1000 memories: doing the bins

In the summer of 1989 I was back at home from Hull, looking for work. The only job the temp agency could find for me was doing the bins in Wolverhampton. I cycled the ten miles or so to get to work by 8am. After clocking in and a cup of sweet tea with the men, I was assigned a truck. With three other blokes, we trawled around the unlovely suburbs of Wolverhampton. Some of the estates had received the new wheelie bins, which were easy to load – you simply slotted the bin onto a lift mechanism, which quickly sprung the bin up and tipped its contents into the back of the truck. On other estates, the old wide bins with corrugated sides were still in use. You had to lift the bin by its side handle onto your shoulder, and then tip it over. The done thing was to do two at once, with a bin on either shoulder. Sometimes these bins were overflowing, and some of the rubbish fell onto the overalls. It was well that the smell of the rubbish disappeared as your nose grew accustomed to the odour.

The 11am tea break was heavenly – already after two or three hours of continuous walking and lifting behind the grunting chewing truck, the body had started to tire. We’d sit in the cabin and sip more sugary tea from flasks and eat digestives. It was at these times I started to get to know my fellow workers. One of the men was a pigeon fancier; another was a horses man, dreaming of the bookies. They all talked in a thick Wolverhampton accent – similar to the Brummie accent but flatter, more chipped, less sing-songy. I found myself walking with one of the men quite frequently – his name was Jeff. He was an inspiration: a real nature lover. He noticed all the different plants and shrubs in people’s gardens, admiring the butterflies around a buddleah. He’d also be careful to store the scrap metal – from old bikes, poles and the like – on a shelf underneath the side of the truck. The men would sell it off at the end of the shift to a scrap dealer – an incentivised form of recycling the bosses probably turned a helpful blind eye to.

After three weeks, I had grown used to the job, and enjoyed it – learning to understand people’s lives by the shit they dumped. Sometimes, tipping the old bins, the most disgusting gunk would fall onto our overalls – rancid meat infested with maggots, sanitary towels, condoms. It’s funny how these things stopped being shocking or offensive after a while. There was colour, there was movement and there was all of humanity in the crap.

When my contract ended, I was sorry to leave. It was one stage in the way of learning an almost too simple truth: its not the job you do, it’s the way that you do it. Even lifting bins can lead to inner peace and happiness.