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Good Morning,
Right now I am a programmer, which means that the only customers I deal with are internal. I have tales of the resident twelve o'clock flasher, but that will be in unsupportable.
Way back when, in my youth, I worked as a bottle sorter at a bottle depot. In Canada, or at least Alberta, we charge between $0.05 - $0.20 per can, bottle, tetra-pack, carton, or other drink container as a deposit. This deposit is refunded at the bottle depots. How does the depots profit? We sell the bottle back to the province with a mark up. For example, a bag that contains 1800 pop cans will cost us $90 but we will sell it for $120.
This job is dirty, smelling, and each worker looks like crap. We are treat like crap by a good number of people who bring in bottles.
The Bottle Drives
This sums up a good part of the angst of your average bottle sorter. A group, Boy Scouts, hockey, or some such, would canvas the neighborhoods for bottle and cans and bring them to a certain location, on site or off, and a group of the parents and children would sort them. I would be supervising them while taking care of the beer products.
The suckyness would come in two parts, first is quality control, second would be the Know-It-Alls.
Samples:
Soccer Mom: I know what I am doing this is my third bottle drive.
Me: That is fine and good, but Molson Excel doesn't count as beer, it is less then 0.5% alcohol, it is a near beer. It is considered pop.
Me: Who put the flat of Rainer (beer) in the pop bag? Okay. Put the flats besides the bag, I will put them in. *grumble*
Me: *looks at counter on bag, 45 flats, bag is full* *shakes head* I need to recount this.
KIA: No you don't it will cost us money. This is a donation.
Me: *raised eyebrow* Uh no. You will get more money, A third of a bag, infact.
It was horrible and thankless. You would have a group of people looking over your shoulder and questioning everything you did. I was good at it. Probably one of the best. In a average bottle drive, you would pay out around $600-$1200 dollars.
I am Udderly sure we can't take that.
Bottle Depots don't recycle for any green reason. We aren't doing it to save the world, we are doing it to turn a profit. We take anything you paid a deposit on. You don't pay deposit on milk containers. None what so ever.
The problem is they have the same shape/size as some soy milk and juice containers. Every now and again you would get someone who thought they were clever and remove the labels trying to get an extra nickel.
Me: I am sorry I can't take those. They are Milk products. There is a dump across the street if you don't want them, or if you want to recycle them, there is a bin at the grocery store.
SC: They aren't milk, they are soy milk. You can take them.
Me: *Pointing to the top of the container where 2% best before... no it is milk. Se that, it is only printed on milk containers. Soy doesn't contain that.
SC: But they are exactly like the soy.
me: Sorry. Can't do it. WE won't get any money for it.
After that they usually stuff them in the garbage container and leave.
Getting various different containers, food products, laundry detergent, was a common occurrence. People would get very indignant about it as well.
Hawkeye
These are the type of people that just stare at you. They are trying to keep track of what you are doing to make sure that you don't gyp them out of a nickel. We had nine categories of stuff on the bill, but everything was sorted into 20+ boxes. We would always be questioned when we were cleaning up the last of a order to make sure that we did it all. We would often keep stuff behind the counter so that we would send back a large number of boxes at one time to save room on the sheet. This would confuse a lot of people.
Home Brew
Everything goes into a garbage bag, and isn't emptied, and left in the Garage. What appears on the table is a gross and you expect me to put my hands in that? Really? There is mold floating on the top. Thanks a lot.
Entitlement Whores
This by far was the most common type of people. They would stock up for six months and then decide to come in. They would toss all their garbage bags on the top of the counter, filling it, and just stand back looking disgusted that they are even in that place. Once you start going through all their crap they just stand back looking like someone shat on the table. Then when you give the slip, they would argue that they had more cans then that. I looked at what I put on the rollers, and the amount was right.
The people who were most likely to do this were the ones that drove Mercedes and Jaguars.
Is it racist because that is how actually is?
