Contaminated
February 20th, 2008 - 2:17pm - No Comments »
Last week I stayed overnight in Geelong for a work do (that’s another story, and not interesting enough to repeat). Early next morning, I received a call from Justine. The call was, I expected, the usual morning “hello” call whenever I stay away overnight.
“Our recycling bin has some sort of ‘Contaminated’ sticker on it!” Justine’s troubled voice rang out, “What’s going on? Is there a dead dog in our bin?”
A few moments later and I had agreed to take care of it, and looked up our council’s details. Open at 8:30. Perfect, my work thing starts at 8:45. I called the council at exactly 8:30 and — as I suspected in the back of my mind — the phone rang out.
I gave them another ten minutes to get in, make their coffees, have a gossip and settle in for a day of, well, sitting. Call two went slightly better than the first… if you can call being transferred to a different phone that rang out an improvement.
Fast forward a few boring hours, including a dull presentation given by me where no one understood what “Distributed File System” or “SubVersion” are, and I called again for the third time.
The helpful lady on reception advised me that the number to which she’d previously redirected me should not have rung out. That came as a surprise, I thought it had been done on purpose. This time, though, someone picked up at the other end. It just wasn’t someone from the area I was attempting to reach. I left my contact details and was told I would be called “after lunch” since the report regarding our bin would arrive in the morning. Specific enough to sound like today, but in true council fashion, it could also mean a week from Thursday.
After a lovely filling lunch of everything, I had more work-related work to, well, work on. I figured that quarter past two was “after lunch” enough, but call number four involved me being put on hold before I had a chance to ask to be transferred. I waited over five minutes before giving up. Call number five was similar to four, but the wait was slightly shorter. When I was transferred I was advised the person I’d been trying to contact for around six hours was at lunch.
I hope it wasn’t a dead dog in the bin.
Call number six occurred an hour later and after a few more minutes on instaHold I finally, amazingly, managed to reach the person I’d been trying to contact all day.
I explained our situation; through the thick South African accent I was told that our report had not yet been received, and that was not normal. Apparently having to spend seven hours and six calls trying to get through is.
The final situation was a let down. South African accent-lady mentioned that we had simply put something in the recycling bin we shouldn’t. A plastic bag, take-away container, or perhaps a tin can. No dead dog, no animal faeces, no uranium, no chopped up third-degree burn victim. Just incorrect rubbish. Apparently though, if we’re naughty another two times, they’ll take away our bin. I’m not sure how that would improve recycling, but the bad little kid inside me wants to run and put the wrong things into everyone’s bins on our street.
Arriving home after a long two days, I rushed to bring our bin back in, hoping the neighbours hadn’t yet seen the sticker. As I walked back after putting the bin around the side of the house, one of our neighbours was suddenly in front of me.
It turns out he had seen the sticker. Rather than doing the modern neighbourly thing and making me feel bad about it, he told me he had ripped part of the sticker off, rushed our bin across the street and the truck actually took the bin! Take that, council.
