Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Garbage wars

"Aurora looking down at me with disdain"
This is where she spends most of her time. We have this ginormous monitor, and she sleeps on top of it most of the day, especially when I'm working.

Yesterday I got a nasty note from my garbage man. LOTS of exclamation points, and they weren't just regular exclamation points, they were the ones with little 'x's instead of dots at the bottom. He writes, "TOO MUCH WASTE!! You have had 4-5 weeks of too much and next week I will NOT pick it up!!!!!" And the paper was this bright orange.

I am totally aware there is too much out there. We are remodeling our house. There's trash. Lots of it. So I called the waste 'management' company a few weeks ago (probably 4-5 weeks ago, according to Mr. Garbage's note) and ASKED them if I needed to rent a dumpster as we'd be having an excessive amount of waste in the next few weeks. The woman on the other line looked up my address and said to me, "Ma'am, we are showing here you have UNLIMITED pickup, so no problem."

Okay, see my point here? I was MISLED by the MAN. Or, the woman.

I called them up yesterday and told them about the note. She asked for my address, I gave it to her.

This is where I turn into 'Elaine' from Seinfeld. Apparently, my file has been marked "DIFFICULT."

"Uh, yes the driver said you've been leaving too much out for weeks."

"But I called you guys to make sure that was okay, and I was told it WAS."

"The driver has also said you left out a toilet?????" (now the sarcasm is dribbling through her voice)

"No, I don't recall that..."

"The driver said you also left a bicycle, a hot air balloon, a Chevy Malibu and the Elephant Man's bones????"

"uh....no....I...."

(wait a second, why am I on the defensive here? I AM THE CUSTOMER!")

"LOOK. I called your place on the very premise that I didn't want to look like an ASS when we left all this stuff out there, so if this guy had a problem with it, why didn't he tell me this 5 weeks ago instead of leaving this nasty little note with the 'x's instead of dots on his exclamations???"

"Hmm. The driver also said you left a Mack truck, a float from the Macy's Parade and the set from the Merv Griffin show???"

"oh NEVER MIND!"

Well, after all that I have to pay them extra for a 'special' pick up to pick up what is left. I have a friend who is a garbage man, and he tells me of all the things he finds in there, so you KNOW that guy has gotten some treasures out of my TRASH, yet I bet he had a nice little conversation with this garbage phone lady yesterday about ME.

And I always make cookies for him for Christmas but by golly this year they aren't going to be send with LOVE.

At least I know he can spit in my garbage and it won't affect me. Bah!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Man, that stinks, Jana (no pun intended, I just threw it in as a bonus)

Oh, and when you make cookies for them, do you just set them out on the top of the garbage?? ;)

Vajana said...

CK: heh, if I can use another Seinfeld analogy, you mean like when he eats the food from the garbage? No, I usually try to catch them before they get it and bring it out to them. Hopefully they wait to eat it until their shift is over.

DC: Who know garbage would be such a dirty mess.