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Citizen complaint of the day: For a superhero, Recycle Man is a real jerk

Bad job by recycling guy in Mattapan

A disgusted citizen complains on Walk Hill Street in Mattapan:

Once again recycle man placed empty bin in front of driveway WHILE I WAS EXITING the driveway. He looked up at my car and placed it there. This is ridiculous.

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Comments

Does it in my neighborhood ALL THE TIME! I've asked them to not to do that, very nicely, even when I notice there is a new crew. Now I just put the barrels out with the handle NOT facing out like I conveniently use to do for them to make it easier for them to take.

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Same here in roslindale. Actually, I consider myself lucky if they put it on the side of the road.

The garbage truck guys regularly throw the lid to my garbage can into the middle of the road, where it is pulverized by traffic. In their defense, it may just be blowing over there 50% of the time.

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You should get a barrel with a permanently attached hinged lid.

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The s.o.b lost the lid, that is attached to the barrel. He took the attached lid off the barrel.

And yes, it was Rozzie.

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The bin says to leave the bin on the edge of the curb, front facing out. I do this faithfully each week. And the 'Recycle Men' (and Women) leave the bins haphazardly in the street. There is never an attempt made to put the bins back on the sidewalk. So when you drive down a busy street with T busses and bike lanes, the bins causes havoc. I work late or go out after work so I might not get home until midnight and the bin has been in the street for that time. If I were saving a space after a snowstorm the city would remove it... but how are 'Recycle Man' allowed to do this?

That picture perfectly illustrates it.

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So you get disgruntled employees working for asshole employers under some kind of gun from the boss.

You can get some impressive mixes of callous and stupid like this.

https://flic.kr/p/nCFUPG

The supervisor is in the smaller truck and she came roaring out of the side street with a Doctor Seuss load of leaf bags on her rig. In some crazy drama routine she offloaded into the bigger truck totally blocking the side street for 45 minutes.

Asshole that I am, I snapped a shot and it was over with the city official who handles the account within a few minutes. It hasn't happened since.

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In Medford the garbarge truck is automatic. It has a big arm which sticks out and grabs the bin as if it was a soda can. After dumping the contents the arm doesn't go all the back so the bin is dropped haphazardly on the street even if it was neatly left on the sidewalk in the morning.

I'm not sure if the truck driver has any control over how far back the bin is placed once it has been emptied. It would be nice if the bin was put back were it was taken from but seeing as trash collection is included in taxes I won't complain.

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Right in front of your driveway? Oh, the humanity! How on earth did you move it out of the way? It must have been exhausting.

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You seriously think it's OK for the trash guy to look you right in the eye as you're pulling out of your driveway and drop a barrel in front of you?

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If the garbage man sees me in my own driveway, he probably thinks I'm going to bring the empty bin back up to my house so it isn't in the street all day while I'm at work. I'd actually thank him for leaving it closer to the house for me.

If this guy had time enough to take a photo of the bins, he had enough time to pull the bins back onto his property.

Tossing the bins down in the gutter is one thing, but this seems like some crybaby shizz from the citizen here.

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The guy is in his truck, just waiting for the recycling guy to do what he has to do, the recycling guy sees that the guy is in the truck about to leave, and BOOM, puts the barrel right in front of the truck. Sure it was a nice morning, but what if it was raining or snowing, 10 degrees or 90 with the dew point of 70. The poor guy then has to put his truck in park (I'm assuming an automatic transmission, along with the driver being male), get out of the truck, move the barrel, then back in the truck, back in gear, and off. All because the recycling man felt the need to put the barrel right in front of the truck.

And, this has happened on multiple occasions.

Okay, so I have a different issue with my garbage guy (pulls the lid off of a barrel that has an attached lid), so I might have a bias on this one.

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Do you really think he put the trash bin in the driveway, in front of my moving car to help out? I guess you also think they throw the barrels in the street so people can exercise as they retrieve them.

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I guess I wasn't there to see exactly how it went down, and whether or not he was doing it out of spite, laziness, or whatever reason.

But these guys probably empty a few thousand barrels a week. They aren't thinking about where the barrels get placed after they drop them as long as they aren't too far in the street or knocked over.

But I would still rather have him drop it in front of my car so I wouldn't forget to bring it in or have someone else in my family bring it in, so I stand by my point. Sorry sunny!

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Since his bin has just been emptied, shouldn't this complainer take it back inside now instead of leaving it out to block the street or sidewalk all day? The recycling guy is doing him a favor by leaving it right in front of him.

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The bin was moved after the pic was taken. Gee whiz. What do you think we are, cavemen?

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So I made this report. I was very surprised to see my photo on here since I read UH daily. This has been an ongoing problem with the recycle drivers. We have spoken to the driver and it continued. I've complained to the mayor's hotline several times to no avail. I've reported this via Citizen Connect and it stopped for awhile. But this morning the guy decided to be a jerk and place it bin in front of me as I drove down the driveway.

There is absolutely no reason for this behavior. I spoke to a sanitation supervisor today and was promised a call back. We'll see. I had no idea so many others had this issue.

The good news is the Sunrise Scavenger's contract is not being renewed after June.

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All of the recycle bins for my block of buildings end up herded at the end of the street. Know what we do? We walk over and get them ourselves. Not that hard really.

I do wish we went with the idea Swirly had mentioned long ago. That being the large communal bins. No worrying about who's is who's, and no approaching the herd of bins.

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The city gives new ones out for free. When they ask you why you keep needing new recycle barrels, explain what happens. My guess is they will stop putting the barrel in front of your car when Waste Management starts getting the bills for all the destroyed barrels.

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Give them a cold six-pack (soda presumably, don't need drunk truck drivers) on a hot day. Give them another token of appreciation at Xmas. That might turn some annoying folks into unexpected friends.

Perhaps this could be called a bribe. Or it could be seen as an investment toward growing social capital.

These folks have pretty thankless jobs. A little personalized appreciation might go a long way. But then I'm old fashioned if not downright atavistic in believing that cell phones should NEVER be used when paying checking out at a cash register where there is another person on the other side of the counter.

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I used to know the old crew pretty well, because trash trucks are pretty interesting to 4 year old boys, and we were out watching them every morning.

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Except that I recently heard that tipping one's "binman" is common in Ireland.

Then again, when my wife gets full serve gas (thankfully rarely) she tips the attendant. And trust me, we are not full serve gas rich.

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The past month or 2, I have noticed the scavengers leaving the bins in the street. The guys that cover my neighborhood are pretty friendly, but still don't care where they leave the bins.
Leaving the bin in front of a vehicle attempting to exit, is bold. You'd think it would occur to the guy that you can easily report him.

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In their defense, recycling pickup is a really tough job.

As opposed to trash pickup where there's a crew of 3, in Cambridge the recycling truck has just one guy. So in front of every building, he has to climb down, get the bins (and any loose cardboard boxes, etc), have the truck dump them, bring them back, and climb back in.

On one-lane streets, this causes a major blockage of traffic.

A lot of my neighbors don't seem to understand that if they put a wheely bin behind a row of tightly parked cars, it means the street gets blocked that much longer while the guy runs around to the nearest driveway. The city should really encourage people to place bins better.

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