New York City Hall has a funny idea of what a “dream job” is. The “city that never sleeps” is indeed offering a job as the “bloodthirsty” head of a town hall service dedicated to the “slaughter” of millions of rats in the megalopolis, for 120,000 to 170,000 dollars a year.
The position of “Rodent Reduction Program Manager” attached to the New York City Council can become “your dream job”, provided you devote yourself to it “24 hours a day, 7 days a week with tenacity and sense of staging”, boasts a very serious announcement published this Wednesday by Mayor Eric Adams, a former tough policeman who wants to fight against the scourges of his city. “There is NOTHING that I hate so much as rats”, he hammered Thursday on Twitter, promising his fellow citizens: “Your dream job awaits you”.
You must have “a killer instinct”
According to a tenacious urban legend, there are as many rats in New York as there are people, or nearly nine million. The famous English novelist Charles Dickens had already complained about it when visiting the city in 1842.
Almost two centuries later, “the ideal candidate” for Wednesday’s job offer “must be ultra-motivated, quite bloodthirsty, determined to examine all solutions from various angles, in particular to improve operational efficiency, data collection, technological innovation, waste management and the large-scale culling” of these pests that proliferate in the streets and subways of New York.
The booming mayor of New York, a centre-right African-American Democratic elected official, offers an annual salary of $120,000 to $170,000 to “achieve the impossible” with a “virulent aversion to vermin” and “a reputation for ringworm.” “. The town hall also requires a bachelor’s degree, a first experience in urban planning and project management, and above all “determination and a killer instinct to fight the real enemy”.
Hunts with dogs to kill rats
Like many American cities, New York is also famous for its rodents. Especially because of the garbage bags left by residents and traders on the sidewalks, without containers.
Spending millions of dollars, the municipality regularly tries new techniques to eradicate rats, such as dry ice or alcohol baths: this was presented in 2019, during an unsustainable demonstration, the mayor back in the days of the Brooklyn borough…namely Eric Adams himself.
In 2021, after the pandemic, a private association of Manhattan residents called RATS organized hunts with their dogs to kill as many rats as possible.