Friday, September 26, 2008

Street Cleaners Take A/The P*ss

Regular reader Kate writes:

A couple of weeks ago my mother and I spotted one of our TDC street cleaners in the shared communal alleyway opposite our place. Originally I thought he was clearing away some of the left over rubbish. But he did not, he unzipped his fly and pee'd.

He then made a great pretence of looking to collect rubbish and walked off. We had noted in the past he had some unusual habits like drinking leftover bottles of alcoholic liquid.

Anyway we did nothing and thought best to let it pass. Then earlier this week we passed a communal courtyard again to a block of flats. There was a dust-cart/trolley all on it's own, with a different road sweeper peeing up against the wall beneath one of the windows of the flat. This time mum told him that it was not acceptable, and he grumbled off saying: 'I don't bloody care'.

We phoned the TDC customer relations line to speak to the head of the waste disposal team, who had his voicemail on, so mum left a message. We waited all day for a return of our call. The very next day the original offender was back in the alleyway and we saw him yet again unzip and pee.

So in light of it all, you may have rubbish in your street, but at least your operatives aren't adding to it!

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Head of Waste Disposal"? Too good to be true.

Anonymous said...

Wed of haste espousal

Anonymous said...

Wonder if he has ever drunk from a bottle used in haste by his mate the day before

Anonymous said...

In days gone by, manual workers had to work under a foreman who would fire them if they didn't work hard enough. I have noticed that the cleaners do very little cleaning. They congregate on street corners drinking cans of Special Brew. I don't know about you but I would struggle to do hard manaual work after drinking. But where's the foreman? Is the "Head of Waste Disposal" the modern equivalent. What is the Head of Waste Disposal paid to do? Presumably he's too busy in meetings to check that anyone is actually doing what they are paid to do.

Anonymous said...

If anyone thinks anyone is managing anything at TDC they are very much mistaken. It is like the Politburo. As long as you tick the boxes and tow the Politburo line you may just get to keep your job. Dissent such as trying to point out that your staff are incompetent or incapable, or trying to use your initiative to improve things, is not tolerated. We are not even allowed to imagine that council taxpayers are unhappy with the service we provide. That would be considered dangerous talk around here. All the surveys we see say TDC is getting better and better.

I am not even allowed to access local blogs from my workstation they are so afraid it might shatter their happy delusions, so I am typing this from home.

Anonymous said...

When you have to go you have to go, as for dedication to the job pay more!

Nice to see the officer has time to work when not surfing the interweb

Anonymous said...

Most Jobs have a no drinking policy so why should this job be different?

derick97 said...

7:36
I feel so sorry for you sandy,
lets hope you manage to get ken too sort it out for you

Anonymous said...

'...We phoned the TDC customer relations line to speak to the head of the waste disposal team, who had his voicemail on, so mum left a message. We waited all day for a return of our call.'

Maybe he was on a days leave, maybe he was in a meeting. Why do you expect an instant response? Whoever head of waste disposal is would need to talk to the cleaner before replying to you. Why not complain properly? Write a letter and wait.

Anonymous said...

Often i used to watch the street cleaners of Margate drinking and smoking pot with the gangs of drunks and druggies that use to congregate on Hawley sq.

I took a photo of one of them and sent it to the council, and also of the drunks pissing up the trees (full frontal - lovely), I sent it to all the local bigwigs - shorlty the drunks were being constantly moved on and the sweepers started to do their jobs properly.

So why don't you take pictures of them and send them to the council. It may well stop the problem and keep the roads litter and urine free.

Anonymous said...

"Why do you expect an instant response? "
Epitomises the attitude of TDC to taxpayers.
I don't expect an instant response. I do expect to be able to contact someone and to be phoned back within a reasonable period of time (24 hours). If that's beyond your capabilities go and do something where customer service isn't important. I wouldn't be phoning you if you were doing your job in the first place.

Anonymous said...

tdcer needs to examine TDC's whistle blowing policy that they should have avaialble to staff and perhaps some whistle-blowing is in order? there would appear to be some people in Thanet who can give you some useful contacts in Maidstone.

Anonymous said...

If you write a letter to anyone at TDC you will wait a year for a response!

Anonymous said...

Thank god our street hasn't seen a cleaner in months.

Anonymous said...

Use the on line TDC complaint system as its the one thing that actually gets monitored by the TDC internal and external Audit system. May i suggest everyone uses this system as it will get results.

Anonymous said...

Yes, all a worry isn't it ?

What is getting tiddled (or poured) into the Isle's drainage system

worse than tiddles

cyclohexanone .... ??

Now who says Michael Child is just a scaremonger ?

Anonymous said...

Maybe they were out of cleaning fluid so needed to create some liquid to get rid of some tags? It could be that they were acting beyond the call of duty.

Talking about duty, I once saw a rather large, bearded, angry looking man doing a massive, steaming poo on the doorstep on an unnamed labour cllr.

It was the impressive political point I have ever seen made in Thanet.

Anonymous said...

What you must do is take a photo. It works wonders when they know you have a picture that could be in the local rag the following week.