Okay, here’s a day on the truck with Marc. Leave the depot at 7.30am. Drive to the first job. Have a fag. Start picking at about 8.00am, depending on how long it took to find the place. At 8.30, regardless of having finished the first job or not, go for breakfast, arriving at the cafe at quarter to nine-ish (stopping on the way at newsagent). At some point between 9.30 and 9.45 leave cafe and return to job getting there at about ten-ish. Finish first job and move to second job. At 11.45-ish (regardless of having finished the second job or not) return to depot for lunch. Have lunch in cab of truck as it’s more confortable than the rest-room. Half twelve, return to finish second job if need be then move to third job. Probably have a wee break in between. Do third job. If third job is finished before 2.00pm go and check out next job, perhaps picking a small amount. If third job is finished after 2.00pm spend a while driving around before getting back to the depot not before 2.45 to tip.
And that’s a busy day. In fact that was today and when I got home I was knackered, which is odd because when you deduct all the breaks and driving around I’m probably doing no more that four hours work a day, usually three. It could be this phlegmy cough I’m still trying to shake off, it could be the extra effort of doing manual labour while wearing four jumpers, it could be the bracing fresh winter air after months of warehouses and offices, or it could be that this is actually quite hard work.
The basic kit for this job is a bath and something to pick stuff up with, either the standard grabber or a shovel or a set of clappers (big scissor things with two boards at the end) or, quite often, your hands. The bath is literally that – a long plastic tub which is dragged around by rope. The rope is a relatively recent development – Marc said he’s buggered up his fingers a year back on a bath and since then this modification has been added – so you can see we’re not exactly talking high tech. Once the bath is full it has to be lifted into the dump truck which is just like the sort you see collecting your garbage only without the wheeley-bin attachment. If it’s just got litter and leaves in it this isn’t a problem but we also collect bricks, metal and mud and the arse-end of the truck is chest high. And then there’s the the lugging of large items like fridges, mattresses and fence panels.
At the end of the day we’ve usually collected at least a couple of tons of rubbish by hand but what I’m getting at is it doesn’t really seem like it because of all the breaks. The refuse guys who do the residential collections are on task-and-finish which means they get paid for a full day’s work regardless of when they get the job done and they probably clock off after four hours. We do the same amount of work but we spread it over eight hours. Ostensibly this is a slack job – lots of time spent lounging around in the cab listening to music and getting lost in Erdington – and it feels like that, especially in the morning when it seems we don’t do any real work until gone ten. You could easily pinpoint inefficiencies on the operation where time and therefore money (the dump truck is on hire at a reported £1000 a day) could be saved to the taxpayers benefit. The whole thing screams of “out-dated working practices” and a “culture of inefficiency”.
My last job at the NEC involved unloading furniture from tucks and delivering it to a myriad of different stands in one of the huge halls there. That was a sold eight hours of non-stop lugging and lifting and even though it was only two days I was completely wiped out by it. Compared to that (and the full-timer’s there often worked eighty, that’s not-shitting-you eighty, hour weeks) the litter picking is a walk in the park, albeit the rather dirty corners of the park. But then the NEC job was stupid and pointless whereas the litter job is vital and important. Should that make a difference?
Not sure where I’m going with this to be honest. The job seems like it’s not hard work but it is hard work. To the outsider it looks like we’re slacking off but we’re not really because when we do work we work hard.
Anyway, here’s some photos.
The tools of the trade are transported in the back of the dump truck.
Feet up, time for a break.
Have you ever drunk tea from a Young Offender’s Institute mug? I have. How do you get one of these anyway???
Today we were clearing under a motorway flyover. I was quite taken by the scale of it all.
This photo is level, honest.
I’ve been a bit reticent about taking photos on the temp jobs. There’s an obvious legal angle, since they’re being published here and I’m not supposed to disclose company practices (I once signed a form to this effect – haven’t done so with the current agency but even so I’m playing safe) but also a small element of personal security. Obviously I don’t want my camera to be nicked but I also don’t want people I work with knowing about the site, especially when I’m working with them. The “why’re you taking photo’s” question could get awkward, which is why the above pictures are rather surreptitious. That said, I think Marc will be okay about it and I may well ask his permission to take more.
Yea, it does shout “out dated working practice” and all that other stuff, but as one of the taxpayers I can’t say I’m that bothered. Picking up rubbish is a crappy job, and it’s hard job, and I don’t fancy it myself. If the guys doing bins sprint round and finish in four hours, then good luck to them. They do sprint too – they come through here at about 7ish on Tuesday morning, and they aren’t pissing around. I’ve got no doubt that if working practices were changed – perhaps to something like collect the bins then go out on spot response – everything would slow down. Not deliberately perhaps, but simply because the job is less fun, everyone’s less motivated, and so on. The psychology of the situation changes, and the relationship between binbloke and council starts to break down. So enjoy your tea.
This apparent slacking isn’t confined to council binmen, by the way. The working day you describe almost exactly matches my time working as a driver’s mate for Gaymers. We notionally started at 6, but rarely left the yard before 7 or even 7:30. In a typical day we’d make 4 or 5 deliveries to pubs or shops. A pub delivery was invariably followed by a refreshing beverage. Generally we got back the yard early-to-mid afternoon. If our route took us past my house, I’d get dropped off. Whatever, a day was a day – when the lorry was empty you were finished. Beer comes in handy barrels for a start, so you can drop and roll it. I enjoyed it – good money, free beer, and a really brown left arm.
I think you answered your own question, mate, about all the breaks. The time you spent working that solid, it wiped you out. And, on the farm, you often worked too hard, again, wiped yourself out.
Because the people you’re with now have the sense to pace you, you could maybe do this for a while. A long while, without destructing inward or outward.
It’s time we moved away from the 80s obsession with efficiency and updating. Beware the efficient system — it’ll be crushing some people in its gears. Learning to slack is part of learning to work.
“Have you ever drunk tea from a Young Offender’s Institute mug?” You bet! — but then, some of my colleagues work in youth offending teams. They got it by working there. At one time I used to lift a mug from every temping job I worked — I own too many mugs to do that, now.
Currently I’m drinking from: “The SIMS approach — we’re a sims-ems site of excellence!”
I have no idea what that means.
Well, your day was a little different from mine! On Tuesday I was getting lost in a pine forest looking for old oil wells. The main difference, I suspect, between the two is that I was fully motivated at the start to make the day successful since it was my idea and I would feel good if I achieved what I set out to achieve. Even so, as we started back from the location at about 3 p.m. I couldn’t help but think that this was a “short” day. The real bonus for me, however, was that I was out in fresh air and sunshine and it felt really good. So good I could have been on holiday!
Your comments about working the NEC remind me of a time when I used to exhibit a British device called Seistimer at trade shows in the US. Different states have different “right to work rules”. This meant, for example that in Texas you could set up your own stand while in California you had to pay someone else to do it (at double rate on Sunday) and then re-do it all after they left! I’m glad I don’t do that any more.
“At one time I used to lift a mug from every temping job I worked — I own too many mugs to do that, now.”
I’m currently collecting hi-viz jackets and working gloves. Got four pairs of gloves and three jackets. I try and take a souvenier from every job even it’s it’s just a pencil.
i’m curious about the mug… see if you can steal it. Or would you get thrown in an offenders institute of some kind for that?
The mug came from a friend of Marc’s house where we stopped off for tea so I’ll probably never see it again. He had a scar from his mouth to his right ear from his “football hooligan days”. Which probably explains the mug.