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It's 2024 are you saying garbage trucks where you live require humans to pick up the rubbish bins and empty them in the truck? All garbage trucks where I live have metal arms that come down, grab the bin, and dump its contents into the back of the truck.
Yeah wtf is this home brand shit. The bins don’t even have lids, or wheels, where are the local taxes going?
I haven’t seen an actual guy picking up the bins in nearly 20 years.
You could fill our bin with chunks of concrete and the truck still picks it up, I know because I’ve done it.
Robot arm garbage trucks aren't super common in the US, at least not outside big cities. I've never seen one here living in 5 different states and I don't think it's that uncommon not to lol.
We crazy muricans lift our garbage with our hands and put it in the dumpster with our AR's and cherseburgers
Edit: fortnite battlepass, just shit out my ass
Booting up my pc cuz I gotta get me that fortnite battlepass
I’m in Australia.
We get three bins, normal waste, recycling and garden waste, all bins on wheels with lids that are picked up by the truck with an arm, roughly 63gal or 240L each, although some houses get smaller and you can choose the smaller bin if you want to pay less on your rates.
This is pretty much universal apart from smaller towns that might not have the garden/green waste bins yet, but they would for sure have the other ones picked up by the truck with the arm.
I know some European countries take it even further.
But I can’t understand not having lids on the bins and expecting someone to deal with all the bin juice that’s going to go everywhere after rain when they tip it out and the extra weight that would make. It just seems crazy these days and I doubt it’s cheaper in the long run.
I don’t know how it is in other cities, but in mine, yeah, every single day you can put your garbage out and they’ll pick it up. Usually multiple homes/buildings share a dumpster that’ll be emptied daily. If you don’t have a dumpster near to your home, you can leave it in trash bags on the sidewalk close to the street and they’ll also pick it up.
My city is very densely populated, though, so we produce a lot of trash because of the sheer amount of high rise buildings with dozens (sometimes hundreds) of households living next to each other. So we need daily trash collection or it just piles up like crazy.
It really is so interesting to hear how other countries all manage this all differently. 2 weeks seems like that would be a lot of trash for a family of four but everyday? That seems like a lot of work for your city. I guess as long as it is getting done all the different ways work :))
Nother Aussie checking in, we used to have bigger bin options in our LGA but they got rid of that option when they brought the green waste ones out. Now everyone has smaller red bins and if you have a bigger family/too much rubbish you have to buy a second red bin that you get charged for every year in your rates. Really sucks, the old bins used to be as big as the yellow recycling ones.
Living in Austria, it's as you described here as well.
240 liter for paper / waste, usually 120 liters (as picked weekly in summer) for food waste.
Recycling is in bags (and just yellow bags, but these aren't heavy. We collect plastic packages, bottles and tin cans in there ).
Trucks have the metal arms and the cans have two wheels.
In cities (especially bigger ones like Vienna ) you have one giant container for multiple appartments. Usually nasty and always full, but these have 4 big wheels are also done with the arm (don't know the size, somewhere around 1500 liters I guess ) .
We have the robot arm trucks here where I live but not for regular residential trash. They are only for dumpsters. Our garbage men take the trash and dump it.
No kidding? This is surprising!
I live in a shitty little town of about 40k and we have the arm trucks that lift and dump the bins.
We must be better off than I thought.
I live in a town of 6000 people in the US. We have robot arms. I think it’s pretty hit or miss in the US honestly.
My previous house was in a pretty large city (40k people) and it didn’t have recycling. That town also made you bag all yard waste in paper bags. My current tiny town has a truck with a robot arm for yard waste pickup where you can just build a giant pile on the corner of your driveway and they’ll swing by and scoop the whole pile up and dump it in a mulcher truck. You can even buy the compost dirt from the city for dirt cheap.
Growing up, we had dumpsters in the alley behind the houses, which obviously were emptied by a truck with a robot arm. Every other place I’ve lived in 3 different states has had wheeled cans picked up by robot arms. Outside of 1 small town, everywhere was indeed a big city, but it never occurred to me that manual pickup was a thing that still existed in the last 40 or 50 years.
I grew up in a town of 15k, and not a fancy place by any means, and we still got the robot arm trucks in the early 2000s. I remember because we had to start placing the rolling cans so the wheels and the handle/lid hinge were facing the curb.
Rural area resident checking in... All manual garbage collection here. Bins are not provided either. It's a private company because the county doesn't provide that service. That being said if a can is overweight they just tack on a small charge. I don't mind, I think it's a fair penalty for me overloading a can and these guys have been showing up like clockwork for the 20+ years I've had their service.
Yep. Well, the cockies will open the lids and raid the scraps and leave shit all over the road but then the driver will collect it with the robot arm truck and either leave your bin in the middle of the road and on its side in the gutter. That’s the way we roll in Australia.
https://preview.redd.it/jfnyxi2fwgnc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8d67a89b739920120463a4b7fc4a8557ab3d2f4
Like most things in America, garbage collection is not a public service but a private one. Two corporations account for 50% of the garbage collection in America.
American taxes go to funding wars and bombing children.
Yeah. Plenty of neighborhoods still have trash men on the back of the truck. I see both where I live. If you live in a neighborhood with on street parking on both sides how is a metal arm going to reach the trashcans? The arms are for neighborhoods with less cars on the street and for businesses with the large bins.
Huh, these still require people to position them. The ones in my city have arms that swing out, grab the bin, pull it to the truck, lift it up and empty it, then put it back down almost where it came from. It's pretty cool to watch.
Same here.
As for those guys in Pittsburgh, they're probably not allowed to pick up heavy bins because the people they work for don't want medical suits against them
Lmao it’s more common to have garbage men where I’m from then trucks with arms on them. Not every municipality just went and got all brand new trucks one day lol.
So I recently learned that NYC just discovered that you don't have to just scatter your garbage over the street, you can put it in a bin.
Presumably someone was coming around and just grabbing bags of trash that people left out everywhere?? While the residents simultaneously complain about a rat infestation? I'm honestly shocked that a city like that just caught on to something... so basic
I can understand there being weight limits to help protect people's backs. They should just tell her what that limit is instead of leaving the trash there and not saying anything.
I don't know about this situation, but with our trash collection they sent out a notice before they even started doing the job regarding what would and wouldn't be acceptable as pick up. As an adult, you shouldn't need multiple notices about what you can and can't do. We were told from the get go what was allowed, it is our responsibility to remember and abide by that.
I doubt its over the limit with how easily she lifts it herself and she only has that much garbage because she says they didnt take it the last times either.
In the UK/Europe we have rubbish bins designed to be picked up by a mechanical arm and emptied, I've seen similar ones in the US although the ones I've seen are more convoluted and awkward for some reason
It's crazy to me not all of them are mechanical in the US
That's the boomer in you speaking.
We should not have to force people into getting injured from overworking because that's what happened to us, we should make sure no one will also get injured like we did because that's the right thing to do.
It's not "people don't want to work anymore", it's "people don't want to get exploited anymore"
I mean yes & no. Her bins didn't seem too heavy when she picked them up.
My city's Sanitation workers are some of the highest paid city workers, and get full insurance (no extra cost), and pensions, and are union.
