Our human ibises need break
THE world abounds with rotten jobs, but digging through bins in the dead of night in hope of amassing a 10c-acan fortune has to be on the bottom rung.
I once stood for hours on end in a shopping centre in Logan, Brisbane’s dodgy cousin, flogging fingernail buffers to poor souls trying to get their groceries and go home.
Salesmanship is by no means my forte, especially with something like a fingernail buffer, but some Israeli bloke promised me cash in hand with a tidy commission for every overpriced product I sold.
I hated myself, and the non-customers could see right through my insincere smile.
There was pity in their eyes and deadness in mine.
For two shifts I hassled uninterested women (and men as desperation kicked in) with an astonishing prevalence of fungal growth on their hook-nailed claws.
I felt like a thoroughly unaroused pervert.
“This thing is amazing,” I assured them through gritted teeth as shameful sweat pooled on my lip.
“Flop that lovely paw over here and I’ll buff you up to Level 100 on the specular reflection glossmeter.
“Ho ho, you will never need nail varnish again, big fulla.”
Worst of all, I was a car-less uni student and had to hop buses over an hour in each direction just to subject myself to this ritual humiliation.
I sold five buffers over about 16 hours before throwing in the towel and vowing never to visit that godforsaken shopping centre again.
Still, I would rather return to that foul career than hover around people’s stinking wheelie bins after midnight like some kind of deranged ibis.
How down on their luck must this Cairns family of nocturnal bin chickens be to resort to raiding recyclables?
Yesterday I spoke to an Edge Hill woman who got the fright of her life when two males, who she supposed were father and teenage son, scoured through the mostly-empty bin directly outside her window about 2.30am.
A white van idled out the front, presumably wasting more money in fuel than the bottle-and-can haul could possibly replace, as the duo skulked from bin to bin along the street.
Residents all over town, from Mount Sheridan to Mooroobool, have reported seeing a similar white van shuffling through the suburbs while these bottle bandits make their nightly sortie into the bins of Cairns. It is bloody weird. Straying from the kerb and into rubbish bins outside people’s bedroom windows is absolutely not on, but it is hard to get too upset if they stick to hitting streetside receptacles on bin night.
It may technically be illegal, but it is not the end of the world as long as they are quiet and clean up the mess.
Still, there is something decidedly off-putting about having another human ploughing through your filth while you sleep.
Here is a better option. I hope the bin bandits are listening.
Anybody who wants to make a few extra dollars for their kids or themselves should do a letterbox drop around their community, asking neighbours to leave a separate container next to their bins with only refundable containers inside.
Plenty of people would only be too happy to help out, but for God’s sake do not forget to pick them up or those poor philanthropists will have to wait another two weeks for the council to pick them up.
It will make things immensely easier and your kids will be less likely to cop a spike from a wayward hepatitis syringe or get gnawed on by rats.
I would be only too happy to leave them out.
Even with my prodigious beer abuse, I cannot bring myself to stockpile a whopping stack of tinnies, lug it to my boot and endure a long and boring wait at the refund centre for a measly 10c per unit.
Ask, and thou shalt receive.
STILL, THERE IS SOMETHING DECIDEDLY OFF-PUTTING ABOUT HAVING ANOTHER HUMAN PLOUGHING THROUGH YOUR FILTH WHILE YOU SLEEP