The Berry Blog

Here's just a sample of what they're dealing with:

1) maggots. So many maggots. You have no idea. And where there are maggots there are flies, and a decent number of flies bite.

2) feces and vomit in dumpster areas.

3) unhoused people in dumpster areas, which is a big problem for sanitation workers because the machinery that lifts the dumpster can absolutely kill people who are in the way. That means having to move unhoused people, who may be both on the defensive and armed. Is it always dangerous? No, of course not. Is there always a risk? Yes.

4) that thing about the machinery? Yeah, that goes for sanitation workers themselves, too. Sanitation workers can and have died on that machinery.

5) bees. Angry bees.

6) the smell. THE SMELL.

7) broken, unsecured glass.

8) unsecured needles. Drug paraphernalia is the most likely culprit, but some folks who take injection meds are incredibly stupid.

9) rabid animals. Coyotes and raccoons love dumpsters and trash cans.

10) other miscellaneous stuff that we don't normally think of as dangerous, but absolutely can be. Rusty nails can cause tetanus, old paint can contain lead, a pile of dead clothes can contain black mold, trash that sat outside for awhile may contain biting insects or spiders.

I have also heard at least one story from a fellow worker about a guy who ODed in their dumpster enclosure and died there. Imagine being the person who finds that body. You don't know anything is wrong, you're just doing an enclosure check before you lower the loader, and suddenly you very literally trip over a corpse. This is a thing that happens. A few years ago here the cops went looking for a body in the landfill. They found half a dozen bodies or partial bodies, none of which were the person they were looking for.

And that's just stuff that I know transfers from my old jobs to sanitation workers and stuff I've learned from the news! There's plenty I'm sure I don't know! This is not a safe, easy, or fun job!

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It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

There are no "exact color" of pride flags.

I see more and more sites and posts talking about the exact hex codes for the lesbian flag, or the right purple for the ace one, and how it should be more or less saturated and I just want to say: pride flags were meant to be sewn in your kitchen. To be spraypainted and to be recognised.

you look at them and you’re like “wow! what amazing photographs” but they’re oil paintings

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.