Land Of Tides And Fog

The sexuality of a police officer is cop.

The gender of a police officer is cop.

When you become the enforcer and protector of capital, you are making the deal to be slightly favored by the system over others like you, in exchange for being its servant. Your solidarity is with the system that you serve, even if it hates you.

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!