Deon Coleman: Starting over, can by can.
Deon Coleman arrived at the Stop & Shop in the Hamden Plaza at 9 a.m. with 200 bottles. He cashed out with twelve bucks.
As he expected.
“Because it’s 5 cents for each bottle and not every bottle they take here,” Coleman said.
It wasn’t a lot for hours of work. These days every bit makes a difference as Coleman seeks to rebuild his life post-incarceration.
The 31-year-old discussed his daily bottle-collecting routine Tuesday on the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program.
“The most I’ve ever made is $65 and some change,” Coleman said.
Typically, his schedule consists of collecting and saving the bottles for three or four days before hitting the Stop & Shop.
His bottle routine starts off on Dixwell Avenue in New Haven, where he’s been couch-surfing, and continues into Hamden.
“I wake up around 5 a.m. or sometimes 6 a.m.,” Coleman said. “I start carrying them until I find a cart. Then when I find a cart, I place all of the cans in there.”
He generally arrives at the Stop & Shop around 9 a.m. when he cashes in.
He said that the “Word on the Street” is that there’s a lot of negativity circulating around the city.
Coleman, a lifelong Newhallville resident, has been looking for steadier work. He said his prison record, including a stint for a robbery he committed in his younger years, is holding him back from finding a job. His motivation to land one is his 1‑year-old son.
“We’re all in a drought right now. The best I could do is, do what I do,” Coleman said. “Keep making it the best that I can.”
He recently put in applications at Walmart and Taco Bell.He said he had a job at a labor and staffing company for a little over a year before he was fired last November.
“I was there for 13 months and I lost it because on their behalf, they said they paid me for a day that I didn’t work,” Coleman said. “I don’t understand how and so I ain’t fight it, I guess.”
In seeking employment, Coleman said, he encounters people who judge him for his prison record.
“It’s really hard,” Coleman said. “The majority of jobs that have been offered to me have been 50/50, because some of them require a license. I don’t have my [driver’s] license. And some of the places that I’ve been recommended to, they don’t like my record. That’s why I say there’s a lot of judgment out here.”
He said that when he was released from prison, New Haven’s Project MORE helped him out with bus passes and other basics. “I didn’t get too far with them because I started working after the fact and then I went MIA,” Coleman said.
It’s been two years now since Coleman was incarcerated at Robinson Correctional Institution in Enfield on an armed robbery charge dating to when he was 19.
“When I got home, I had my head on my shoulders and I knew what I wanted to do,” Coleman said. “My credit score is up, I’m working on myself, so I got it. I’ve gotta be content. I can’t complain about it.”
Coleman shows his tattoos on "Word on the Street."
“The jobs is picky with people. You need a whole bunch of certificates and vaccinations. so it’s like when you’ve got an opportunity, you gotta question where the opportunity is coming from. Nothing is just, ‘Take this job and work hard, and do what you’ve gotta do.’” Coleman has chosen not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 based on research he has done on the subject, he said.
For now, Coleman said, he gets by on food stamps, collecting bottles and doing tattoos for people. Growing up in a musical household also inspired him to work on R&B and rap.
His dream is to make a living being a tattoo artist. He has 37 tattoos all over his body, he said.
“I am my own motivation,” Coleman said. “And due to the fact that I have a son now, it’s more that I’m doing everything that I can for him.”
So he has no time for pride getting in the way of, say, collecting bottles and cans.
“I never feel embarrassed,” Coleman said. “I just want to be comfortable. A good job, a good apartment or house, and I just want to make sure my kid is straight. I don’t want him around this now.”
Click on the video to watch the full interview with Deon Coleman on the "Word on the Street' segment of WNHH FM's "LoveBabz LoveTalk" program.
The deposit amount should be raised to 25 cents. That amount would make it worthwhile for folks to actually redeem the bottles and cans. Moreover, if people the bottles and cans were returned to stores, they might actually be recycled, something not economic when towns like New Haven mix all their recyclables together in a single stream.