Who They Are: Garbagemen are the damage control people of the New Media Caste System. Garbagemen do everything from rebooting the server in the middle of the night to setting up e-mail accounts to enduring the abuse of enraged and often clueless users. ("MY COMPUTER'S NOT WORKING!!!" ... "Are you sure it's turned on?" ... "HOW DO I DO THAT?!")

Where They Can Be Found: Wherever the immediate problem is -- be at the bottom of an entangled mass of cables, in the charred remains of a fried hard drive or at the other end of a sweaty receiver in overlit, overheated and downright hectic "Triage Wards," better known as "Tech Support."

Average Age: 23-25. Garbagemen, being "jacks-of-all-trades," usually move up to a higher level of Being within the New Media Caste System through quickie certification programs ("Java in a Day", "Networking w/Fries -- the Fast Food Method") or else get so burned out and disgusted with Technology that they apply their hands-on skills to bricklaying.

Diet: Soda and doughnuts for breakfast; soda and pizza for lunch; soda and Chinese food for dinner (Average daily carbonated drink intake: 500 ounces.)

Mating Habits: Garbagemen are not exactly the most rakish of NetSlaves and therefore do not have much of a social life, especially when it comes to wooing and cooing. (It's not that they hate people; it's that after dealing with such hostility from them all day, they just feel better when they're not around. ) Although the final statistics are not in as of press-time, it is safe to say, with a fair degree of accuracy, that Garbagemen are the least-sexed caste -- their romantic activities limited to checking out the voluptuous hind quarters of the new administrative assistant in Building G and drooling over running scenes involving the hot babe on Star Trek "Voyager." (frame-by-frame, slo-mo advancing through a videotaped copy of the latest episode being the preferred method)

Percentage of the NetSlave Population: 40%

Hours Worked Per Week: 60-?? (including nights, weekends or whatever odd hour the system chooses to blow up)

Average Income: $20-$25 per/hour (no overtime pay)

What They Do When the Boss Isn't Around: Downloading "skins" and files to their MP3 player; negotiating the 78th level of Ultima; venting their frustrations on the "alt.users.kill" newsgroup.

Last Book Read: Once tried to read "On the Road," but gave up on it due to lack of technical references. Now only reads trade magazines. ("Router Weekly" is a common favorite.)

Current Technical Fetishes: Advances in shoe telephony, Lynux-based search engines, the growing acceptance of the IOU D-COM CSU 2.06 protocol.

Career Aspirations: To telecommute from home in their underwear or as far away from operational problems as possible. ("Can you say, 'Tahiti'?")
 

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