Now judging by the title of this post, and supposing you know me, you might be asking yourself, what the hell does he [the royal I] have to do with sewage workers?
Thanks to a municipal staffing foul-up I spent the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of colleg working for the Chemung County sewer plant in Elmira, NY instead of the non-shit-handling highway Dep’t. In retrospect, the screw up was probably better for me, anyhow. The highway workers were a stocky, herculean bunch who din’t mind scalding asphalt and unrelenting, scorching summer sun. The shit plant workers on the other hand, were smaller guys with a e conniving Hobbesian shrewdness. They were good at not working much, pilfering power tools from the city, and listening to George Thorogood on the radio. I think I fit in better with them, even though I think George Thorogood is one of the worst musical acts of all time.
When I worked at the shit plant, I made $6.25 an hour before taxes. I remember my weekly paychecks being about $120 after Uncle Sam got his paws in my honey pot. Getting up at 5:30 am to go paint digesters, screw pumps, and trickling filters that each smell like one of the 5 different stages that decomposing feces goes through was not in the long-term cards for me. I think I made it about 2 months before I quit. And I only made it that long because my supervisor, Ryan, was one of my buddies from high school.
The point of this whole thing is that as bad as working at the Chemung County Sewer Plant is, it’s a cushy gig compared with what the New York City sewage workers go through. The New York Times ran a story today detailing the unconscionable treatment these guys have endured for the past 30 years. Basically, their wages have been as stagnant as a backed-up frat house toilet, while other municipal employees have ridden waves of raises over the years.
The article also taught me that during the 2003 blackout 30 million gallons of untreated sewage were discharged into the East River. My back yard, basically.
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