Collectors
It ain't a glamorous job, but just imagine how the streets would smell if we didn't remove the waste!
Probably one of the least popular professions on all Shireon, the collectors of Thalor Alari keep the city streets clean from waste and garbage, among other things.
Function
The collectors do what their name implies - they collect. They mainly collect garbage and sanitary waste, but sometimes they'll have to remove things like dead animals. The collectors can be hired to transport dead people, too, if the city's inhabitants want to avoid the hassle of moving their dead from their hometo the funeral. In fact, the collectors will collect or transport most things ordinary people find disgusting, uncomfortable or mentally burdening.
History
The first collectors were criminals, hand-picked from the prisons. The criminal underground of Thalor Alari, mostly Eluin's Shadow, saw this as an opportunity to recruit new members and have someone to bring messages in and out of the prisons. The guards caught on eventually, and after about a century they started trying to shift the workforce from prison labor to actual hired employees. Besides, people who get paid to work tend to do a better job than those who doesn't get paid. A chief collector was hired to run the operation as an official city business.
The shift took a really long time. The chief collector quickly realized it was hard to get anyone to do the job at all, even when he raised the pay up from the base pay, which, to be fair, was as little as they were allowed to pay anyone for an actual job. After tripling the pay, however, they got one or two people who were interested. At quadruple pay they managed to get a workforce large enough to not be required to use prisoners, and to make sure there were enough collectors who actually stayed in the position for more than a year before quitting out of pure disgust.
Perception and Social Status
Collectors? No matter how important their function might be, I'd rather not be in the same room as one. Their stench is offensive to my nose.
Everyone knows that the collectors are important. Yet, as their job is to move refuse out of the city, it's pretty clear what they work with just from the smell. The higher up on the social scale someone is, the less happy they'll be by being close to a collector. A noble who choose a career as a collector will find themself almost shunned by their peers, which is one of the reasons why there are extremely few nobles among the collectors.
(To get any willing workers)
Comments