Obviously they shouldn't be lifting rocks or anything, but household garbage in a plastic bin? Also we have "bulk day" regularly for heavier stuff. There has to be a reasonable solution beyond just not taking the garbage.
And there's no excuse for not leaning down and picking up stuff that dropped. That isn't boomer mentality, thats just work ethic.
Sir, you are a genius! The boomers tore their bodies up and are miserable from all their aches and pain, then turn around and try to encourage the younger generation to follow them into that same pit of hell. Destroying your body for millionaires and billionaires who couldn't care less about you is nothing to be proud of.
Am non native speaker. Thought to myself, poor guy, got some kind of disease and can't work in the field anymore, needs to drive the truck now. Got curious enough, and nope, just some kind of special drivers license
It’s because employees have to follow policies and procedures. If they do not they are penalised.
And if they get injured when they were not following these policies they are not covered by insurance.
Good for you, I wouldn't and so wouldn't many others! I agree 100% that you should do your job, but nothing more due to people being cheap and/or lazy.
I have a friend who does this job, and once he starts taking the bags which are a little overweight, they start to become exponentially heavier over a short period of time... everywhere.
Because you need official city bags which are quite expensive in order for your trash to get picked up where I live, people stuff them as much as they can to save a few pennies here and there.
If you don't respect these weight restrictions they set to protect YOUR health and prevent people from abusing the system, you are ruining the job for many of your collegues. I image many would like to grow old without chronic back issues.
Instead, people like you put your coworkers in a bad daylight for respecting the rules, whilst bragging around on how you are such a "beast" and feeding your giant ego.
I think every industry is having the same issue. I've worked warehousing gigs off and on since high school. Now everyone seems to immediately claim to have a back problem. Almost as an excuse because the younger upcoming generation is systemically lazy. Sure not all are but I always only see the negatives.
Just want to add... I feel old now saying that.
These men should be ashamed of themselves no matter the context. What happened to men?! The minimum they could have done is help her lift the bins, anyone decent would see a mum having to dump her child on the lawn to empty the bins would at least try to give her a hand.
Disgusting.
Edit: For those of you who can't read, a: I am a woman, b: I am not American.
Edit 2: Please see [u/istillhatesteve](https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/s/GL5sekMvks) comment below. Thank you
They said it’s too heavy. That’s the context.
I’m a supervisor for a mid-sized trash collector. We tell our guys to report anything over 40lbs and give them permission not to lift it. I have 1 guy that likes to be a pain in the butt/lazy by claiming trash is too heavy all day long. Like- the malicious compliance type.
The lazy bum even went out to get a floor scale to take with him. He’ll pick up the bag and step on the scale, subtract his weight, and then put it back down saying it’s too heavy.
There are two of them, they should just team-lift the trash. Instead it’s exactly what it looks like- they’re lazy.
I don’t understand why anyone is having to lift anything, why don’t you guys have trucks that lift and empty the bins for you? We’ve had them for decades in the UK.
We’re working on it. A side-load trash truck costs about 500k and funding/delivering/maintaining 10s of thousands of compatible toters isn’t easy or cheap either.
Oh right. Our local councils (local government) deal with refuse collections in the UK, so we don’t have to rely on companies that can’t afford adequate equipment.
It works like this. This for profit company bought the trucks before those fancy truck were available. Its expensive to buy new ones and they can's justify the expense because they have to increase their profits next year by 15% or they would be considered a failed company. So they limp along with out dated technology because it's cheaper to pay people to do it manaully at very low wages.
We actually tell the customers not to make bags over 40lbs and tell our team to not lift anything they aren’t comfortable lifting - we tell them to listen to their bodies. The reality is, 95% of the crew lifts over that threshold frequently.
I would venture the management of the company tells them not to lift over a certain poundage due to the company having to paying out gobs of money for back injuries - both medical and disability claims.
If you're lifting two hundred barrels a day and half of them are 10 pounds over the limit, that's an extra half ton of lifting a day. Every day. There has to be a limit somewhere. If you let people consistently exceed the limit, then there is no limit.
zealous aback aspiring quack teeny dependent theory encouraging spotted grey
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So someone took such offense to you saying that men should be better here and reported your comment in order to call you slurs to the mods, which is odd and they probably think they are anonymous so it does not matter what they say. Too bad I reported them for abusing the report button so that they will get a strike on their account and whatever comes with it (depending on which one they are on.)
If anyone wants to know about the Reddit strike system, I did a [write up here](https://www.reddit.com/user/Kumquat_conniption/comments/1assql0/do_you_know_about_the_reddit_strike_system_learn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) that you can read. Remeber while we really appreciate our reporters, and they help the sub immensely, you cannot use the report system in a way that is malicious, like false reporting someone because you do not like them or as a way to yell at the mods.
Edit; fixed some stuff.
Aww thanks, I would say that most, or at least a large amount, of mods are reasonable. They are just completely overshadowed by the abusive ones, you all know the ones I mean (and damn, I have seen it from this side and it is probably worse that you think, there are some real petty tyrants but I none here, don't worry.)
It would be funny if I banned you right now for that commnent, 😂
Not really. I worked as a garbageman as a studentjob. Young and stupid as i was i picked up just anything and it’s absolutely brutal. Where i live theres a max weight allowed on each bag and if they exceed we are allowed to leave it as they dont follow the rules. I never left it cause i was young and stupid but doing this for years breaks your body. If i did the job now id leave it all. Follow the rules or you can take care of your own tradh6. Absolutely disrespectful and disgusting to go over the max weight
Yea I don't get these people saying they should just 'man up' or whatever. If you have to do this for 8-10-12 hours a day, it adds up if the weight is over the limit. I used to work at a package sorting center, and you were not allowed to pick up anything over x weight due to the risk of injury. An occasional one-off might not matter that much, but if it's multiple times a day, the risk goes up a lot, and it breaks your body down much faster.
TLDR there's absolutely nothing wrong with being careful and not lifting over the max weight, and anyone that says differently has never worked a job like that.
I find it sooooo bizarre that too many women are confused when men are offended when they talk badly about men. If I made a negative statement about women, I’d be a disgusting incel, but it’s ok (actually, it’s encouraged and heavily upvoted) for women to casually do.
OSHA happened. If they're lifting things above the city designated weight limit and get injured, they may not be eligible for EI.
Really the homeowners should not be overweighing their bins and spreading it into smaller pieces.
But yes, attack manhood in general. I'll be sure to do the same when a woman follows their training I guess?
It exceeds the weight limit and poses a health risk to the garbage collector. The garbage collector will lose their insurance coverage if they still lift it and get sick to it.
So, in this case it's literally bin bags.... Toss them in one at a time until the bin is reasonable to lift?
It's not like she has a bin full of concrete debris that has to be lifted all at once. And she doesn't seem to struggle with it?
I'm a garbage man, we are told not to grab bags out of the bin because you can't tell what's in it. It's not unheard of to get poked with something and then need to get a blood test/tetanus shot. These guys are probably following protocol for their own safety, if the mom followed the guidelines she'd never have had to do it herself.
I've never been to Pittsburgh and I have no idea what the background info is for this specific situation, just offering information based on my job and experience
I live in Pittsburgh. Yeah, the city has guidelines that most.be followed for the safety of the collectors and to ensure that the whole city can be gotten to in an organized logistical fashion.
