the recycle man and the public: an interaction gone wrong

Today, while waiting in bed to get up, I heard some screaming outside the window. Something like, “Can you move over? There’s plenty of room over here…” Getting up to check it out, I noticed a blue Honda mini-van behind the recycling truck going down my street. The recycling truck was picking up the blue bags on each side, as usual. She was asking the recycle truck to move so she could get by.

The recycle guy responded with something like “it’s not my fault, people aren’t supposed to park on both sides of the street”. She waited there for awhile, and I just went back to bed.

About five minutes later, I hear this constant horn sound–roughly two minutes’ worth. I got back up, and saw her hanging out the window, this time yelling, “I gotta catch a plane!” in-between her honks. The recycle guys didn’t respond, and kept throwing bags into the back of the truck. A minute or two went by, and finally she yelled, “Fuck you!” and did an eight-point turn-around, going back down the street the way she came. Others waited patiently behind her.

What’s so interesting about this? Well, besides just being plain rude, there was clearly a “me first” attitude here (no surprise there). A rational person would have turned down the alley roughly 10 feet away, and gone around the block to get past the blockage. Secondly, there was a lack of respect for the fact that the recycle guys have a job to do–they can’t pull over next to everybody’s house to pick up bags; it’d just take too long. They have hundreds of homes to stop at.

Maybe an isolated incident, but still an interesting glimpse into what is perhaps a daily occurrence for the public servants of Pittsburgh who are forced to deal with narrow streets.