In the darkness of the sewer, Barrios could see nothing. He doesn't bother to carry a light, because it would be of no use in the thick waters. He inched forward in his bright red suit, an airtight model that sealed away the disease all around him, feeling his way with his rubber gloves, listening in the darkness. He could hear the powerful, whirring pump that pushed the flow through a six-foot-wide pipe. His mission was to clear away the debris around it so it wouldn't back up into city streets. Thousands of homes have been flooded in the past by dammed-up wastewater.
"I've got it!" Barrios said as he pushed away bottles, plastic bags and other junk he could not identify by touch. At least there were no human bodies today, like the two he found floating by recently.
your next scuba vacation: the Mexico City sewer system!
Divers keep vast, smelly sewers flowing:
Tags: doomed, grim meathook future, poop
Current Music: The Sisters of Mercy -- Torch ♬
7 Responses:
Hah!: Two years ago, he gave up a career in accounting for this which, he noted, says something about accounting.
I think it's in India where one of the Untouchable castes has to clean out sewers by hand, with no protective gear. Yum.
Not just wby hand. There are sewage workers who strip to their jockeys and dive into the sewers to unblock the clogs. Not a piece of protective clothing on them. They don't live very long because of the exposure to the chemical and biological wastes in the sewers. Read more here.
And I thought normal hyperlinking was lazy...
I'm going to Mexico City in November, although not to job hunt.
I think I'd rather do what he does than my own job. It almost sounds like fun.
The appropriate quote would've been:
...Just sayin'.