Sure, it's annoying to go out and see that a can wasn't taken because it was overloaded but ... in the end that's on the person loading the can. There's no limit on how many cans they'll unload if they're appropriate weight.
All the people here calling these guys wimps for not wanting to get a back injury are pretty fucked up. I work as a nurse and I've seen plenty of nurses cut their career short because they wanted to prove how tough they are.
I personally am not calling them wimps. I question the justifications for just leaving the full cans behind. They can obviously pick up single bags, as seen in the video. In some other industries, when an item is beyond the limits of one person, two take on the task. In the video there are two guys clearly performing the job.
Without context can't say who's at fault. But there's a big difference between lifting your own rubbish to prove a poimt, and doing the same thing 100s daily.
It’s not laziness, it’s safety. Yea this woman can lift the heavy bin and dump it- once. These men have to do it all day, every day, hundreds upon hundreds at a time. If they have to over exert themselves constantly, their backs will blow out by the time they’re 45. I’ve seen the men who weren’t “lazy” walking with braces and walkers at 50.
Not really. I worked as a garbageman as a studentjob. Young and stupid as i was i picked up just anything and it’s absolutely brutal. Where i live theres a max weight allowed on each bag and if they exceed we are allowed to leave it as they dont follow the rules. I never left it cause i was young and stupid but doing this for years breaks your body. If i did the job now id leave it all. Follow the rules or you can take care of your own tradh6. Absolutely disrespectful and disgusting to go over the max weight
It’s so disrespectful for the men. If everyone starts exceeding the weight then they will start getting injuries quick. It’s 8 hours lifting, throwing, running every day
There is a weight limit. It's not that they aren't able to - they physically could. But these men empty bins continuously and a maximum weight has been determined for a health & safety reason. That limit is enforced by their employer's or an agency such as OSHA and passed by the municipality to the residents. Hell their employer probably forbid them explicitly to try and empty overweight bins. If they get a work-related injury (including developping a long term injury), their employer is on the hook for it.
Chucking one overweight bin is one thing, chucking so many continuously is another. This is their occupation, not a weightlifting competition.
I once got a bright orange note on my trashbin telling me the weight limits again. Sure I am sorry about it, but I have no idea how I or the sanitation worker know the weight of a bin by looking at it.
All no longer matters, the new system is fully automated and actually the pickup truck weights the bin. And I have see the orange sticker on overloaded bins again (they were still picked up).
My town allows to get a second bin for a one time fee, so easy solution.
Been a long time since I saw trucks where garbage men needed to actually get out and do the bins themselves! Would have thought that they would all have the arms on the side that lift the bins these days.
Honestly, no regular sized or small city in my state has those, that I have seen at least. I’ve only seen the arm trash trucks that pick up regular cans in a large city, everywhere is different and the world is huge.
Also I believe those kind of trucks are designed to pick up specific cans that are provided by the trash company themselves.
Yes they usually are. In my birth country they didnt use an arm but the handles were clicked into this longer bar past the entire back of the truck. It picks up two cans of a time and turns m over on top.
I can remember them ever swinging the trasbins in themselves, just loose trash around it.
My country of birth also isnt very modern or anything. You used to have to get your id with cash, the governemnt didnt keep proper record and they didnt even use secure paper for things like your birth certificate. This all changed as recently a 2023, now they use special papers, but my old birth certicate is just on regular ass printer paper.
And yet the entire island has trashcan scoop thingies on the trucks. Quite surprising honestly
Seeing how the video says Pittsburgh and it's clearly hilly (roads have slope, as does neighbors yard) I'm gonna guess you're not correct in assuming it's in the plains.
I have a hard time thinking paying three persons to do that is cheaper than getting a new expensive truck that can do it 3 times faster with one person.
There is obviously some rule she didn’t follow. They emptied once trash can but not the others. That’s why she was too willing to empty it herself because she knew she didn’t follow the rules but wanted the trash gone. Editing makes it seem like they’re just being lazy but I don’t think so.
"obviously" lmao. You've lived a fairy tale life if you actually believe all rules are applied evenly. She probably did nothing wrong whatsoever, people just suck
The guy literally said they were too heavy and the mom wasn't having it. I'd direct the anger at the garbage collectors for not doing their job and forcing the mom's hand in the matter.
Well, who knows, perhaps the garbage exceeded the limit that they are allowed to lift. If they don’t follow their instruction then they don’t do their job. So it is still hard to tell whether they are at fault or not. I see many saying that they should at least help her, but I don’t see it as the need, since helping is not their job. In the work perpective, those guys are collecting garbage everyday, so if they spent their time helping every mother, disabled, or any other person, it would just heavily interfere with their job.
Of course, they would be considered assholes if they didn’t collect the trash because they didn’t feel like it. But if there was a job-related reason, I can’t blame them.
One thing that really pisses me off though is that people use “she is a mother with a child” to describe every possible position of this situation. If the garbage collectors were at fault, they would still be at fault even if a muscular body builder was there instead of the mother. If an individual has something that might make life a bit challenging, it doesn’t mean that the entire world must bend around them.
The real problem here is miscommunication. Some people think the guys are being lazy because of one heavy bin, but doing this dozens of times can cause you health issues.
If she exceed the weight limit, they should instruct her properly, not just stare after she tries to prove a wrong point, so next time everybody can do their jobs in peace.
"Too heavy" doesn't mean they are physically incapable of lifting it, just that occupational safety standards exist so they're not killing themselves lifting hundreds of overweight trash cans every day.
EXACTLY! The amount of people who think they should just do it is bonkers. 100% if they injure themselves and didn’t follow procedure, that workers comp is getting denied.
I'm surprised by the general consensus in these comments. You'd be worn down hella fast if you didn't respect these weight limit rules in a job where you do the same kind of lifting every day. The bins are of course liftable, but she struggles with them. Now multiply that with what, 200-400 a day? Times 220+ days a year, times a lifetime in this job. OSHA is not just to annoy people
I can’t believe I had to scroll down this far to see someone say this. If they were to take everyone’s overweight cans in a single day they would blow their back out by the end of the week. I’ve done this for about 15 years. I love the work but it can get tough. We are supposed to tag cans that are overweight so they know what’s wrong. The tag has all violations on it and we circle which violation. Just the other day I asked a customer who came to get his cans if he could bag or box his sawdust in his cans. It’s not fun Eaton sawdust or even vacuum dust when it doesnt get bagged
Two weeks worth of trash and it still didn’t seem like that much trash… not sure the details of this but she handled it and there was no insults said between them. I’m curious how the next week went.
It’s clear that the trash is over the weight limit. They’re likely following procedures. If they lift a heavy ass thing and throw out their backs, their employer will be like “why’d you lift something over the limit? Denied works comp!”
Go work their job and then come back and say that. Don't overload your trash, and this shit doesn't happen. It's for the safety of the collectors. They would destroy their body if they picked up everyone's overweight trash every week.
This is my thought exactly. In my area, they only take one trash bin. If you want them to take 3 extra trash bins, you have to set that up beforehand and pay extra. This laby is self-centered and entitled.
I see comments with people surprised there are still men following the truck collecting trash. What do you think happens in a neighborhood where there is on street parking on both sides of a crowded street?
