Something I have never understood

[dreamshark]

A familiar email from the City of Minneapolis:  "Your regular collection day is Friday, however collection will be delayed one day due to the Labor Day holiday. Please remember to place your garbage, organics and recycling carts and up to two large items at the alley or curb line by 6 a.m. on Saturday."

How does that work, exactly? Presumably, people whose collection day is usually Monday will have their garbage picked up on Tuesday instead. Tuesday moves to Wednesday, and so on. But next week everybody's collection days return to normal. How??? How do they catch up? Why doesn't every holiday permanently shift my garbage service one day forward until eventually it works its way back to Friday? 

Comments

[sraun]

Is Saturday a normal garbage collection day? Maybe all the collection crews end up working mandatory overtime to get things back on schedule.

[redbird]

I think they move the normal Friday pickups to Saturday, and the trash collectors get overtime pay. That works as long as the normal schedule is that all pickups are on weekdays, which I think is standard if not universal.

I'm not sure what they do if there's heavy enough snow from one storm that it takes three days to clear.

[dreamshark]

If they have to work on Saturday to make up for having a "holiday" on Monday, that's not much of a holiday, even if they do get paid a higher rate for it.

[sraun]

They probably get paid five days at regular rate, and one day at overtime. They at least get Monday off to celebrate with family and/or friends. It's also possible that they end up not needing the full crew for the Saturday pick-up, so some people might not have to work that day.

[quadong]

I have also wondered that. In St Charles garbage is picked up on Monday on one side of the river, and Tuesday on the other. Except when Monday is a holiday, and then it's Tuesday and Wednesday. Why not just always do it Tuesday and Wednesday? I guess the answer is that the garbage gets taken by a huge company that also serves lots of other places, plus what Scott said.