Posted on Saturday, 18th September 2010 by Patrick Dorwin
Last week, my buddy and I did a bunch of work, trimming trees and stuff in the yard. We found out the hard way that the city no longer picks up brush and tree branches for free (I guess our property taxes aren’t high enough for that anymore), they want $50 for them to come over with a wood chipper and mulch it up (that’s one of Tom Barrett’s infamous “fees” not a tax…). We tried to break it into smaller piles and put them next to the garbage cans, the trash collectors are supposed to pick up piles less than 2 cubic yards, but the crews ignored their job. So, today we used his little Ranger truck and took 5 loads of branches & brush to the “self help center.”
We had an interesting event the first time to the lot. They only allow city residents to use the center (dump), an understandable policy. My buddy didn’t have his drivers license on him, so I handed the attendant mine, but that wasn’t good enough for him. He actually made us switch seats, so that I, the one with the license, drove through the gates… Rules are rules, you know! it’s a good thing I knew how to drive stick, if I didn’t, I guess we would have been screwed 
When we left, I drove out of the gate, we stopped in the driveway and switched seats again, right in front of the jerk attendant, and he drove from there. He grabbed his license for the subsequent trips, but the idiot was gone by the time we got back, no one else seemed to care. But this one guy reminded us why the DPW doesn’t always stand for Department of Public Works, it also stands for Damn Poor Workers.
Thanks Tom Barrett, pleasure doing business with you… Not!
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4 Responses to “Rules are rules… I guess”
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September 18th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Must have been Capper’s nephew.
September 19th, 2010 at 2:07 am
It’s a government operation. It doesn’t have to make sense.
September 19th, 2010 at 9:23 am
It’s times like those that makes one one wanna dump the crap right in front of City Hall.
For instance, I have an ugly yellow plastic container, about knee-high tall and maybe 3′ square, given to us 10 years ago for the purpose recycling trash pickup. About 4 years ago we were switched to these giant rolling carts that the trash collectors just drive up and use side mounted hydraulic forks to lift and dump into the trucks (two trucks weekly: one for garbage and one recyclables).
So I tried putting now-unused ugly yellow container at the road side, thinking the guy might actually get out and toss it into the truck along with the other cans and plastics. I did this for a month, even writing “TAKE ME, PLEASE!” in huge lettering on the cover with a fat Sharpie.
Fat Chance.
That stupid ugly yellow container has been taking up space in my garage now for years. It’s like having a yellow Pacer that you can never get rid of.
September 19th, 2010 at 10:24 am
We have big blue containers here. The city rammed them down our throats in May. Mine is still sitting in the shed behind my house. Never been used. My objection goes beyond the manner in which this was imposed on us; the city had tracking chips built into the bins in order to monitor citizens’ use of the bins. In other words, if you are not in compliance, you will get a visit from the jackbooted thugs to remind you of the need for compliance, complete with threats of citations and fines.
Say “Sieg Heil” to the nice people. If it looks like, if it acts like it, call it what it is: fascism.