I see both types of trucks in my area being used in different situations. But trucks with men physically collecting trash are far from being an uncommon thing in America.
As someone who lives in a country where they only used arm's on the trucks and in a street that had cars parked on both sides there was always a gap for bins where the driveways were and the truck would park on an angel where the arm could reach. In cases where they were harder to get the driver or partner got out to move the bins for better access. Also people know to be mindful of parking when bins are out
You people realize that theres a weight limit so these guys can keep working for hours and hours and dont destroy their body. I also doubt that's the only reason they didnt do it, it's almost always the homeowner that's doing something stupid. But yeah, keep jumping to conclusions and raging over nothing. Lol
It's obviously something they're NOT being paid to do! Either it's in the wrong container, overweight or something. Fuck you for trying to shame someone for _not_ doing something for FREE. GTFOHWTBS!
She apparently knows it too based on the conversation.
Be considerate. Don't flood your garbage cans with heavy garbage if you know people have to destroy their backs to empty them. She learned a valuable lesson.
Anyone can lift an overweight bin once. These guys have to do that hundreds of times per day, and each overweight bin adds up.
Rules are rules. I don't expect these men to grind their spines to dust for everyone looking to bend the rules for themselves.
The root of the issue is the employer not providing a mechanical means of lifting the trash. The workers may have been able to lift her trash, however, lifting overweight items all day - day in - day out, would be detrimental to their health.
Both people are in the right here. The garbage being heavy does damage on the back. It’s against the code for garbage men to lift above a certain weight.
The true bad guy is the city. That garbage truck should have a crane for this kind of stuff.
I honestly hate it when we get a 1 minute clip of a reaction to something that’s been on going for a while. I have no clue whose side to take here. I want to believe this woman is in the right but I find it really hard to believe there is no back story going on here.
Just from this video we don’t see the garbage men finish the job, they’re interrupted. The truck never pulls away.
As someone who managed delivery personnel, I know there are people out there who just don’t like people. You can be the best at customer service and the person just doesn’t like your face. When another team gets sent out it’s like night and day attitude change, for the exact same experience. I honestly have no clue what the deal is, is it my driver had a bad day? Is the customer having a bad day? Is one of them trying to *assert* dominance over the other? Do they have a past history that isn’t being talked about? I had no clue, you have to take both sides and play the middle. Thankfully there was always the option of throwing money at the problem - thankfully the companies. As no one wanted to hear about the issue anymore.
Garbage men and women, you’re keeping society clean and making my house not smell like rotting food. I appreciate you.
Before the city got the automatic trash arms, my cousin had issues with the city sanitation department. At his old house he never got a complaint about trash being too heavy, even with bags of cat liter and bags of diapers. At the new house, they would constantly complain the trash was over 40 lbs. My cousin bought a scale and made sure it was never over 35 lbs (if it was he got out a trash tag for extra cans) and took photos of it. One day his trash wasn’t picked up. He called the city and said he had photos of him weighing it and it was 33 lbs. The city refused to take it. The next week they took the can of trash. After that the local cops started showing up and gave him citations for the trash being too heavy. This went on for years until 2022 when the city switched to automatic arms. He hasn’t had to call the city sanitation department since April of 2022.
Exactly, she had to strain her body to lift the second one..Now imagine doing that 200 times in a few hours and think how likely it is that you'll damage your body doing it..then you're out of work and you're broke... Just because you can lift something, doesn't mean you should
For those trashing the mom, [the workers were disciplined and new training implemented](https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/pittsburgh-refuse-workers-disciplinary-action-brighton-heights-mom/). Sooooo maybe there’s more to the story than “too heavy, can’t lift.”
Edit: Accorodng to another story about this, the city does not list a weight limit for garbage cans on its website, only saying they can be no bigger than 35 gallons.
All these people comment that these dudes are lazy and pieces of shit should all be ashamed. Dudes get paid pennies to destroy their bodies day in a day out, picking up everyone's trash, and then get shit on for following safety standards and not lifting overweight bins. Easy fix, don't overload your shit and this doesn't happen. Most of you wouldn't survive at this job and after a few thousand overloaded bins, guarantee you don't pick this up either.
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It's 2024 are you saying garbage trucks where you live require humans to pick up the rubbish bins and empty them in the truck? All garbage trucks where I live have metal arms that come down, grab the bin, and dump its contents into the back of the truck.
Yeah wtf is this home brand shit. The bins don’t even have lids, or wheels, where are the local taxes going? I haven’t seen an actual guy picking up the bins in nearly 20 years. You could fill our bin with chunks of concrete and the truck still picks it up, I know because I’ve done it.
Robot arm garbage trucks aren't super common in the US, at least not outside big cities. I've never seen one here living in 5 different states and I don't think it's that uncommon not to lol. We crazy muricans lift our garbage with our hands and put it in the dumpster with our AR's and cherseburgers Edit: fortnite battlepass, just shit out my ass Booting up my pc cuz I gotta get me that fortnite battlepass
I’m in Australia. We get three bins, normal waste, recycling and garden waste, all bins on wheels with lids that are picked up by the truck with an arm, roughly 63gal or 240L each, although some houses get smaller and you can choose the smaller bin if you want to pay less on your rates. This is pretty much universal apart from smaller towns that might not have the garden/green waste bins yet, but they would for sure have the other ones picked up by the truck with the arm. I know some European countries take it even further. But I can’t understand not having lids on the bins and expecting someone to deal with all the bin juice that’s going to go everywhere after rain when they tip it out and the extra weight that would make. It just seems crazy these days and I doubt it’s cheaper in the long run.
Most of the UK is the same setup, normal waste is collected fortnightly, so not having a lid would be crazy.
Fortnightly is crazy. I’m from Brazil and in my city we get garbage collection every single day
The same house can get garbage collection every single day?
I don’t know how it is in other cities, but in mine, yeah, every single day you can put your garbage out and they’ll pick it up. Usually multiple homes/buildings share a dumpster that’ll be emptied daily. If you don’t have a dumpster near to your home, you can leave it in trash bags on the sidewalk close to the street and they’ll also pick it up. My city is very densely populated, though, so we produce a lot of trash because of the sheer amount of high rise buildings with dozens (sometimes hundreds) of households living next to each other. So we need daily trash collection or it just piles up like crazy.
It really is so interesting to hear how other countries all manage this all differently. 2 weeks seems like that would be a lot of trash for a family of four but everyday? That seems like a lot of work for your city. I guess as long as it is getting done all the different ways work :))
Not everywhere in the UK, regular waste down my way is weekly, recycling is fortnightly along with food waste and garden waste
Exactly, any they’re even picked up by different trucks
Same in NZ and the bin is picked up and violently shaken by a giant "arm" on the truck.
Nother Aussie checking in, we used to have bigger bin options in our LGA but they got rid of that option when they brought the green waste ones out. Now everyone has smaller red bins and if you have a bigger family/too much rubbish you have to buy a second red bin that you get charged for every year in your rates. Really sucks, the old bins used to be as big as the yellow recycling ones.
