The roadsweeper on the BBC Ident is using his broom upside down. I will never un-see this



The roadsweeper on the BBC Ident is using his broom upside down. I will never un-see this

by t0riaj

18 comments
  1. There are situations when it is useful to turn the broom over. If you have a very wet pile such as a pile of wet leaves or a large amount of rubbish to move.

    By the looks of things though he should be using the broom normaly here until there are more leaves collected together.

  2. Bloody Australian brooms coming over here stealing our brooms advertising roles, diversity casting at it’s worst

  3. the technique makes perfect sense if you notice what he’s sweeping: large, lightweight items of litter, not dust

    I used to work as a cleaner in a warehouse, we had very limited time to perform a sweep round of large areas so efficiency was the key; if you brush with bristles down they catch on any uneven surfacer and spring whatever you’ve just brushed everywhere, meaning you have to constantly go over what you’ve swept. if you sweep with the bristles facing forward it traps the rubbish and you can generally sweep up in a single continuous sweep, uses far less energy. with fine dust it’ll pass under no matter what orientation so jsut use it in the standard manner

    all the cleaners were in agreement on this, funnily enough it was the warehouse workers who had no cleaning experience that kept wasting their own time to stop and “correct us” on how to do our jobs

  4. It’s normally a tactic to shift wet leaves etc that the bristles aren’t tough enough to shift. Then flip it back over once dislodged. A scraper basically.

  5. It’s easier to push objects and the broom when the bristles are perpendicular to the ground. Using it the “right” way creates unnecessary resistance when all you need to do is move lose objects on the ground. It’s clearly doing its job.

  6. This is “the wrong way up” , if it was upside down he’d be gripping the bristles and jamming the handle into the pavement, which might have been a little more noticeable.

  7. It looks it’s had 17 heads and 14 new handles

    There is an old saying *“Look after your broom”*

  8. You can push the broom along like that without doing sweeping motion. It works best when there’s a large area to cover

  9. I’m really looking forward to the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon kicking in and OP and others noticing people doing this in real life everywhere they go for the next few months.

  10. OP: This person is using their broom wrong.

    Broom enthusiasts: You know nothing of our work.

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