January 27, 2017
Dear Everyone:
When I was a college student, back in the Stone Age (or more accurately
in the early 1970s), one of my
Anthropology
instructors made an observation about our modern culture.
He said: “America is
a waste-producing society.”
His comment was to point out that we, in the course of ordinary,
everyday living, produce a great deal of waste.
Just to keep everything in perspective, consider that trees, rose
bushes and cabbages produce a waste that we like to call “oxygen”.
Not such a bad thing after all.
A lot of the waste that we produce occurs in the process of consumption.
Open a can of soda, drink the soda, and what you have left, apart
from assuaging your thirst, is an empty can.
Or bottle. Or
something.
Often times you can’t obtain a product without also obtaining and
discarding the object that it comes in or with.
You can’t really buy the soda without taking the can or bottle
that it comes in as well.
Want some wine? Try carrying
it home without the bottle.
Our brother, "Marshall", once needed to sew something, probably to
replace a button that had come off a shirt.
He complained that “You can’t just buy one needle.
You have to buy the whole package.”
And, of course, there’s a whole lot of packaging going on.
Some of it is advertising.
Don’t buy that product! Buy
this (virtually identical) product because it comes in a brighter,
shinier, more colorful package!
And some of it is to prevent petty theft.
A small tube of anti-bacterial ointment comes in a cardboard box
three times its original size just so someone can’t slip it into a
pocket to avoid paying for it.
Needless to say, all of this produced waste has to go somewhere.
Originally, people just tossed it outside the cave; but then the
refuse heap kept getting bigger and bigger.
Archaeologists love those heaps, called “middens”,
because it tells them so much about a society.
There are even modern archaeologists, who call themselves “garbologists”,
who study today’s trash and with it, today’s societies.
So we, as a society, produce mass quantities of waste and it all has to
go somewhere. Eventually, it
tends to end up in a
landfill. But it has to
get there from here and that’s where the modern “Waste
Management” companies come into the picture.
Most municipalities require their citizens to use some kind of waste
management, such as
garbage cans,
dumpsters, etc. Some also
require a certain effort at
recycling waste
that can be reused somewhere, somehow.
So your typical community has garbage and recycle bins, or
dumpsters, or a combination of both.
In my place, we have enclosures to house the dumpsters and recycle bins.
There are seven such enclosures for the 188 households.
The Waste Management company trucks come every week and empty the
dumpsters. Then they come on
a different weekday to do the same with the recycles.
But why do garbage trucks always have to arrive, grinding and beeping
their way through the street so loudly and so utterly early in the day?
And who puts the dumpsters outside the enclosures ever-so-early
in the morning on garbage collection day?
That would be your “waste management facility service” (WMFS).
The
waste management company doesn’t touch the dumpsters or bins
themselves, other than with big, metal arms.
How do the dumpsters and bins get out of the enclosures and back
in again? WMFS.
These are the guys who wrestle the appropriate bins and dumpsters
out and in. They also shift
garbage out of the recyclables and move the really-recyclable stuff out
of the garbage into the right bins, break down large cardboard boxes and
such; and they clean up the whole enclosure and keep it all neat and
clean.
For years we had a WMFS that seemed to be doing a fine job as far as I
could see.
But then along came “Patty”, our newest
Homeowner
Association (HOA) Board member.
“Patty” insisted that she had found a WMFS that was oh-so-much
better than the one we were using.
Even had sales representatives come to the November Association
meeting to assure us how much better they were, and how much more money
they could save us.
With all due respect to our brother, Matt, who is in Sales, here’s the
thing about sales reps. No
matter what you ask, their answer is always, “Of course!”
Ask a software sales rep if their product will do FIB
(Fill-In-Blank) and they say, “Of course!
Our product does it better than anyone else!”
After you buy the software, you find yourself on the phone with
Technical Support and you hear:
“Yeah, there’s a way to do that.”
(Meaning the sales rep didn’t totally lie.)
“But first you’re going to have to get yourself a tricycle and a
whole lot of duct tape.”
Beware of Sales Reps!
(Sorry, Matt.)
That was in November. Now at
the end of January, the new WMFS has done a spectacular job of failing
to deliver the service they sold us.
Even “Phoebe”, the other HOA Board member, the one who “loves”
absolutely everyone, is fed up with the new WMFS.
They keep telling us that this is just a “shake down phase” while they
get everything in order and besides, there’s always a lot more waste
around Christmas-time and who knew the big Waste Management company
would balk at rescheduling pickup days?
Actually, the new WMFS specifically told us that they expected
these problems; but then failed to prepare for them.
On the Plus Side, between you, me and the lamp post, the next time
“Patty” tries to sell us another one of her many “improvements”, she’s
going to trip over her own WMFS.
Love, as always,
Pete
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