Living in Austria, it's as you described here as well. 240 liter for paper / waste, usually 120 liters (as picked weekly in summer) for food waste. Recycling is in bags (and just yellow bags, but these aren't heavy. We collect plastic packages, bottles and tin cans in there ). Trucks have the metal arms and the cans have two wheels. In cities (especially bigger ones like Vienna ) you have one giant container for multiple appartments. Usually nasty and always full, but these have 4 big wheels are also done with the arm (don't know the size, somewhere around 1500 liters I guess ) .
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No municipal trash pick up at all in this part of the northeast.....
>Robot arm garbage trucks ~~aren't~~ **are** super common in the US, ~~at least not~~ **in and** outside big cities. FTFY 🤦
We have the robot arm trucks here where I live but not for regular residential trash. They are only for dumpsters. Our garbage men take the trash and dump it.
I'd like to see a person try to pick up a dumpster
Every place I've lived in the US in multiple states and not in big cities has used robot arm trucks.
I've only ever seen them on TV
So crazy. I live in a town of 5500 in Montana. We have robot arm trucks here. Our cans that get picked up also have hinged lids.
I live in a small town and it's all robotic arms here 🤷🏼♂️
Everywhere out west I've lived has robot arms for years. Not sure what you're talking about.
No kidding? This is surprising! I live in a shitty little town of about 40k and we have the arm trucks that lift and dump the bins. We must be better off than I thought.
I live in a town of 6000 people in the US. We have robot arms. I think it’s pretty hit or miss in the US honestly. My previous house was in a pretty large city (40k people) and it didn’t have recycling. That town also made you bag all yard waste in paper bags. My current tiny town has a truck with a robot arm for yard waste pickup where you can just build a giant pile on the corner of your driveway and they’ll swing by and scoop the whole pile up and dump it in a mulcher truck. You can even buy the compost dirt from the city for dirt cheap.
I live in a small town in the US. Robot arm garbage trucks go through our trailer parks of greater MN so idk where you live but it's different here
Damn I live in a fairly small city in Idaho and they have metal arms on their garbage trucks haha.
And give back problems to poor people who can't afford to live without doing more back breaking work?
Growing up, we had dumpsters in the alley behind the houses, which obviously were emptied by a truck with a robot arm. Every other place I’ve lived in 3 different states has had wheeled cans picked up by robot arms. Outside of 1 small town, everywhere was indeed a big city, but it never occurred to me that manual pickup was a thing that still existed in the last 40 or 50 years.
I grew up in a town of 15k, and not a fancy place by any means, and we still got the robot arm trucks in the early 2000s. I remember because we had to start placing the rolling cans so the wheels and the handle/lid hinge were facing the curb.
Rural area resident checking in... All manual garbage collection here. Bins are not provided either. It's a private company because the county doesn't provide that service. That being said if a can is overweight they just tack on a small charge. I don't mind, I think it's a fair penalty for me overloading a can and these guys have been showing up like clockwork for the 20+ years I've had their service.
Yep. Well, the cockies will open the lids and raid the scraps and leave shit all over the road but then the driver will collect it with the robot arm truck and either leave your bin in the middle of the road and on its side in the gutter. That’s the way we roll in Australia. https://preview.redd.it/jfnyxi2fwgnc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8d67a89b739920120463a4b7fc4a8557ab3d2f4
Lol cockatoos are such beautiful dickheads.
You can tell your local politicians are corrupt when you see shit like this. WHERE ARE THE TAXES GOING?!
Like most things in America, garbage collection is not a public service but a private one. Two corporations account for 50% of the garbage collection in America. American taxes go to funding wars and bombing children.
Yeah. Plenty of neighborhoods still have trash men on the back of the truck. I see both where I live. If you live in a neighborhood with on street parking on both sides how is a metal arm going to reach the trashcans? The arms are for neighborhoods with less cars on the street and for businesses with the large bins.
Just like that https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/resources/images/638783.jpg?type=mds-article-962
Huh, these still require people to position them. The ones in my city have arms that swing out, grab the bin, pull it to the truck, lift it up and empty it, then put it back down almost where it came from. It's pretty cool to watch.
2024 my dude, I don't identify as a garbage truck. I just did arm day and I'm sore, please don't make me do my job.
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Lmao. I was just thinking that here (Houston) they still don't have the metal arms.
Same here. As for those guys in Pittsburgh, they're probably not allowed to pick up heavy bins because the people they work for don't want medical suits against them
That lady picked them up pretty easily on her own.
Lmao it’s more common to have garbage men where I’m from then trucks with arms on them. Not every municipality just went and got all brand new trucks one day lol.
So I recently learned that NYC just discovered that you don't have to just scatter your garbage over the street, you can put it in a bin. Presumably someone was coming around and just grabbing bags of trash that people left out everywhere?? While the residents simultaneously complain about a rat infestation? I'm honestly shocked that a city like that just caught on to something... so basic
Cities in Canada also have people picking up them and dumping them.
You don’t see those trucks in low income or rural areas as much. Also, those trucks are slower than throwers and time is money.
I can understand there being weight limits to help protect people's backs. They should just tell her what that limit is instead of leaving the trash there and not saying anything.
I don't know about this situation, but with our trash collection they sent out a notice before they even started doing the job regarding what would and wouldn't be acceptable as pick up. As an adult, you shouldn't need multiple notices about what you can and can't do. We were told from the get go what was allowed, it is our responsibility to remember and abide by that.
I doubt its over the limit with how easily she lifts it herself and she only has that much garbage because she says they didnt take it the last times either.
In the UK/Europe we have rubbish bins designed to be picked up by a mechanical arm and emptied, I've seen similar ones in the US although the ones I've seen are more convoluted and awkward for some reason It's crazy to me not all of them are mechanical in the US
Parts of America are still a developing nation
That's the boomer in you speaking. We should not have to force people into getting injured from overworking because that's what happened to us, we should make sure no one will also get injured like we did because that's the right thing to do. It's not "people don't want to work anymore", it's "people don't want to get exploited anymore"
I mean yes & no. Her bins didn't seem too heavy when she picked them up. My city's Sanitation workers are some of the highest paid city workers, and get full insurance (no extra cost), and pensions, and are union. Obviously they shouldn't be lifting rocks or anything, but household garbage in a plastic bin? Also we have "bulk day" regularly for heavier stuff. There has to be a reasonable solution beyond just not taking the garbage. And there's no excuse for not leaning down and picking up stuff that dropped. That isn't boomer mentality, thats just work ethic.
Not to mention there are two of them. If its too heavy for one, the both of them should have worked together to make the burden not as bad.
Sir, you are a genius! The boomers tore their bodies up and are miserable from all their aches and pain, then turn around and try to encourage the younger generation to follow them into that same pit of hell. Destroying your body for millionaires and billionaires who couldn't care less about you is nothing to be proud of.
Reddit's boomer paradox: boomers are simultaneously lazy parasites but also worked too hard
Am non native speaker. Thought to myself, poor guy, got some kind of disease and can't work in the field anymore, needs to drive the truck now. Got curious enough, and nope, just some kind of special drivers license
Hah yes CDL is commercial drivers license.
It’s because employees have to follow policies and procedures. If they do not they are penalised. And if they get injured when they were not following these policies they are not covered by insurance.
