Cents on the weekends

If you're perceptive, you'll see them on the weekends digging through the trashbins, hoping to be the first to collect the empty beer bottles and cans that accumulated during the previous day and night's worth of partying. They're the ones we see on a daily basis strolling through our halls. They clean up our ivy-league shit and piss stains off the toilets, each and every one. They empty out trashcans with the vomit of our irresponsible indulgence, day to day.

I spent two years in oblivion, thinking if I ever saw one that they were just paid to come in on the weekends and do a little service, emptying our recycling and all. In all honesty, I can't even say I specifically remember noticing at all. It wasn't until a few weeks ago that the guy who cleans our floor told me on his way out, "save your bottles for me from over the weekend, and hey, tell your friends!"

I stared and listened, incredulous but attempting a polite interest as he continued. "Yeah, last weekend I came in, picked up your cans and bottles, turned 'em in and got $22. Five cents a bottle, that's a whole lot of them." I blinked, processing. He does what?!? "But you gotta save them for me or else the other service staff will come in and grab 'em before me. If I could get that again it would be awesome. 22 bucks man, that bought me a good night out with the guys and a couple beers. Only way I could get away from the wife. Man, she drives me nuts sometimes!"

After that I started to notice. One weekend I saw the round, short guy who always wears that red hat and has a beard that looks like he hasn't shaved in years carrying a bag almost his height and width full of our recyclables. I also noticed the skinny, emaciated lady with limp, sparse hair run through the hall on our floor with a few bottles she gleaned from our trash room one Saturday. Then, a weekend or two later, I saw another lady dressed in her service uniform standing outside in the frigid northeastern cold digging through a smelly metallic dumpster, with a few bags plopped beside her feet.

Does anyone else understand that these people are not simply doing their job? The Monday through Friday uniform they don on the weekends betrays the true reason they crawl through campus on the days they're not paid to come in. They come hoping to supplement what their Monday through Friday jobs at an institution that houses tomorrow's CEOs, lawyers, surgeons and diplomats fails to provide them. They clean our nasty shit for a living and on weekends they dig through our shit to find enough bottles and cans to trade in for a dollar or two. What we consume, toss, and deem useless makes up their only chance to live a little, treat themselves just a little. That's right... Is that right?

We don't mind them emptying out our trash on Sundays, we just figure it's what they're paid to do.