What a bunch of garbage!
An elderly Manhattan woman living on Social Security was slapped with a $100 ticket — for throwing away a newspaper in a city trash can.
Delia Gluckin, 80, tossed the paper, which was in a white plastic shopping bag, in a bin right outside her Inwood apartment building Saturday morning and was immediately ambushed by a Department of Sanitation agent wielding a handheld computerized ticket book.
“I was walking to take the subway downtown and dropped it in a trash can, and this lady in a blue uniform ran up to me,” Gluckin told The Post.
“I thought she was going to ask for directions. She said, ‘You just dropped garbage in there,’ ” according to Gluckin.
“I said, ‘I didn’t, it was just a newspaper,’ and I offered to take it out,” said Gluckin, who had bought the Post at a deli and then tossed it after reading it.
Sanit cop Kathy Castro wrote Gluckin the summons for putting “improper refuse” in a city litter basket.
“She acted as if I had a committed a crime,” said the outraged octogenarian.
“I said, ‘Look, lady, I’m a senior citizen . . . I’ll just take it back.’ I even said to her, ‘Am I your first customer of the day? I really felt intimidated . . . I have a feeling she just wanted to make her quota.”
The green mesh can, at the corner of Beak Street and Seaman Avenue, is marked with signs that read “litter only” and “no household trash.”
In a statement, Castro — who contended she was in plain clothes and not a uniform — said she opened the bag and found it “contained newspapers and other household garbage.”
City rules prohibit tossing household waste in city litter bins.
“Too many apartment dwellers use the corner litter basket as their personal household dumping site,” said a sanitation spokesman. He said the department stands by its agent’s account but said Gluckin “has every right to contest it.”
Gluckin said there “may have been an empty canola oil bottle” in the bag but insisted “there were no other items — she is wrong! I have trash chute on my floor that goes to the basement, why would I walk my trash out to the sidewalk?”
The senior, who lives on a fixed income, said she’ll fight the fine, and has been inundated with offers to help pay it.
“I think the city is being horrendous. I was never in trouble with anybody,” said Gluckin. She has 10 days to pay up, or the fine jumps to $300.