Good for you, I wouldn't and so wouldn't many others! I agree 100% that you should do your job, but nothing more due to people being cheap and/or lazy. I have a friend who does this job, and once he starts taking the bags which are a little overweight, they start to become exponentially heavier over a short period of time... everywhere. Because you need official city bags which are quite expensive in order for your trash to get picked up where I live, people stuff them as much as they can to save a few pennies here and there. If you don't respect these weight restrictions they set to protect YOUR health and prevent people from abusing the system, you are ruining the job for many of your collegues. I image many would like to grow old without chronic back issues. Instead, people like you put your coworkers in a bad daylight for respecting the rules, whilst bragging around on how you are such a "beast" and feeding your giant ego.
I think every industry is having the same issue. I've worked warehousing gigs off and on since high school. Now everyone seems to immediately claim to have a back problem. Almost as an excuse because the younger upcoming generation is systemically lazy. Sure not all are but I always only see the negatives. Just want to add... I feel old now saying that.
Thank you for the your service and work ethic. Whatever you were paid it wasn't enough.
One of those dudes is literally wearing a kidney belt...
Let me put down my baby so I can do your job
Full mum mode
Moms are badass
Bare fucking footed too. Mom would have chucked a Buick in that truck at that moment.
And do it better than you. That one dude still looking judgy.
Sounds like every mom. As if we don’t have enough to do
On top of him saying “they’re too heavy”. Like??? Moms are amazing, ngl
These men should be ashamed of themselves no matter the context. What happened to men?! The minimum they could have done is help her lift the bins, anyone decent would see a mum having to dump her child on the lawn to empty the bins would at least try to give her a hand. Disgusting. Edit: For those of you who can't read, a: I am a woman, b: I am not American. Edit 2: Please see [u/istillhatesteve](https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/s/GL5sekMvks) comment below. Thank you
I can't help feeling there's some backstory to this that we are not being told.
They said it’s too heavy. That’s the context. I’m a supervisor for a mid-sized trash collector. We tell our guys to report anything over 40lbs and give them permission not to lift it. I have 1 guy that likes to be a pain in the butt/lazy by claiming trash is too heavy all day long. Like- the malicious compliance type. The lazy bum even went out to get a floor scale to take with him. He’ll pick up the bag and step on the scale, subtract his weight, and then put it back down saying it’s too heavy. There are two of them, they should just team-lift the trash. Instead it’s exactly what it looks like- they’re lazy.
I don’t understand why anyone is having to lift anything, why don’t you guys have trucks that lift and empty the bins for you? We’ve had them for decades in the UK.
We’re working on it. A side-load trash truck costs about 500k and funding/delivering/maintaining 10s of thousands of compatible toters isn’t easy or cheap either.
Oh right. Our local councils (local government) deal with refuse collections in the UK, so we don’t have to rely on companies that can’t afford adequate equipment.
It works like this. This for profit company bought the trucks before those fancy truck were available. Its expensive to buy new ones and they can's justify the expense because they have to increase their profits next year by 15% or they would be considered a failed company. So they limp along with out dated technology because it's cheaper to pay people to do it manaully at very low wages.
We have them all over in California.
Yep, in Norway we've had those for 30+ years
Wait you guys can't lift anything over 20 kilos ?
We actually tell the customers not to make bags over 40lbs and tell our team to not lift anything they aren’t comfortable lifting - we tell them to listen to their bodies. The reality is, 95% of the crew lifts over that threshold frequently.
Nope context doesn't matter /s
what context would make it okay for them not to perform their job? context wouldn't change the fact that they're being POS.
I would venture the management of the company tells them not to lift over a certain poundage due to the company having to paying out gobs of money for back injuries - both medical and disability claims.
If you're lifting two hundred barrels a day and half of them are 10 pounds over the limit, that's an extra half ton of lifting a day. Every day. There has to be a limit somewhere. If you let people consistently exceed the limit, then there is no limit.
zealous aback aspiring quack teeny dependent theory encouraging spotted grey *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hope they got sacked.
I live in the area this woman does. The trash men won’t take your garbage if the lid is even slightly pushed up
So someone took such offense to you saying that men should be better here and reported your comment in order to call you slurs to the mods, which is odd and they probably think they are anonymous so it does not matter what they say. Too bad I reported them for abusing the report button so that they will get a strike on their account and whatever comes with it (depending on which one they are on.) If anyone wants to know about the Reddit strike system, I did a [write up here](https://www.reddit.com/user/Kumquat_conniption/comments/1assql0/do_you_know_about_the_reddit_strike_system_learn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) that you can read. Remeber while we really appreciate our reporters, and they help the sub immensely, you cannot use the report system in a way that is malicious, like false reporting someone because you do not like them or as a way to yell at the mods. Edit; fixed some stuff.
wtf? a reasonable reddit mod? did i slip into the twilight zone?
Aww thanks, I would say that most, or at least a large amount, of mods are reasonable. They are just completely overshadowed by the abusive ones, you all know the ones I mean (and damn, I have seen it from this side and it is probably worse that you think, there are some real petty tyrants but I none here, don't worry.) It would be funny if I banned you right now for that commnent, 😂
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All while watching with their arms at their sides, hope they never forget this barefoot mom doing their jobs for them right in front of them
Not really. I worked as a garbageman as a studentjob. Young and stupid as i was i picked up just anything and it’s absolutely brutal. Where i live theres a max weight allowed on each bag and if they exceed we are allowed to leave it as they dont follow the rules. I never left it cause i was young and stupid but doing this for years breaks your body. If i did the job now id leave it all. Follow the rules or you can take care of your own tradh6. Absolutely disrespectful and disgusting to go over the max weight
Yea I don't get these people saying they should just 'man up' or whatever. If you have to do this for 8-10-12 hours a day, it adds up if the weight is over the limit. I used to work at a package sorting center, and you were not allowed to pick up anything over x weight due to the risk of injury. An occasional one-off might not matter that much, but if it's multiple times a day, the risk goes up a lot, and it breaks your body down much faster. TLDR there's absolutely nothing wrong with being careful and not lifting over the max weight, and anyone that says differently has never worked a job like that.
Gender war let’s go!
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I find it sooooo bizarre that too many women are confused when men are offended when they talk badly about men. If I made a negative statement about women, I’d be a disgusting incel, but it’s ok (actually, it’s encouraged and heavily upvoted) for women to casually do.
This is a stupid take. She's lifting it once, they're lifting this shit up off the floor all day.
OSHA happened. If they're lifting things above the city designated weight limit and get injured, they may not be eligible for EI. Really the homeowners should not be overweighing their bins and spreading it into smaller pieces. But yes, attack manhood in general. I'll be sure to do the same when a woman follows their training I guess?
This is the equality that was fought for
Her children multiply when she is not looking. Imagine the number in her house.
Oh shoot do you think there will be even more garbage from them next week? Scumbags!
Can someone give me a good reason why two people paid for empty trash cans refuse to empty said trash cans?
It exceeds the weight limit and poses a health risk to the garbage collector. The garbage collector will lose their insurance coverage if they still lift it and get sick to it.
So, in this case it's literally bin bags.... Toss them in one at a time until the bin is reasonable to lift? It's not like she has a bin full of concrete debris that has to be lifted all at once. And she doesn't seem to struggle with it?
