Robyn Nagle ends her week long diary as a saniation worker in training with a reality check:
Next week, when we report to our garages, the real work and the real weariness begin. I’ve been in collection trucks and on the streets with sanitation crews in various parts of New York City for the last two years, flinging trash and asking questions. I’m writing a book about the essential but unacknowledged labor of sanitation workers, so I know a little more about the job than most new hires. Today I lie on my cot, consider my classmates, and feel a disconcerting rush of concern for them. I want to warn these guys (and four girls) that when they start hefting their share of 10 or 13 or even 20 tons of trash a day, their bodies will ache in ways they never knew possible.
Nagle humbling respect for what she calls “the most important uniformed force on the streets of the city” is uplifting as she notes:
I know, too, that sanitation workers will learn to read a neighborhood more closely than the most sophisticated sociologist just by observing what it discards, but no one will care about their insights. In fact, no one will care much about them at all, and I want to shield them from this insult most of all
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The diary appeared at Slate.com.