or Why it Pays to Have a Fit

I told Missy the other day that pretty much everything begins in the middle of things and this story certainly does. I happened to be outside when I saw the trash truck coming up the driveway. Stopped. Started backing up.

I am in no better mood than I was the day I mentioned that I was in a foul mood. Mr. Big Food is in a not very good mood, too. (No. We’re not fighting– in fact, we’re partners in arms on this one.) I did not want Mr. Big Food’s not very good mood to be ruined this evening with news that “they” didn’t pick up the trash. Again.

So I chased down the yard waving my arms and screaming at the top of my lungs. I did not even think about not swearing– and pulling out the big guns, at that! They started up the drive. By this time Tuffer had moved the offending vehicle which, by the way, was in no way offensive. The guy who does the dumpster bit got out and I let him have it. He replied with the same lame ass cockamame horse hockey I’d heard before. Car. Driveway. Turn-around. Rut. Stuck. Contact the county.

I was hardly in the house before I’d pulled up the text thread with Pat, our County Supervisor, from last summer that concerned the fact that on and off and on again all summer the trash people didn’t pick up. He did what Supervisors do and it’s been okay until today. My text was 11 lines long. (To my credit, it did not contain any cuss words.) He replied within a minute and then called to get more detail. He promised to 1) get it fixed and 2) “ream” them a new one.

The way this all works– as I learned last summer– is that the county negotiates a rate with the Trash Co. and Trash Co. bills us. The county makes no profit in this. But Trash Co. works with customers through the county and is sort of answerable to the Sups (that what the newspaper calls them). It’s important to bear in mind that if Sups want to be re-elected, they must keep their constituents happy. One clear way to do this is to make sure the trash gets picked up. 

I learned today that there’s actually a procedure in place for Trash Co. to alert the county when a road or driveway needs to be fixed because the damned Trash Co. truck busted it up. That procedure was not followed.

A little while later, up drives a pickup with some stuff including shovels in the bed. And back down the drive it goes. I surmised that ours was not a pickup level problem. And sure enough, here comes Dale on the tractor. He dragged the drive to get rid of the potholes from all the rain. And then comes the dump truck with softball-sized molten lava rocks. And the comes Dale again (he’d gone over to the neighbor’s to chat).  Together they did whatever they did to repair the turn around. By the way, everyone I talked to was amazed that the Trash Co. people had done that to the turn-around.

The fix is uglier than sin. But it should work.