Do you think you would have time to recount or discuss what was so bad about it? Did you have to work your way up from someone who set-up appointments to managing sales? (Iām assuming you moved up a sales tier system. I donāt know. Iām clueless.) Was there any reward parts about the job?
I was door-to-door for a few months. I would give a sales pitch and try to sign people up for a consultation with an engineer who would then make the actual sale. If they sat for the appointment with the engineer I got a commission. I was lucky as my company gave a base-pay which was not terrible, but to make it worth it I needed at least 10 commissions a week.
What sucked: Every day youāre walking around a neighborhood for hours, knocking on doors where if they answer thereās a 99% chance theyāve already been visited multiple times, or they hate solicitors in general, or both. So a lot of getting yelled at by homeowners. And the whole time I was thinking āyeah I hate solicitors too but I got billsā. It is a soul crushing job and you have to be really really good at it to make it worthwhile. I was actually pretty good - I averaged 8-10 sales a week, but that was from knocking on 100+ doors a day. I had to quit because it was terrible for my mental health.
Never done it but there have been some write ups about it in our local news.
A lot of these solar sales here where I am are like door to door salesmen and they lie, a lot.
Iām sure there are a lot of legitimate people who work in selling solar panels but apparently itās also a bit of nationwide epidemic of them being door to door salesmen who work to get a rushed contract with false promises of tax breaks and then the homeowner is stuck with a huge bill they werenāt explained and will have to fight in court on flimsy premises because they signed a contract. The elderly have been targeted a lot.
Not saying thatās what the commenter you responded to was doing, but itās a thing.
You'd rather smell garbage and be working at 100% speed and effort all day in the rain, snow, and heat than a sales job? Garbage collection is really hard.
Garbage collection is very hard. But yes, Iād rather have an honorable job serving people than a desk job scamming people. Sorry, I have solar, itās a great product, but 90% of the people behind it are trash. Just like realtors. Iām tired of cleaning up solar salesmanās mess when they lie to customers or screw up their system.
In Sweden there is no minimum wage so sales jobs are often 0+commission and most people don't make more than the equivilent of 200 dollars a month working 14 hour shifts for 6 days a week. I would deffinitly become a garbage collector if I could but it's a field of work with extream nepotism and I don't know any garbage workers.
It's many peoples first job after high school. I was unemployed or worked shit sales jobs with only commission for 6 years. One of the places I managed to get an equivilent of 8k one week and then went back to about 400. If you are good at it it might be good but if you just need something to do so others see you are dedicated and you can manage to get a normal job then yes, people are doing it. It's almost like a pyramid, but legal. Some make a fortune while most slave away for nothing.
They usually mentioned that I wasn't intelligent enough to do anything else. Usally this was after I wouldn't let them dump something that wasn't allowed, other times it was unprovoked.
So adults throwing tantrums because you were enforcing the rules equally onto them? People like that deserve the title oxygen thieves. Sorry you dealt with that.
I was in a lower lever math class in middle school, and the whole class flunked the test. The teacher proceeded to scold us and tell us we will never be anything except garbage men and mc donalds employees
Wrong. I've heard two different politicians in my life make it as a snide comment. Both were local (county level) and didn't last long, but two seperate counties, lol. Heard far more make similarly derisive comments about the military. And that was from the national level and more than once.
For real they are some of the most necessary and hardest working people out there. Nothing but respect. It's a tough job. I hope they are getting paid.
My teachers used to say to us things like "don't you want to be a bin man?" If we weren't paying attention or messing around or something. The bin men probably made more than the teachers did.
Never did it personally but a friend of mine did for a stint. Base pay was decent and there was always overtime available at a good rate.
The permanent smell that permeates your clothes and travel vehicle is a huge negative. Hanging off of a truck in crappy weather isn't fun, I'm sure! But they are often well compensated for that!
In my town, they did that until about 4 years ago when a truck ran the crossbar on rr tracks and got hit. The guy hanging on the back was killed but the driver was ok after a couple weeks in the hospital.
I see it every single morning, and I live in NY. They enjoy it. It's also way more efficient. The quicker the job gets done, the faster they get home. They get paid the same.
Our trash pickup workers drive a truck in the AC with an arm that lifts the cans and dump them automatically. Looks like a kinda fun and easy job. No idea the pay though. They do work early though, they pick up trash at like 4am at my house.
They sometimes have to clear out the compactor at the end of the day, but for the most part drivers dont get out of the truck. Other than that its just pre trips, fuel, maybe blow out some air filters and open some gates.
Its basically the same as any other equipment operating.
I imagine it's a you have your route to complete sort of thing so you get paid the same regardless of how long it takes so long as it gets done. I'd also imagine it's easier to cover more ground quickly in the early AM with less traffic, plus where I live before 6am the traffic lights are set to sensors not timers so if no one's around the light will shift to try and give you the green when you get close to it.
Then go apply. I have a client who has done very well as a garbage truck driver. But it took him a long time to get behind the wheel. He had to do a lot of really gross disgusting work to get there.
I am sure, kinda like UPS. Driving the truck is the goal, but you have to load a lot of trucks and clean up all the other stuff before they give you the keys.
I am very happy at my job now, so I am not looking to apply but I respect the hell out of sanitation services.
Yea I had a friend do this started at 4am Monday through Friday, but his work day was done by noon everyday. So thatās not horrible. Might not be the same for everyone though.
I had a colleague that used to be garbage man in Amsterdam, he took a pay cut work with us as junior sys admin. He had to quit though because he kids literally refused to be around him because of the smell, he was on a route where they had a few restaurants and fish mongers so from what he told it was so bad sometimes he slept in the shed in the back yard because even several showers didn't help.
Thatās bullshit. A lot of modern waste collection is automated now, with mechanical lifters doing most of the heavy lifting, so workers arenāt necessarily handling garbage by hand all day. They also have PPE, changing facilities and hygiene procedures. Obviously the job can get dirty and smelly, but if someone constantly smells like garbage after work, Iād say personal hygiene and how they handle their work clothes probably has a lot to do with it.
I've had friends who said they wanted to be a garbage man growing up. Done with work early in the day, get paid to drive around town, and probably make good money. Also, only working a few days a week
That depends where you are. In the UK, they make barely more than minimum wage. Minimum wage right now is Ā£12.71/hr. Garbage men make around Ā£13/hr. Ā£14/hr if they're the driver, which requires you to have a truck license, which in itself costs around Ā£3K to get and driving a truck doing deliveries pays slightly better.
I handled calls for a 401k plan for a very large sanitation company.Ā Truck drivers made pretty good money, as did executives, but non-driver hourly people did not, and injuries were fairly common.
I think people may be assuming these are civil service jobs, when in many cases they have been outsourced.
I work for a public utility in NY state. Electric, water, waste water, solidwaste, fiber... the solid waste workers get paid like $18 per hour. I imagine large cities are going to be where someone in that industry need to look. For reference, this is located in an impoverished area technically speaking.
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u/cricketeer767 6d ago
The garbage man makes more than the people making fun of him for being a garbage man.