Sticky Job: At one time, a person worked full time to remove discarded gum from New York City's Grand Central Station. Most nights, seven pounds of gum would be scraped off the floor and seats. On holidays, the amount jumped to 14 pounds daily.
My note: It isn't a "station" it is really a "terminal" - meaning it's at the end of the tracks / line.
Elaborate Exterior - See it says its a termainal
The Main Hall or otherwise known as the "Gum Dump"
Chewing gum has traditionally been made from chicle, but for reasons of economy and quality many modern chewing gums use rubber instead of chicle. So you can chew rubber. Just thought you might want to know that.
According to Wrigley's website, a stick of gum weighs 3 grams. So, follow along, the math is simple!
3 gram per stick = 0.1 ounce per stick, which gives us 10 sticks of gum in an ounce!
7 pounds of gum were scraped / cleaned up times 16 ounces per pound = 112 ounces scraped up daily.
1,120 sticks of gum left on the floors and seats each and every day and twice that on holidays. Simply delightful - we humans are a messy bunch.
8 comments:
Amen to that - we humans ARE a messy bunch. Just look along the roadsides at all of the fast food trash, soda and beer bottles and cans, etc.
Your blog says "At one time, a person worked fulltime..." What about now? At 7 - 14 lbs daily, I would think every surface of the terminal/station would soon be covered with gooey gum. Eeeeeek!
in its "heyday", Grand Central Terminal was the busiest train station in the country. In 1947, more than 65 million people traveled through Grand Central Terminal.
Today there are:
Trains
660 Metro-North commuter trains
Commuters - About 125,000 a day
Visitors - Over 500,000 a day!
Which works out to 228,125,000 people a year! I suspect they had to hire another person or three or four. :)
Imagine, a 5 person team of nothing but gum scrapers...
Laffs as I imagine little Johnny telling his mom that when he grows up he wants to be a Grand Central Terminal gum scraper.
Hmm... Well, I suppose there are worse jobs... LOL!
That's a lot of gum!
.oO(Hey Mommy? When I grow up I wanna be a gumbum!)
I think they have a special steam sprayer that gets the gum off. I watched Dirty Jobs one time, and there is a company that works in NYC doing just that, they clean up all the gum on the sidewalks.
Yikes, ChicagoLady, the gum stats were for just this one building - I can't imagine what its like on all the sidewalks in Manhattan!
Those folks from "Sex and the City" must be really good in walking around in such a way to avoid the gum without looking like they are!
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