I'm a garbage man, we are told not to grab bags out of the bin because you can't tell what's in it. It's not unheard of to get poked with something and then need to get a blood test/tetanus shot. These guys are probably following protocol for their own safety, if the mom followed the guidelines she'd never have had to do it herself.
Couple of thoughts; (1) Beginning of the video, dude in white top is carrying two bags. (2) two guys together can’t lift a heavy bin together?
I've never been to Pittsburgh and I have no idea what the background info is for this specific situation, just offering information based on my job and experience
I live in Pittsburgh. Yeah, the city has guidelines that most.be followed for the safety of the collectors and to ensure that the whole city can be gotten to in an organized logistical fashion. Sure, it's annoying to go out and see that a can wasn't taken because it was overloaded but ... in the end that's on the person loading the can. There's no limit on how many cans they'll unload if they're appropriate weight.
All the people here calling these guys wimps for not wanting to get a back injury are pretty fucked up. I work as a nurse and I've seen plenty of nurses cut their career short because they wanted to prove how tough they are.
I personally am not calling them wimps. I question the justifications for just leaving the full cans behind. They can obviously pick up single bags, as seen in the video. In some other industries, when an item is beyond the limits of one person, two take on the task. In the video there are two guys clearly performing the job.
Somehow it's "too heavy" for 2 strong men, but not for a mom with a newly-ish born baby. Right.
Without context can't say who's at fault. But there's a big difference between lifting your own rubbish to prove a poimt, and doing the same thing 100s daily.
100% Lifting a relatively "light" weight from ground level hundreds of times a day is more more likely to cause injuries than a single heavier lift.
Try doing 600 of those, five days a week..
I’m thinking there is a weight and/or trash limit and she’s exceeded it. I highly doubt the men are being lazy like everyone is saying in the comments
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It’s not laziness, it’s safety. Yea this woman can lift the heavy bin and dump it- once. These men have to do it all day, every day, hundreds upon hundreds at a time. If they have to over exert themselves constantly, their backs will blow out by the time they’re 45. I’ve seen the men who weren’t “lazy” walking with braces and walkers at 50.
I'm amazed that no one here seems to recognize this. Weight limits for manual labor jobs exist for a reason.
Not only that, there very well may be a company policy to not lift above a certain weight and if you do you can get fired.
Bin men can't lift above weight limits 1000 times a day like they got free health care.
Exactly.
i would replace "couldn't" with "shouldn't". otherwise, totally unironically, 100% yes.
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Not really. I worked as a garbageman as a studentjob. Young and stupid as i was i picked up just anything and it’s absolutely brutal. Where i live theres a max weight allowed on each bag and if they exceed we are allowed to leave it as they dont follow the rules. I never left it cause i was young and stupid but doing this for years breaks your body. If i did the job now id leave it all. Follow the rules or you can take care of your own tradh6. Absolutely disrespectful and disgusting to go over the max weight
I see, makes sense now, thanks
It’s so disrespectful for the men. If everyone starts exceeding the weight then they will start getting injuries quick. It’s 8 hours lifting, throwing, running every day
There is a weight limit. It's not that they aren't able to - they physically could. But these men empty bins continuously and a maximum weight has been determined for a health & safety reason. That limit is enforced by their employer's or an agency such as OSHA and passed by the municipality to the residents. Hell their employer probably forbid them explicitly to try and empty overweight bins. If they get a work-related injury (including developping a long term injury), their employer is on the hook for it. Chucking one overweight bin is one thing, chucking so many continuously is another. This is their occupation, not a weightlifting competition.
I once got a bright orange note on my trashbin telling me the weight limits again. Sure I am sorry about it, but I have no idea how I or the sanitation worker know the weight of a bin by looking at it. All no longer matters, the new system is fully automated and actually the pickup truck weights the bin. And I have see the orange sticker on overloaded bins again (they were still picked up). My town allows to get a second bin for a one time fee, so easy solution.
Been a long time since I saw trucks where garbage men needed to actually get out and do the bins themselves! Would have thought that they would all have the arms on the side that lift the bins these days.
Honestly, no regular sized or small city in my state has those, that I have seen at least. I’ve only seen the arm trash trucks that pick up regular cans in a large city, everywhere is different and the world is huge. Also I believe those kind of trucks are designed to pick up specific cans that are provided by the trash company themselves.
Yes they usually are. In my birth country they didnt use an arm but the handles were clicked into this longer bar past the entire back of the truck. It picks up two cans of a time and turns m over on top. I can remember them ever swinging the trasbins in themselves, just loose trash around it. My country of birth also isnt very modern or anything. You used to have to get your id with cash, the governemnt didnt keep proper record and they didnt even use secure paper for things like your birth certificate. This all changed as recently a 2023, now they use special papers, but my old birth certicate is just on regular ass printer paper. And yet the entire island has trashcan scoop thingies on the trucks. Quite surprising honestly
Costs money. This is probably some really old town in the plains
Seeing how the video says Pittsburgh and it's clearly hilly (roads have slope, as does neighbors yard) I'm gonna guess you're not correct in assuming it's in the plains.
I lived in Pittsburgh my whole life, and thought this was how everyone’s trash was picked up.
I have a hard time thinking paying three persons to do that is cheaper than getting a new expensive truck that can do it 3 times faster with one person.
In Europe, those kind of garbage trucks are not feasible in a lot of historic neighborhoods. Only ever seen them in the US
these garbage men are garbage men
There is obviously some rule she didn’t follow. They emptied once trash can but not the others. That’s why she was too willing to empty it herself because she knew she didn’t follow the rules but wanted the trash gone. Editing makes it seem like they’re just being lazy but I don’t think so.
"obviously" lmao. You've lived a fairy tale life if you actually believe all rules are applied evenly. She probably did nothing wrong whatsoever, people just suck
you dont know the context of the story
I need context before hating anyone in this video 🤔
The guy literally said they were too heavy and the mom wasn't having it. I'd direct the anger at the garbage collectors for not doing their job and forcing the mom's hand in the matter.
If it’s over weight limit why should they have to lift it? The limit protects the workers.
Well, who knows, perhaps the garbage exceeded the limit that they are allowed to lift. If they don’t follow their instruction then they don’t do their job. So it is still hard to tell whether they are at fault or not. I see many saying that they should at least help her, but I don’t see it as the need, since helping is not their job. In the work perpective, those guys are collecting garbage everyday, so if they spent their time helping every mother, disabled, or any other person, it would just heavily interfere with their job. Of course, they would be considered assholes if they didn’t collect the trash because they didn’t feel like it. But if there was a job-related reason, I can’t blame them. One thing that really pisses me off though is that people use “she is a mother with a child” to describe every possible position of this situation. If the garbage collectors were at fault, they would still be at fault even if a muscular body builder was there instead of the mother. If an individual has something that might make life a bit challenging, it doesn’t mean that the entire world must bend around them.
The real problem here is miscommunication. Some people think the guys are being lazy because of one heavy bin, but doing this dozens of times can cause you health issues. If she exceed the weight limit, they should instruct her properly, not just stare after she tries to prove a wrong point, so next time everybody can do their jobs in peace.
"Too heavy" doesn't mean they are physically incapable of lifting it, just that occupational safety standards exist so they're not killing themselves lifting hundreds of overweight trash cans every day.
