Bureaucracy of Garbage

{ring}

"Hello, this is TL."

"Is this ... Is this Transplanted Lawyer?"

"Yes, this is. Can I help you?"

"Sir, I'm Glynnda from Waste Management. I'm calling about your house."

"My house? What about it?"

"Well, my driver is out in front. We have limits to what we can take, you know."

"I'm sorry. Your account rep told me that on our first day of service, you would take extra bags and broken-down boxes. So I've got some extra bags and broken-down boxes but that's what we were told we could do."

"No, sir. Your boxes have to be tied together. My driver says they're loose. And he says you've got, like, twenty bags all full of wood out in front."

"Oh, I do not. I have nine bags. Eight of them are full of packing paper."

"Well, my driver says there's like twenty bags."

"I happen to have a photograph I took this morning of what I left." (Why? Because I was planning on writing a blog entry about it later, but there's no need for me to explain to you why I did it, Glynnda.) "Would you like me to e-mail it to you?"

{pause}

"Seriously, what's your e-mail address? I hauled all those bags and boxes to the curb myself. I know how much they weigh, I know what's in them, and I know how many there are. Your driver is exaggerating what's really going on."

"Okay, sir, I can tell him to take his limit in the bags, but we can't have him chasing the boxes all up and down the street."

"Shouldn't your recyclables guy should take the boxes?"

"His rules are that the boxes have to be tied together."

"Hey, no one told me that. They told me I had to break down the boxes, and I did."

{pause}

"Look, we've got all this trash. I'll pay extra if I need to. Just please tell your drivers to take it all away."

"Well, he's already gone. I call and tell him to go back and take his limit. Anything over his limit you'll have to haul away."

"What? You mean he left without taking anything? Who set this limit, anyway? Is it a city ordinance?"

"Excuse me?"

"Is the city telling you that you can't haul away too much trash at once?"

"No, sir, that's the rule."

"So that's Waste Management's rule."

"I think so, yes."

"Well, I'm Waste Management's customer and I'm asking you to take my trash away. It's just your own rule, so no one will get in trouble if you bend it this one time. Hey, I'm even offering to pay you extra to do it."

{pause}

"What's in the bags? Paper, you said?"

"Yes. Eight have nothing but used packing paper. The ninth has some household trash and the remains of a CD rack that got destroyed by our movers. And some styrofoam."

"Well, you're sure you didn't leave like twenty bags out there? Maybe your neighbors put a bunch of bags out when they saw what you did."

"Yeah, I'm, um, I'm pretty sure that didn't happen, unless they were lurking behind the bushes to wait for me to drive away to work this morning and then sneak bags of garbage onto my sidewalk instead of just putting their own garbage out in front of their own houses. I mean, it's not exactly guerilla garbage warfare by the aquaduct out there in west Palmdale. I think they were all getting ready to go to work themselves."

{pause}

"All I'm asking is for you to take my trash away. That is the service you provide, isn't it? That is why I'm paying you money every month, right?"

"Look, sir. All I can do is have my driver take his limit of bags. I'll tell him to go back and take his limit."

"Okay, please do that."

"ThankyouforchoosingWasteManagementhaveaniceday."

{click}

The result: thirteen hours later, seven bags of packing paper, and all the boxes, are still here.