trichroism replied to your post “You know, there’s an interesting kind of classism I see on this site...”
wanting basic rights for homeless people and a safer environment for drug addicts doesn't mean we can't ALSO want better working conditions for the people who have to clean that up. You're making minimum wage? ok so you deserve more. that's another battle we can fight for. You don't have gloves or adequate equipment to take care of it? that's on the company and is also something we can fight for.
Here’s the problem with what you’re saying.
Vomit, blood, feces, and mucus are all what we call biohazard. (Urine is actually sterile.) That means you can get hella diseases from them, and you don’t have to be any kind of high-risk group (like addicts, sex workers, chronically homeless folks) to carry one. HOWEVER, it is true that someone from a high-risk group is more likely to be carrying a communicable disease in their biohazard-designated bodily fluids. There’s also a much higher likelihood of it being a pretty awful one, sad to say. That’s why people working in the medical field have masks, sterile gowns, gloves, etc., and why in every doctor’s office somewhere you’ll see a box marked “sharps“ for all the hypodermic needles. They receive special training on how to handle biohazard materials, including disposal, cleanup, and protecting themselves.
My job is to make food, train others to make food, and do the paperwork surrounding making food. My job is not to do tasks that medical professionals require special training for. That would be true whether I was making my current rate of pay, the same rate of pay as one of said medical professionals, or the same amount of money as my CEO. It would be true even if we had medical-grade gloves and a safe way to dispose of sharps. It is literally NOT MY JOB to do medical work. It is the job of medical professionals to do medical work. Period.
Also, just saying? I almost got stabbed with a pen tonight by somebody who was high. Maybe while you prove my point by worrying so hard about an addict’s right to make a mess that could give someone else hepatitis, you could consider that addict behavior literally makes my job less safe, and that, as I was saying, I and other service-sector employees also have the right to a safe environment.
