So street people that scrounge cans and bottles for beer money work hard? What time do they have to punch in on their shift? Do their targets of numbers of cans and bottles change every day, and do they have a specific area they have to cover? Do they rinse out the containers or just feed them into the machine dirty? I would say that the crew on the truck that picks up municipal recycling works hard, particularly because of the sheer amount of containers they are physically moving, which is thousands of times what someone can get on a stolen shopping cart. I would define hard work as work that has to follow very specific directions, usually provided by someone else, and is physically and/or mentally demanding. Someone that spends an hour doing cardio at the gym expends a lot of energy, but that is not considered "work".

If you work hard you still may not get much out of it, but if you don't work hard you will definitely not get much. Even the homeless know that.