Strange research

It's amazing the things writers have to research sometimes.

I wanted to send a story off today - just a little flash thing about a vampire. But I realised on reading it through that I'd used very British language and the story was heading for an American market, and one or two terms in particular would have been baffling. And why baffle a potential publisher before they've even finished reading the story? They've got more than enough reasons to reject it without adding to them....

The worst offender this time was 'bin men'. In the UK, they're the people who come round once a week (or more likely once a fortnight as councils try to force everyone to recycle more...) and empty your dustbins (trash cans). I googled and googled but although I discovered a long list of regulations on the weekly trash collection in Philadelphia, nowhere could I find out what the collectors were called. I tried 'garbage collector' and 'trash collector', but both of those turned up pages about clean-up software for computers, and nothing about real life as opposed to virtual trash.

In the end, I put a call out on my LJ and a very helpful person stopped by and told me - it's 'garbage men'. The story has now been tweaked and sent off, and I'm delighted that I haven't bewildered the editor even more than usual.

But what's the oddest thing you've ever had to research?