Hands down and by far the worst orders always came from the Natives. You were most likely to find bottle filled with chew (read spittoon), bottle with dead critters in them, bottles that were shred/broken/disgusting. I honestly think they were the ones that kept he highways from the reserves to the city clean of bottles. It was horrible. I gaged the most from the smell of those orders. I swear, if there was a liquor store in the strip mall they would have walked right over.
Though the nicest and most well organized was often from the Asian community. They would wash them out and sort them. It was lovely. Made my life easy, and made the order go quickly.
My Eyes!
This is a quickie. I know it is a bottle depot, it is dirty and all, I don't expect you to wear your little black dress, or a business suit. But for love of all that is good, don't wear your daisy dukes, and tube top. Hoochie ware is not for the bottle depot.
Domestic Issues
Finding domestic waste in an order wasn't unusual. Sometimes it would be straws, or empty tins, or something minor like that. Some times it would be from a function whose garbage bags, and refundable bag were really close together, so you would get a large number of glasses, shrimp tails, and stuff like that. If we were lucky, it was still fresh. Sometimes we were.
There was one incident where I felt something squishy in the bottle of a bag. I opened it up, and it was a rotted/marinaded in putridfied beer/coke/etc, chicken carcass. The smell was horrible, though not the worst smell I had ever smelt there. Needless to say the customers quip :"How much do I get for that?" wasn't appreciated.
The worst smell ever!
Last one. I promise. As I have alluded to, there were some fantastic stenches there. We got to refuse soy containers that weren't washed out because they were a health risk. They were bad, worse then sour milk. Getting rancid juice/pop/beer wasn't really all that bad. Some of the domestic waste was awful. The dead mice in the 2L (1/2 gallon) pop bottles was interesting, as the occasional human waste.
The one that took the cake was this. Someone had half filled a bag with leaves, then used it for a recycling bag. They didn't empty out their pop/juice. It had sat over winter in a warm garage. The smell of it made me dry heave. That was the only time I game close to loosing my lunch. That would be the worse smell ever. Consider what I labeled as not all that bad, you can imagine, if you dare, what this smelt like. Eww!
More to come later.
Right now I am a programmer, which means that the only customers I deal with are internal. I have tales of the resident twelve o'clock flasher, but that will be in unsupportable.
Way back when, in my youth, I worked as a bottle sorter at a bottle depot. In Canada, or at least Alberta, we charge between $0.05 - $0.20 per can, bottle, tetra-pack, carton, or other drink container as a deposit. This deposit is refunded at the bottle depots. How does the depots profit? We sell the bottle back to the province with a mark up. For example, a bag that contains 1800 pop cans will cost us $90 but we will sell it for $120.
This job is dirty, smelling, and each worker looks like crap. We are treat like crap by a good number of people who bring in bottles.
The Bottle Drives
This sums up a good part of the angst of your average bottle sorter. A group, Boy Scouts, hockey, or some such, would canvas the neighborhoods for bottle and cans and bring them to a certain location, on site or off, and a group of the parents and children would sort them. I would be supervising them while taking care of the beer products.
The suckyness would come in two parts, first is quality control, second would be the Know-It-Alls.
Samples:
Soccer Mom: I know what I am doing this is my third bottle drive.
Me: That is fine and good, but Molson Excel doesn't count as beer, it is less then 0.5% alcohol, it is a near beer. It is considered pop.
Me: Who put the flat of Rainer (beer) in the pop bag? Okay. Put the flats besides the bag, I will put them in. *grumble*
Me: *looks at counter on bag, 45 flats, bag is full* *shakes head* I need to recount this.
KIA: No you don't it will cost us money. This is a donation.
Me: *raised eyebrow* Uh no. You will get more money, A third of a bag, infact.
It was horrible and thankless. You would have a group of people looking over your shoulder and questioning everything you did. I was good at it. Probably one of the best. In a average bottle drive, you would pay out around $600-$1200 dollars.
I am Udderly sure we can't take that.
Bottle Depots don't recycle for any green reason. We aren't doing it to save the world, we are doing it to turn a profit. We take anything you paid a deposit on. You don't pay deposit on milk containers. None what so ever.
