Thursday, November 29, 2007

Another volley fired in the garbage wars

My ongoing love-hate relationship with the local "waste management" company has been the topic of so many posts that I don't want to tackle the job of creating links to them. If you're all that curious, you can go to the blue bar at the top of this post, type the word "garbage" in the white box at the left, then click on "search blog." Otherwise, I'll just note here that the battle continues.

For more than ten years now, my neighbors and I have clustered our cans side by side at the curb. We've done this out of consideration for the trash collectors, thinking this arrangement would save them some steps. Apparently, the company has recently managed to eliminate a few jobs by mechanizing the physical process of picking up and dumping the cans into their truck. That's fine. Whatever. But if they wanted us customers to begin doing things differently, it would have been nice if they'd mentioned it up front.

Instead, they surprised us. I came home for lunch on trash-pick-up day and found this (click the photo to enlarge it):


I cropped off the company name and contact numbers just to be nice. And to not get sued.

As you can see, my neighbors and I unknowingly violated the "improperly placed cart" rule. And, in case the explanation on the card wasn't detailed enough, somebody kindly wrote a few words to explain it in more clearly: "Cart need to be divide apart." Well, all righty then. I get it now, and I will divide cart apart in future.

If you look closely at the photo, you'll see what appears to be a white circle at the upper left. The circle is actually a hole in the card. There's a slit from the edge of the card to the hole, so I assume the card was designed to hang from the garbage can handle. Instead, this one was lying in the driveway and another one just like it was in the middle of the front yard. After I traipsed through the wet grass to get the second card, I had to deliver it in person to the neighbors.

There's no telling what kind of problems we might have had if the card had blown away and the neighbors didn't know cart need to be divide apart. They might not understand why I put my garbage can off by itself on the other side of the driveway from theirs. They might think I believe my garbage isn't as stinky as theirs. Or they might decide I must have had a good reason for moving my can, which could lead them to put theirs right next to mine again, on the side of the driveway where we've never put them before.

We'd have the same problem all over again. Then the garbage picker-uppers would think we're really stupid.

14 comments:

  1. Your invitation to search your blog for garbage was irresistable, Velvet Sacks, and I had a good time dumpster diving into your archive.

    Not only were there some funny rants, but a song parody. Guess we have that habit in common.

    At our previous house the haulers changed over to the mechanical lifts and we soon learned that the carts must be faced a certain direction so the arm can grab them. If you do it wrong you may have another hangtag in your future.

    Annie at the Transplantable Rose

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  2. Annie in Austin, I'm glad you enjoyed the trash talk. Fortunately, I knew the importance of facing the cart in the right direction. That particular instruction is embossed on the lid!

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  3. I guess the driver doesn't want to have to get out of the truck to reposition the cart.

    To think that a feud could have erupted between you and the neighbors, with them thinking you don't want your can to associate with theirs anymore.

    --Ordinary Janet, whose Google password is being rejected.

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  4. well, I'll be. I had to sign up for Blogger blog in order to post comments on Blogger blogs. Blast Blogger blogspots! It's a conspiracy, a discrimination against other non-Blogger blogs. Blithering buzzards in a bag of blogspots.

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  5. But did they take the stuff? Or just leave the note? I'm curious b/c it could be one of those "in the time it takes to write the note" things.

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  6. MY garbage company is spiteful! When I left them a can that was "too heavy"...(mind you, I dragged it all the way to the steet and I'm a senior citizen)..they not only did not empty it, they left it, full, right in front of my mailbox so my postal carrier could not get to it and I didn't have mail that day. I WAS LIVID. When I called to complain I was told that because of liability, they can't lift a can that weighs more than 50 lbs. BIG BABIES.

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  7. Oh this is too funny. The things you have to go through to get your garbage picked up.

    My mom HATES the new mechanical picker uppers. She takes her garbage to my sister's now, claiming she can't push the big trash can. Actually, she's afraid of it...she fell into it while pushing it with the lid open when the carts first arrived. She went in head first and it took her some time to get out! LOL!

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  8. enjoyed my visit. i had not been by for a few days and i had some good posts to read.

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  9. Holly, that is a funny story! I bet she was embarrassed, wonder if anyone saw her?

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  10. I just came back here to read this again and what caught my eye this time and sorta got my blood heated is the "Oops" on the tag. Why "Oops"? Oops, you aren't playing by our rules? Oops, you forgot something??? Oops? Hmph.

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  11. Things aint wot they used to be, that's for sure!

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