"Fat to Fittie"

Growing up it was common knowledge that council workers were the laziest, usually spending hours hiding and keeping out of the way, I can vouch for this cos at school I did three weeks work experience with the council stone mason’s and the only experience I actually got was doing the butty run and sitting in the cabin. Imagine then if your particular job at the council was deemed to be the one where you did the least work, well I can reveal that title goes to the bin men.

When I was a kid, the dustbin men as we called them, were hard, tough men, who would come round the back of your house and lift your metal bin, full of the week’s crap onto his shoulder and carry it like it was a bag of flour to the lorry. There were no black bags then so you made sure that all the rubbish you’d accumulated was stuffed into this already heavy while empty receptacle. (We used to use the lids as a shield, which went a long way into building up the muscle strength in your left arm, wooden sword in the other hand, you’d spend the summer holidays battering your friends in a game called “last man standing”.) There’s no doubt that these guys were looked upon as hero’s, there’d always be banter as they came to pick it up, before returning the empty bin to the same spot in the yard, not left halfway across your drive, meaning you have to move it before taking the car out, or if you’ve been out shopping while they called, having to get out the car on your return and shifting the obstacle, possibly placed there on purpose before you can enter your drive.

Of course we have re-cycling now and this morning it was the turn to leave that out, along with the now charged for green waste bin. I bought myself a new microwave this week so I piled all the cardboard extras it came with into the box and placed the whole thing in a plastic box, seems silly I know, but they won’t take it if it’s just loose (lets not go there). When I went out to get the boxes back in, the microwave box was still there, with a sticker attached telling me they couldn’t take it because it contained plastic. I had a look inside and amongst the cardboard was the plastic bag that the instructions had been in, I hadn’t know it was there and pulled it out, took me about 5 seconds, why couldn’t the bin man have done that? instead, he went back to the lorry, took out the sticker book and spent quite a while writing out his beef before placing it on the cardboard box, the whole thing must have taken him at least 30 seconds, six times longer than it took me to remove the offending bag and bearing in mind, while rooting through the box, he must have had his hand on it which means removal would have been, 1 second. It really beggars belief that they can be so petty. Luckily they had to come back for the green bin so I was able to leave them a message on the microwave box, best if I don’t tell you what it said.