Where I live, if there is a holiday on a Monday, garbage pick up is pushed back a day. If I had garbage pick up on Thursday, it would be on Friday. Does that mean the city workers have to work on Saturday to pick up garbage that was supposed to be picked up on Friday? If so, this means that they don’t really get a holiday because the have to work an extra day in the weeks where there is a holiday.
In my town, to make up for missed days, they send out extra trucks and the regular guys hustle a but harder. Let’s just say that on a normal day they work at what would best be described as a leisurely pace and on makeup days they actually hustle.
This doesn’t make sense to me. In the end they are not getting a holiday if they have to work twice as hard to make up for it.
By the way, in my town, the garbage collectors hustle like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like a race and they hardly have time to breathe.
Presumably, if the holiday is federal, they get overtime for coming in Saturday, and enough of them are willing to work for that.
OT is a municipal worker’s best friend.
I get paid to talk trash … 
Actually, I work for Oakleaf Waste Management, we are brokers. We interface between our customer base, and different vendors that remove trash, cardboard/recyclables and other functions.
Many communities don’t actually have their own garbage trucks any longer, they contract out [Waste Management, Onyx and Veolia are 3 of the biggest currently.]
Frequently the way it works is a certain percentage of the drivers actually do work on monday[the holiday] and they pick up essential accounts [restaraunts, hospitals/medical locations and certain industries.] These drivers will work their normal week and have saturday off. The balance of the drivers get monday off, and get paid holiday pay [typically basic normal pay for 8 hours] and work on saturday, but it frequently isn’t at overtime rates because many times overtime is calculated on hours actually worked per day and per week. Granted, it is an extra day’s pay, but it inst overtime. Those who are union, or in states with slightly different labor laws may vary=)
Oh, and for people who are interested, here we are
That’s been true at most jobs I’ve worked at – the work to be done doesn’t get any less just because one weekday was a holiday. When I came in after the holiday, there was still a week’s worth of work to get done…we just had 4 days instead of 5 to do it.
I still wouldn’t give up holidays, though. After a long weekend, it somehow seems the work is easier to do.
Here in Austin, they pick up trash Monday thru Friday, each section of the city on a different day.
In the past, on some (but not all) holidays, trash collection would slide to the next day, so for a Monday holiday, trash was picked up Tues thru Sat. For Thanksgiving week, pickups would be Mon thru Wed, and Friday and Sat.
They stopped doing this about two years ago. For one, what’s the difference if the workers have to work on Saturday instead of Monday? Also, it was confusing for the customers to know when the trash would slide and when it would be picked up on a normal schedule: New Years Day? Slide. MLK Day? Slide. President’s Day? Normal. Independence Day? Slide. Veteran’s Day? Normal. Even though the city put stickers on everyone’s trash cans to indicate which holidays would slide and which would be normal, I suspect a fair number of households missed their trash pickup for the week on many/most of the “normal” holidays.
The city still slides for holidays, but only Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day.
Here in Bay Area Waste Management country they only have two official “holidays” that result in late pickups. Christmas and New Year’s, IIRC.
I’ve always wondered about this type of job. Granted, it doesn’t look particularly fun, but sheesh, I think it’s the only job in the world (except landfill workers) where it’s okay to leave your mess on the street. My trash men clearly couldn’t care less when it comes to where exactly the contents of the containers end up. Every Monday afternoon after the pick-ups are complete (we have two companies, WM & CurbCycle) there’s assorted small pieces of trash throughout the neighborhood wafting all over the place. Somehow, I think this lack of effort on their part is just wrong. I end up picking up cig butts, wrappers, styrofoam containers, etc., from the curb and most if not all of it wasn’t mine to begin with. That makes me less than happy with my trash collectors.
Oh, and on another note - do you folks tip your trash men at Christmas? I’m thinking that these guys make considerably more $$ than I; am I expected to tip people who earn more than me in this situation? Advice??
My home town is divided into two parts: north and south. North pick up is Monday & Thursday, south Tuesday & Friday. On Wednesday the whole town has pick up of recyclables.
On holiday weeks they don’t pick up the recyclables. See how easy it is?
My home town used to “shift” in a little different way. When your pickup fell on a holiday, it would move a day later, as described by several posters above, but there was no Saturday pickup to reset the schedule; your pickup would stay on the shifted day until the next holiday, and then shift again. So you’d be on Monday until a holiday, then stay on Tuesday until another holiday, then Wednesday, and so on. The city mailed out schedules every year.
IIRC, our garbage men always worked fairly hard, unlike daffyduck’s. IIRC, they were given a route, went home whenever it was done, and still got paid for a full shift. I don’t think they got overtime if it was an unusually heavy day. Don’t mailmen have the same deal?
To a large extent the lack of effort is from the customers not waste management. You should bag your trash so little bits of paper can’t get blown out when the can is dumped into the truck.
Love this idea!!!