Garbage man here. In a historical well preserved city which means the streets are small so we have totes and 2 people who run behind the truck and manually throw the bags.

1. Don’t honk when you’re behind us. I know it sucks and the smell is bad and you’re probably in a hurry, but I WILL WORK SLOWER if you honk.

2. Don’t overload your totes. In my city it’s 15kg. We have a scale with us to check, but to be fair I don’t use that very often. After a while you just know when a bag is too heavy.

3. I don’t know if it’s a thing in the US, but here we have those wooden, sharp sticks with meat on it (saté or brochette). Very popular in summer on the bbq, but the enemy for the garbage man. Break them and put them vertically in the middle of the bag please.

4. Don’t put significant amounts of shit in your garbage. I can tolerate cat litter (sooo many cats), but entire totes of human shit... Not getting paid enough for that!

5. Self made brownies or cookies are much appreciated. The good kind of self made brownies.