I’m a transplant to NY, and although it is not as awe inspiring and exciting as I had hoped, I like it just fine. But mostly NY, when I not off on some errand elsewhere in the world, is traffic.
[note to fellow New Yorkers: there is a world outside of New York – Shanghai, for example, is a couple millennia older, 15% larger, and just as exciting. It is in a land called ‘China.’]
At any rate, as if the traffic itself is not enough of a tribulation, I’ve noticed something else disturbing while stopped on the motorways. If you look closely, every wooded field, each seemingly serene tree stand, has been spoiled by garbage. It’s a terrible shame, but it’s one I think I have begun to understand. You see, there must be people like me – people whose garbage is not garbagy enough to be picked up by the garbage man. Frustrated New Yorkers who have taken their rejected refuse and found a new, and unfortunate home for it.
When I first moved in, I was a whirlwind of unpacking energy. I quickly brought all the things the old owners had inconsiderately left behind to the curb, filled a few moving boxes with used packing material, and even cleared some leaves and twigs from the gardens. And if the neatly piled stack of garbage at the road had left in the big green truck it was waiting for, it would have begun to seem like home.
But I watched the garbage man, who was a garbage man not just in avocation but spirit, when he came to make his rounds. He picked up on oddly mangled coat rack, chuckled mean-spiritedly to himself, threw it back on my lawn, and drove off. My refuse had offended the garbage maven, perhaps even the great and terrible garbage gods! But how?
I rushed to library to research the best way to appease an angry garbage god. It was all there, or so I thought, codified in complex language. Biodegradable twine, no nylon – check. Leaves only in paper, garbage only in plastic bags – check. Boxes cut down and bound in special twine – check. And the list goes on, but it isn’t important, because it doesn’t work.
Plastic that looks like metal, even if it is surreptitiously hidden in the bottom of a can – rejected. Old carpet – rejected. Leaves now wet and soggy in their special paper bags – rejected. Do you get the idea, or do I need to go on? And if one item, one cereal box or bottle cap is found wanting, nothing gets picked up. There is no partial credit in garbage, I have found.
I chatted with friends at work and asked them if they had had similar experiences. My coworkers, normally confident, energetic folk, looked uncomfortable with the subject. It was as if the very conversation might be reported to the garbage ministry, or anger the trash spirits.
“Have you bought the garbage man a gift?”
“Yeah, or just pin some money to the garbage.”
“What?! I’m the guy who leaves a 30% tip for good service, and nothing for poor service. I’m not rewarding my ill-tempered trash czar for poor service, which by the way, my taxes already pay for. I’m calling to complain about him.”
There where startled glances all around. You would have thought I just peed on a statue of the virgin Mary.
“No one complains about the garbage pick-up!”
“Yeah, I knew I guy who complained once, and they found his ear and knee cap in New Jersey.”
New Jersey! The garbage gods are swift and severe in their retribution. I have made arrangements, and paid for, special pickups, taken my saws-all to everything over 6 inches in diameter, and set out the garbage like it was a burnt offering to a vengeful god. I marketed my garbage, trying to make it as appealing and enticing as a chocolate torte frosted with liquid sex.
But the trash warfare continues. Yesterday I threw out a soccer ball. The garbage man removed it from the can and punted it down the street.
So how much do you tip a trash deity?
