As we’ve established previously, I’m an IT technician. My job is repairing people’s computers and related peripherals when they go wrong. So imagine I’m called up to visit a centre because someone’s PC has stopped working. I arrive, take one look at it and say “Sorry, can’t touch that”. When they ask why not, I casually reply “It’s in the wrong place” whereupon I turn around and leave them with a broken PC they can’t do anything with.
You can imagine the sort of response I’d get if I tried to pull that. There’d be feeble laughter, turning to annoyance and anger as they realised I wasn’t joking. Then there’d be complaints, disciplinarys, and if I kept it up I’d lose my job.
So why is it that when I left my house this morning after our rubbish should have been collected (only the recycling, mind! Our regular refuse has to fester for another seven days before they’ll deign to collect it), I was greeted by the pile of extra recycling we’d left out for collection, with an “advisory” notice attached to our bin. Apparently they couldn’t take the extra recycling because it was in black bin bags. The bags were untied (as per the guidelines) and placed safely next to the recycling bin (as per the guidelines) but they were black so they can’t empty them. So the people paid to collect our recycling wouldn’t collect our recycling (or as I prefer to say “Do their jobs”) because the bags that they had to empty were the wrong bloody colour!
Ridiculous barely covers this situation. Laughable, pathetic, stupid beyond belief – they help to describe it. Yet more blind adherence to short-sighted regulations enforced by local government.
What makes this worse is that now – unless I want to wait another two week for the next recycling collection – I have to put this recycling into my own car (which, unlike the vehicle given to the refuse collectors, is no designed to transport refuse), and drive it to the local dump where it will be deposited in with the general waste, completely defeating the whole point of the recycling exercise.
I really hope that a UK refuse collector reads this, or even better, one of their superiors, because I would love to discuss their idiotic collection policies (but nowhere near as much as I’d like to ram one of the uncollected wine bottles into their eye).
Apologies if all this vitriol and suburban rage is a bit much to take this early in the morning. Normal service will resume shortly.
TTFN