The problem is they have the same shape/size as some soy milk and juice containers. Every now and again you would get someone who thought they were clever and remove the labels trying to get an extra nickel.
Me: I am sorry I can't take those. They are Milk products. There is a dump across the street if you don't want them, or if you want to recycle them, there is a bin at the grocery store.
SC: They aren't milk, they are soy milk. You can take them.
Me: *Pointing to the top of the container where 2% best before... no it is milk. Se that, it is only printed on milk containers. Soy doesn't contain that.
SC: But they are exactly like the soy.
me: Sorry. Can't do it. WE won't get any money for it.
After that they usually stuff them in the garbage container and leave.
Getting various different containers, food products, laundry detergent, was a common occurrence. People would get very indignant about it as well.
Hawkeye
These are the type of people that just stare at you. They are trying to keep track of what you are doing to make sure that you don't gyp them out of a nickel. We had nine categories of stuff on the bill, but everything was sorted into 20+ boxes. We would always be questioned when we were cleaning up the last of a order to make sure that we did it all. We would often keep stuff behind the counter so that we would send back a large number of boxes at one time to save room on the sheet. This would confuse a lot of people.
Home Brew
Everything goes into a garbage bag, and isn't emptied, and left in the Garage. What appears on the table is a gross and you expect me to put my hands in that? Really? There is mold floating on the top. Thanks a lot.
Entitlement Whores
This by far was the most common type of people. They would stock up for six months and then decide to come in. They would toss all their garbage bags on the top of the counter, filling it, and just stand back looking disgusted that they are even in that place. Once you start going through all their crap they just stand back looking like someone shat on the table. Then when you give the slip, they would argue that they had more cans then that. I looked at what I put on the rollers, and the amount was right.
The people who were most likely to do this were the ones that drove Mercedes and Jaguars.
Is it racist because that is how actually is?
Hands down and by far the worst orders always came from the Natives. You were most likely to find bottle filled with chew (read spittoon), bottle with dead critters in them, bottles that were shred/broken/disgusting. I honestly think they were the ones that kept he highways from the reserves to the city clean of bottles. It was horrible. I gaged the most from the smell of those orders. I swear, if there was a liquor store in the strip mall they would have walked right over.
Though the nicest and most well organized was often from the Asian community. They would wash them out and sort them. It was lovely. Made my life easy, and made the order go quickly.
My Eyes!
This is a quickie. I know it is a bottle depot, it is dirty and all, I don't expect you to wear your little black dress, or a business suit. But for love of all that is good, don't wear your daisy dukes, and tube top. Hoochie ware is not for the bottle depot.
Domestic Issues
Finding domestic waste in an order wasn't unusual. Sometimes it would be straws, or empty tins, or something minor like that. Some times it would be from a function whose garbage bags, and refundable bag were really close together, so you would get a large number of glasses, shrimp tails, and stuff like that. If we were lucky, it was still fresh. Sometimes we were.
There was one incident where I felt something squishy in the bottle of a bag. I opened it up, and it was a rotted/marinaded in putridfied beer/coke/etc, chicken carcass. The smell was horrible, though not the worst smell I had ever smelt there. Needless to say the customers quip :"How much do I get for that?" wasn't appreciated.
The worst smell ever!
Last one. I promise. As I have alluded to, there were some fantastic stenches there. We got to refuse soy containers that weren't washed out because they were a health risk. They were bad, worse then sour milk. Getting rancid juice/pop/beer wasn't really all that bad. Some of the domestic waste was awful. The dead mice in the 2L (1/2 gallon) pop bottles was interesting, as the occasional human waste.
The one that took the cake was this. Someone had half filled a bag with leaves, then used it for a recycling bag. They didn't empty out their pop/juice. It had sat over winter in a warm garage. The smell of it made me dry heave. That was the only time I game close to loosing my lunch. That would be the worse smell ever. Consider what I labeled as not all that bad, you can imagine, if you dare, what this smelt like. Eww!
More to come later.
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