Was walking down the street the other day. Taking my Pfand to the shop to cash it in and go shopping. Broad day light, nice weather day after many ugly weather days so everyone is looking rather happy in general.
I pass by a local soccer club, lots of youths coming and going by bicycle, it must have been like 5 or 6 in the evening and it seems like one group just ended training and another is starting.
A sparkling white tesla drives up to the entrance of the club, while doing so: blocks the cycle path… was wondering why the kids had to be dropped off at the door with this nice weather.
Anyhow: car stops at the old clothes collection container, passenger gets out: it’s a fit young woman (driver is a young man), she walks to the trunk of the car, casually takes out bags of trash and puts them next to the “old clothes” container. It’s clearly not bags of old clothes, and she’s no putting it in the container but next to it. She takes out a broken vacuum cleaner: casually puts it behind the container, between the soccer club and a small parking lot and a park.
I tell her this is not the place for that and ask her if she can load it in to her car again. She acts like she’s from another planet and doesn’t understand me. She knows perfectly well. See the guilt in her face. She stays silent, rushes back to the car seat. They drive off, I give the middle finger and a “you’re a fucking wanker” sign. We meet again like 100 meters further where they have to stop for red traffic light. They try to ignore me and stare ahead, avoiding all eye contact. Not talking to eachother either. I don’t start yelling or hitting the car or whatever, because I didn’t wanna cause a scene at the youths/soccer club.
These were really very very “decent” and “normal” looking people. Young, wealthy, healthy, white, with a car. How hard is it to drive 4 minutes to the recycling plant at the edge of the city and dump your trash where it belongs for practically free?
“Normal” people who have dumped their trash where it doesn’t belong: WHY?
When I was homeless I littered in the city. Being homeless around poor people is like being poor around billionaires. You have no pride in keeping their lands pristine. The upper class hits you with their cars, block crosswalks, talk shit about you, provide no accommodations. The upper class acts like it’s a fucking pain to help you and they attribute every little problem to your class.
But also, the city installs trash cans spaced 15-20 minutes apart, while allowing garbage piles to stay on corners for days or weeks.
I think it was probably the third or fourth time a poor person nearly hit me and reacted angrily like I fucked up for using a crosswalk at 6am, that I went from keeping trash in my pockets and thinking ones actions reflects on them, to throwing trash on the ground and denting cars when they narrowly avoided hitting me. (As an aside, it sucks when you kick their side mirror and it just folds instead of breaking.)
when you’re in this situation, i can try to understand, tho i luckily have never experienced this. It sucks and I hope you’re better now. But these people i’m ranting about were clearly by far not poor or homeless or socially or economically on the fringes of society, that’s the part I find very hard to understand.