Okay, this has been well covered, but it is seriously so insane I feel the need to rehash it.
So, as is typical, different neighborhoods get their trash/recycling pickup different days of the week. If service is suspended on a day - such as a Federal Holiday - that day often gets skipped or postponed, which sucks, because you can easily get enough junkmail in a week to fill up your supercan, and it especially sucks if you find out (or remember) after you've hauled everything to the curb, but really, this is not the worst thing that can happen to your day.
Why are we talking about this, well, sadly the DC Department of Public Works, the very one that handles trash and recycling collection, had an incident last week, where, sadly, someone strode onto the lot and shot and killed a sanitation worker. Now, it seems to me that people should realize the following things:
This is a terrible tragedy.
The lot where this occurred is now a crime scene.
The employees who witnesses this are going to be shaken, upset and likely need to also be interviewed by police.
Rolling trash and recycling trucks across the scene of a crime is frowned on while the police investigate.
Asking employees, whether they witnessed their co-worker's death or just found out about it upon arrival to continue their day as normal, in insensitive and ill advised. (Do you really want grief stricken folks manevering large vehicles through your street?)
And yes, grief is a long process, certainly not done in a day, but waiting a day or even a week for your trash and recycling pickup is not really a hardship. Inconvenient, sure. But I also think we can agree this is not an ongoing issue, this is (hopefully) an unusual circumstance and we can all make it through. But apparently some neighbors on a local listserv thought differently. (Follow that link at your own risk. May cause anger or disbelief.)
h/t to DCist and TBD for the linkage.
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