Would You Clean Human Shit Off the Streets for $185K a Year?

San Francisco Chronicle – Mayor London Breed, who won her election largely on a promise to clean up the city, is stepping up efforts to scrub San Francisco’s streets. … The sight of human waste, discarded hypodermic needles, trash and general grime is nothing new to anyone walking in downtown, in the Mission District or in any of a number of other San Francisco neighborhoods these days.

And, as Breed notes, “We’re spending a lot of money to address this problem.”

No kidding.

San Francisco Public Works has a $72.5 million-a-year street cleaning budget — including spending $12 million a year on what essentially have become housekeeping services for homeless encampments.

The costs include $2.8 million for a Hot Spots crew to wash down the camps and remove any biohazards, $2.3 million for street steam cleaners, $3.1 million for the Pit Stop portable toilets, plus the new $830,977-a-year Poop Patrol to actively hunt down and clean up human waste.

(By the way, the poop patrolers earn $71,760 a year, which swells to $184,678 with mandated benefits.)

I’ve always believed that one of the greatest fallacies ever created – and one that gets repeated more than any lie I can think of – is the whole idea of “jobs Americans are no longer willing to do.” Because we are as hardworking and dedicated as any people on Earth. To be clear, I’m not. I sit on my ass all day and write/talk about stuff that amuses me for a living. And before that I had a state job. So that rules me out. But other Americans are. We (not me) will do any kind of hard, grueling, and yes,  disgusting job that needs to be done. For the right price.

I just had a friend of the family re-shingle my roof. In the heat of late July in Massachusetts. It took him two weeks of 8-hour days and I don’t think there was a day below 95 degrees or a more than a minute of shade the entire time. But he was well paid and very much appreciated. I once worked in a kitchen where a licensed plumber came in to fix an industrial garbage disposal, digging through all manners of decayed filth that Andy Dufresne would’ve made Andy Dufrense turn around and crawl right back into his bunk in Shawshank for the rest of his life. Civilization had been built through the hard work of such men since the times of the Romans building the first Aqueduct.

I mean, who hasn’t seen Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs? I remember one episode about a guy who started a business collecting leftovers from the buffets in Vegas and processing them into pig slop. It was stomach churning just watching it from my living room, without smelling the rotting salad remains and decomposing shrimp. But the man did it with dignity and the satisfaction of a job well done. Why? Because he was making a good, honest living providing for his family.

But I have to imagine being on the San Francisco Poop Patrol makes that job feel like being a rockstar. Homeless people shit is disgusting enough before they eat it. Fast food (when you can get it). Half-eaten trash can sandwiches. Discarded dumpster pizza. Now try running through the digestive tract of a bi-polar meth head who probably takes one dump a week and let me know how it smells. On second thought, do not let me know how it smells. Some degrees of awfulness should never be put into words.

So if ever there was evidence to back up my claim that we (again, I mean others) will do anything for the right price, it is this. Somebody will be willing to follow around the homeless, the indigent, the haunted and the hopeless with shovels and steam cleaners, picking up their feces and infected needles with pride that comes from a day’s labor. They will go home to their wives with their heads held high. Show up at Career Day at their kids’ school and say proudly say “I keep the streets clean for the San Francisco Poop Patrol.” And how much is that worth? $185,000 in salary and benefits.

So would I do it for that much? Definitely not. But I’d do it for something. I’m not sure what my exact figure would be. But somewhere north of 185,000 bucks, I would have a price that would allow me to spend 40 hours/week wading through the sidewalk dung of my city’s opiod addict population. Since I’ve boxed myself into a verbal corner and have to name an exact price, I’d put it at $750,000 per year. With a matching 401K, 6 weeks paid vacation and early retirement. Not a penny less.

Of course, it might be a little more cost effective for San Francisco to stop allowing people to live on the streets, shoot drugs in public and litter the sidewalks with their shit, piss and dirty needles. The way virtually every other city does. Then pay the Poopbuster guys a lot less to clean up regular litter and make the place more livable for the regular people who pay the taxes there. But that’s a ridiculous idea I guess.