Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/05/coronavirus-rudeness.html
“So many idiots.”
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Up here in N Ca. there has been a real trend toward seeing more and more PPE trash in the gutter or on the street/sidewalk. I first starting seeing it in late Feb/early March, now it is the majority of the trash I see in the streets. It’s gross and a fomites vector for sure (heck if I’m going to pick it up unless it is in front of my actual house, sorry)
I started seeing older folks in the grocery store with PPE on in early March. At the time I wasn’t wearing a mask (by mid March we were sewing dozens of freesewing.org pattern masks). I always gave older shoppers wearing masks a thumbs up and smile/nod.
Now I check in with my older neighbors if they need a top up on anything when I go shopping (I wipe down or wash everything)
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True blooded assholes don’t need an excuse.
I avoid going out much, but I expect it’s not great around here either based on the normal crap that gets left around.
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To an asshole, everything is an excuse to be an asshole.
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I’ve seen a few, but I also live in a busy city. I’m willing to bet a lot of the masks were tossed with good intentions into a trash barrel, but not put into a trash bag. Then when the lid is open, or a trash truck comes by to empty them, the wind does the rest. The gloves aren’t quite as aerodynamic and just seem like jerkiness.
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I see discarded diapers on the ground all the time. This is weak sauce by comparison.
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It’s the new cigarette butt here in London
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Our grocery store parking lots are littered with discarded gloves and masks - there are dozens in the parking lot every time I go. And we live right by the coast so when it rains they are all going directly into the ocean
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I regard people who litter in much the way I would regard a person who regularly shits on the sidewalk not because they have no other option, but because they are too lazy to walk half a block to the nearest public restroom.
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Oh my god, so many gloves! They seem to be mostly singletons, and appear to be a glove that fell out of a pocket as someone was walking, which makes sense since our neighborhood is where all the hospital workers park and then walk to the hospital/clinic/nursing school across the freeway. I don’t blame tired nurses with bad scrub pockets. But I also don’t feel like picking the gloves up while on a casual walk, and I worry about them winding up in the Mississippi where the street drains in our neighborhood drain. I usually pick up trash any time I’m out for a walk, and don’t now, and need to come up with a plan so I can get back to that.
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I’ve seen a couple different discarded gloves in front of my house, just in the last couple of days; just found another one a few minutes ago. It’s really fucking annoying is what it is, especially as it’s part of a bigger issue. A bunch of people have taken to parking their cars in the street out front and living out of their cars during the day. They all go back and forth between cars and socialize in them, so they’re not remotely social distancing, and when they leave in the evening (or morning, sometimes, after hanging out all night), there’s piles of trash they’ve left behind for me to deal with. Among which is gloves, which doesn’t make much sense as they’re obviously not being careful in any other way.
I’m trying to figure out how to safely pick all this stuff up and throw it away without wasting any of my own gloves in the process…
(I really don’t understand what they’re doing. Either they’re all homeless and they usually have somewhere else to socialize/hang out during the day, or they live in a household with other people that has a “no visitors” policy right now - so they go and get exposed elsewhere. Either way, current events have become an excuse for them to be assholes.)
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I’m glad it’s not the new cigarette butt here in Paris or we’d be buried in discarded PPE…
Seriously, though, considering how much litter there normally is here I expected to see more PPE on the ground these last few weeks. There’s a definite increase in dog poop, though. I’m not sure if that’s because people feel less shame leaving it on an empty street or if it’s because the street cleaning crews have been coming around less often.
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Suburban Chicago town here, definitely seen this a few times. I think the logic is they don’t want it to come in to their house, so they just drop it on the ground. Extremely selfish, and disgusting. This is why we can’t have nice things.
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I’ve been thinking the same thing, and decided it’s time to get a good pair of those grabbers-on-a-stick.
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Meh. My eyes have just stopped seeing all the cigarette butts and soda cans and food wrappers that are on the ground. A few more months and I’ll stop noticing the masks and gloves.
Its sharing a store with people who still won’t wear a mask, that’s the hard part for me. I don’t feel like I should have to deal with that-or with those who insist on open carry firearms at the grocery store, for that matter. But if the store manager can’t exlude them, neither can I.
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Are people really throwing gloves and masks on the ground? How is it where you live?
I’ve seen a few here and there. I’m sure these are the same litterbugs, just with a new means to express their thoughtless jerkiness.
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It’s a really costly problem in my area. Where I see gloves most are in the parking lot of stores - had to visit Home Depot twice in the past two months for repairs needed before I moved. Gloves were everywhere. It really bugs me to see people throw trash out of their car windows while driving down the highway. It’s supposedly a $200 fine, but probably rarely enforced.
https://patch.com/pennsylvania/across-pa/litter-leaves-pa-69m-price-tag
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Wow. That’s worse than the condoms we’d see here.
If the store is in a building which is private property, they can be excluded.
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