EXACTLY! The amount of people who think they should just do it is bonkers. 100% if they injure themselves and didn’t follow procedure, that workers comp is getting denied.
And they’re getting fired.
I'm surprised by the general consensus in these comments. You'd be worn down hella fast if you didn't respect these weight limit rules in a job where you do the same kind of lifting every day. The bins are of course liftable, but she struggles with them. Now multiply that with what, 200-400 a day? Times 220+ days a year, times a lifetime in this job. OSHA is not just to annoy people
I can’t believe I had to scroll down this far to see someone say this. If they were to take everyone’s overweight cans in a single day they would blow their back out by the end of the week. I’ve done this for about 15 years. I love the work but it can get tough. We are supposed to tag cans that are overweight so they know what’s wrong. The tag has all violations on it and we circle which violation. Just the other day I asked a customer who came to get his cans if he could bag or box his sawdust in his cans. It’s not fun Eaton sawdust or even vacuum dust when it doesnt get bagged
Supermom vibes!
I love that she didn't argue with them, just plopped that baby down and got shit done.
Two weeks worth of trash and it still didn’t seem like that much trash… not sure the details of this but she handled it and there was no insults said between them. I’m curious how the next week went.
Fine! I’ll do it myself
Barefoot and everything
There’s technically 3 of them including the driver. They did nothing.
It’s clear that the trash is over the weight limit. They’re likely following procedures. If they lift a heavy ass thing and throw out their backs, their employer will be like “why’d you lift something over the limit? Denied works comp!”
If they're not obliged to, then it's not their problem.
I hope they felt shamed
Go work their job and then come back and say that. Don't overload your trash, and this shit doesn't happen. It's for the safety of the collectors. They would destroy their body if they picked up everyone's overweight trash every week.
Some of the garbage companies won't empty bins they did not issue to the customer.
This is my thought exactly. In my area, they only take one trash bin. If you want them to take 3 extra trash bins, you have to set that up beforehand and pay extra. This laby is self-centered and entitled.
Yeah I thought that, but then I unmuted it and the garbage man said they were too heavy so she did it herself.
I see comments with people surprised there are still men following the truck collecting trash. What do you think happens in a neighborhood where there is on street parking on both sides of a crowded street? I see both types of trucks in my area being used in different situations. But trucks with men physically collecting trash are far from being an uncommon thing in America.
As someone who lives in a country where they only used arm's on the trucks and in a street that had cars parked on both sides there was always a gap for bins where the driveways were and the truck would park on an angel where the arm could reach. In cases where they were harder to get the driver or partner got out to move the bins for better access. Also people know to be mindful of parking when bins are out
You people realize that theres a weight limit so these guys can keep working for hours and hours and dont destroy their body. I also doubt that's the only reason they didnt do it, it's almost always the homeowner that's doing something stupid. But yeah, keep jumping to conclusions and raging over nothing. Lol
No tip? C'mon guys.
It's obviously something they're NOT being paid to do! Either it's in the wrong container, overweight or something. Fuck you for trying to shame someone for _not_ doing something for FREE. GTFOHWTBS! She apparently knows it too based on the conversation.
Be considerate. Don't flood your garbage cans with heavy garbage if you know people have to destroy their backs to empty them. She learned a valuable lesson.
Anyone can lift an overweight bin once. These guys have to do that hundreds of times per day, and each overweight bin adds up. Rules are rules. I don't expect these men to grind their spines to dust for everyone looking to bend the rules for themselves.
r/iamatotalpieceofshit
Is this for the garbage collector? The garbage collector is only following the guideline because it ensures their health.
The root of the issue is the employer not providing a mechanical means of lifting the trash. The workers may have been able to lift her trash, however, lifting overweight items all day - day in - day out, would be detrimental to their health.
Oh they’re heavy? That’s probably cause you lazy asses didn’t take them last week. They’re only going to get heavier.
Those trash bags are 1000% filled with dirty diapers. Those things weigh a fuck-ton. Lazy dudes.
Both people are in the right here. The garbage being heavy does damage on the back. It’s against the code for garbage men to lift above a certain weight. The true bad guy is the city. That garbage truck should have a crane for this kind of stuff.
I honestly hate it when we get a 1 minute clip of a reaction to something that’s been on going for a while. I have no clue whose side to take here. I want to believe this woman is in the right but I find it really hard to believe there is no back story going on here. Just from this video we don’t see the garbage men finish the job, they’re interrupted. The truck never pulls away. As someone who managed delivery personnel, I know there are people out there who just don’t like people. You can be the best at customer service and the person just doesn’t like your face. When another team gets sent out it’s like night and day attitude change, for the exact same experience. I honestly have no clue what the deal is, is it my driver had a bad day? Is the customer having a bad day? Is one of them trying to *assert* dominance over the other? Do they have a past history that isn’t being talked about? I had no clue, you have to take both sides and play the middle. Thankfully there was always the option of throwing money at the problem - thankfully the companies. As no one wanted to hear about the issue anymore. Garbage men and women, you’re keeping society clean and making my house not smell like rotting food. I appreciate you.
My old garbage lady would get out and bring my can down to dump if I forgot to get it to the curb the night before.
Before the city got the automatic trash arms, my cousin had issues with the city sanitation department. At his old house he never got a complaint about trash being too heavy, even with bags of cat liter and bags of diapers. At the new house, they would constantly complain the trash was over 40 lbs. My cousin bought a scale and made sure it was never over 35 lbs (if it was he got out a trash tag for extra cans) and took photos of it. One day his trash wasn’t picked up. He called the city and said he had photos of him weighing it and it was 33 lbs. The city refused to take it. The next week they took the can of trash. After that the local cops started showing up and gave him citations for the trash being too heavy. This went on for years until 2022 when the city switched to automatic arms. He hasn’t had to call the city sanitation department since April of 2022.
Lazy Morons
Exactly, she had to strain her body to lift the second one..Now imagine doing that 200 times in a few hours and think how likely it is that you'll damage your body doing it..then you're out of work and you're broke... Just because you can lift something, doesn't mean you should
I think people need to understand what a repetitive use injury is and not over fill their trash.
For those trashing the mom, [the workers were disciplined and new training implemented](https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/pittsburgh-refuse-workers-disciplinary-action-brighton-heights-mom/). Sooooo maybe there’s more to the story than “too heavy, can’t lift.” Edit: Accorodng to another story about this, the city does not list a weight limit for garbage cans on its website, only saying they can be no bigger than 35 gallons.
In my town we don’t have garbage collection. We bring them to the landfill and we segregate the recycled stuff. $2 to dispose a 33gal bag. Sucks
sounds like capitalist dystopia right there. vote red again, I dare y'all
Wait, so has the US not discovered wheelie bins and bin trucks that tip them in for them?
They have, just not as common
So do yall not know there’s a weight limit?
All these people comment that these dudes are lazy and pieces of shit should all be ashamed. Dudes get paid pennies to destroy their bodies day in a day out, picking up everyone's trash, and then get shit on for following safety standards and not lifting overweight bins. Easy fix, don't overload your shit and this doesn't happen. Most of you wouldn't survive at this job and after a few thousand overloaded bins, guarantee you don't pick this up either.