. Any place that had their garbage collectors go on strike would realize how important your garbage collectors are to the functioning of your entire city. Id be proud if my kids wanted to be garbage collectors. >

At first I thought you were using "garbage" to describe men that are trash. And I thought, well yeah, they should be. This comment section should be good. 
Yeah, I always thought collecting trash would be cool, especially cause you get to see first the good stuff people throw away and keep it for yourself! >

Really. No stigma here in the Midwest usa >


I said that they might not want to either and they work in the worst conditions for pay that is max 52k per year.

Just checked online. Our local garbage collectors are hiring at $50k min with a class B with no experience. And there's such a shortage of drivers you could probably ask for 60 easily. They've got good benefits from what I hear too. >

Lol. You just have to tell them that those guys get pay bettern than most people and they are never going to speak shit about them again..
And they receive money or gifts from the people every  Christmas lol. The only downside  with this job is how many times those guys get  bitten  by  dogs. >

They make a very decent living, dirty jobs don’t always mean dirty people, similar to a mechanic or almost any blue collar job tbh >

When I was like 5 garbage men were my heroes >

I always find the term "if you don't study you'll be a garbage man" really funny.
Garbage men are often paid extremely well, have great benefits and are often unionised. They are very good jobs to have. >

In NYC, sanitation workers regularly make over 100k with overtime. They work a route, finish the route early, go home. >

“You cannot simultaneously demand a service and ridicule those who provide it.”
Don’t know who said this first, but it is true with every industry that provides a service, regardless of what it is.
Shit, I’m a fuckin’ janitor and I run into two kinds of people.  People like OP is describing and people who know what a cushy gig I actually have.  Work alone without coworkers or managers breathing down my neck, $29/hour, vacation, sick days, pension, medical and dental bennies out the ass.  The garbage collectors here have it even better.  They get like $35/hour and more/better bennies.
I’ll take that over some job stuck in a cubicle any goddamn day. >

AND YET...Every week on Reddit is another video of a little kid losing their minds because they want to go see the garbage man! At least the kids love them. I make my guys a box of cookies every year for Christmas >

That’s the first thing I thought… our guys are treated pretty well.. there is a stigma though 
It kind of sucks that people think poorly about that vocation >

But let them go on strike, and we'll all be chin deep in trash by day three. I love my garbage guys! >

Who is dissing garbagemen and women? Didn't Rock teach us they are all just human beings trying to make a living. Plus, PERKS! >

Waste management employees. Garbage men? You're literally denegrating them with that antiquated slur. And anyway, many make north of $100k where i live because it's a unionized career. >

Also its not a slur at all. Its literally what they're referred to as but most people. If I put Waste management employees nobody would know what I'm talking about >

"That's what everyone calls them!" Is the go-to defense of any racially insensitive individual >

I don't know anyone who actually has a problem with "garbage men" I know a former garbage man, my grandfather. My other grandfather was a mailman. Neither of them take offense to this >

The m-word? Omg it's like talking to someone from the 1950s. Postal delivery agent >

Are you saying mailman is a slur too?? >

Too. In addition to cultural insensitivity you're poor at grammar. How ironical. >

This is an informal conversation I could give less of a fuck about my grammar.
Also are you a mailman??? Or a garbage man??? How do you know its offensive? >

I wasn't aware you had to be employed in one of those professions to respect them as human beings. >

Dude my grandfather could give less of a crap about him being called a garbage man, because thats what he was for 40 years >

it just shows how ignorant they are if they say that. >

My garbage man is really a happy, nice, positive person.  I don’t get to have very long conversations with him or anything, but occasionally it’s a few minutes while he waits for mechanical reasons (ie compactor) or dispatch updates (he covers both subscription and ad hoc service) and I think he’s great. >

Alright, I don't know where you live, so I can just talk about the situation I'm aware of over here.
Yes, they're used for that kind of comparison over here as well, albeit only at the younger ages.
At some point, (≥ 14 y/o people, I believe?), after we get comparisons of how these people are paid, etc., it's actually a pretty sought after job over here. The base salary is pretty good already (> 2000 € per month when you started out, and that was when I heard about it the first time), and depending on where you are, you'll get almost ridiculous amounts of money in the way of perks, like hazard bonuses, etc. In extreme cases, these perks almost double the salary, meaning you'd get almost 4000 € a month in the year you start.
You can imagine that these jobs are gone the moment they appear as a job advert, considering most jobs I'm aware of bumble around at 1300-1800 €/month at the start
EDIT: Alright, nevermind, that f*cker told us some bullcrap in school
What was the supposed base salary then is around the average salary right now, wtf >

It's the same with janitorial work, most people don't want the job but somebody has to do it. >

They get amazing benefits and decent pay. I don’t know why there trashed on >

People looking down on garbage men would drown in their own waste if someone else weren't picking it up. Never look down on a job, because if they disappear, you will realize how much you miss them. 
Except politicians. Fuck them. >

I always make sure to give them a small gift on holidays when they have to work. Nothing crazy but I like to show they’re appreciated >

All workers deserve respect if they're doing their job properly. Like everyone talks down to fast food workers and saying it's a worthless position. You say that now, but if everyone is a lawyer or computer scientist, good luck grabbing a Big Mac on a long road trip. >

Where I live garbage collectors start at $30  an hour plus benefits, they make $100k+ >

I feel more like this about a lot of “shitty” jobs—they are important and don’t need to be mocked…” Do you want to fix someone’s toilet?”
Well, a plumber might make $100 to spent 15 min on your toilet so that ain’t bad.
My snobby parents are still triggered by the fact that the guy who cleans their septic system makes fuck tons of money. Few hundred bucks or whatever for less than an hour work in his truck. >

Yeah yeah, it’s a rough job and respectful for them to do it. But can they actually empty the bins and not yeet them around? I watched them do it, looked hilarious but it’s annoying lol