For better or worse, many of us derive a good amount of our self-worth from our jobs.
After all, depressingly, we spend most of our waking lives working! It makes sense that we'd want to find some meaning in it.
Just ask any kid what they want to be when they grow up and you'll hear about prestigious or heroic professions like doctor, firefighter, actor, or, just maybe, famous TikToker.
But how about garbage collector?
Probably not one of the top choices.
A 24-year-old garbage man recently took to Reddit with a conundrum: He likes the work and the pay, but he can't help but feel embarrassed telling people what he does for a living.
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash
"I’m a 24yr old guy ... I’ve been a garbage man for the past 2 years and I feel a sense of embarrassment doing it," OP wrote.
"It’s a solid job, great benefits and I currently make $24 an hour. I could see myself doing this job for a long time. However whenever someone asks me what I do for work I feel embarrassed. Should I feel this way?"
There's definitely a stigma around a lot of blue collar work, especially "dirty" work like, well, anything to do with sanitation.
The comments were overwhelmingly positive, but not all in the way you might expect.
The extremely clear sentiment at the very top of the thread was this:
Garbage collectors are essential works, and OP should be extremely proud of both his employment and of his service to his community.
"You shouldn't be ashamed of having an honest job," said u/nottoomanysalad
"Garbage men are far more valuable than most jobs out there and I'll die on this hill. If I were running a country the people I'd hire immediately after a proper cabinet were sanitation workers," wrote u/Reddit-Lurker-
"Dude, I work for a health insurance company that makes it's profit by denying people life saving care. I'm ashamed of my job. You have nothing to be embarrassed about, you do honest work that benefits your community. I would love to tell people I worked in sanitation," said u/beefymennonite.
A few commenters playfully teased the original poster, too:
"not sure why you'd be embarrassed about being an Excess Material Logistics Manager," wrote u/Correct-Sometimes
Photo by Nathan Cima on Unsplash
Others brought up a really good point: If any job could be future proof, garbage collector might be the one.
"The good thing is your job won't be off shored. The over 60,000 people in tech who got laid off in tech this year wish their former jobs could not be off shored," wrote u/DougWong1980.
TechCrunch has the number of tech layoffs in 2024 at more like 130,000 — yikes.
Engineers and programmers quickly chimed in to say that, yes, finding and holding a "cool" job in tech is a nightmare these days.
Finding steady, stable, non-office work that you enjoy and that pays enough, even if it's "embarrassing"? That's the smart move these days.
Big-picture-wise, the tide is turning on so-called blue collar jobs. More and more young people are choosing trade schools or going right into the work force over spending six figures on a college education.
Being a plumber or electrician, for example, can be incredibly lucrative, and those trades won't be outsourced or given over to ChatGPT any time soon.
Working in sanitation isn't so different. It's stable, essential work — and it's harder to land a job there than you might think, especially in big cities where openings can get seriously competitive.
Indeed pegs the average garbage collector salary at about $52,000 per year.
That's not big money, but again, it's reliable, comes with government benefits, and won't have you answering emails at midnight on a Saturday.
Younger generations are looking for something different out of their careers. Hopefully one day soon we won't even have to ask whether being a garbage collector should be embarrassing — we'll all know that the answer is a resounding No.
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A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
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An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.