It is ironic that the retiree, once liberated from the constraints of the brutal and uncompromising time schedule demanded by a job, continues to seek timed boundaries with which to measure out his existence. One of these boundaries is the weekly garbage pick-up times. My town of Plainburg is divided into four sectors, each with a different schedule, for the purpose of garbage and recyclables pick-up. In my sector, garbage is picked up twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday, and glass, cans, and plastics and newspapers and paper products are picked up once every two weeks on alternate Thursdays.
It is a rational system, but it has its drawbacks. One problem is trying to remember if a particular Thursday is a glass/cans/plastics day or a newspaper/paper products day. An annual schedule is mailed to each household at the beginning of each year, but it always seems to disappear by February. Most likely someone in the household conscientiously disposed of it on a Thursday.
It is not uncommon to find people disposing of the wrong recyclable on a given Thursday. Many people, after having lost or misplaced their schedules, wait until other people on the block have put out their recyclables in order to determine which type to leave on the curb. One time I put out my cans and bottles early and everyone else on the block followed suit, only to find out it was paper products Thursday. The sanitation crew must have gotten a kick out of that.
Another drawback is that sometimes holidays fall on a Thursday. In that case no pick-up is done for one type of recyclable for a whole month. Paper products accumulate and take up valuable storage space in the home, but that is no way as upsetting as what happens when glass/cans/ plastics day is skipped. There are so many soda bottles, jars, and tins accumulated in a month’s time, they overflow the diminutive town-issued recyclable container and have to be stored in two separate bins. In the summer, they begin to smell and attract flies, raccoons, and cats. One time I went out to dispose of an empty bottle of rum and a possum leaped out of the recyclable container and waddled its way up the street.
When you’re working full-time, you’re exhausted and just want to relax, so you delay putting out the trash, or the week goes by in a blur and you forget what day it is. But when you’re retired, there is no excuse for neglecting household chores. In fact, chores become the mileposts on the road of weekly existence. You discover that if you complete chores in a timely manner and on a given schedule, you actually have lots of free time available for more pleasurable pursuits and an unbothered mind with which to pursue them.
But even the most well-planned schedules are subject to the vagaries of those who execute them, and, sometimes, the sanitation men are especially capricious when it comes to the the time of day they pick up the trash. Sometimes, I am woken out of a deep sleep by the distinctive whine of the hydraulic valves, the crunching sound of the compactor, and the screeching of the brakes as the garbage truck works its way up my street. If the sound is suddenly close by, I have to run out in my boxer shorts and quickly move the garbage cans to the curb. Other times, the garbage sits by the curb untouched until late in day.
It all depends on the route within my sector that the crew has decided to take. The streets of Plainburg are, for the most part, laid out in a grid, so one might assume that the crew would service them in a consistent manner, but this isn’t the case. The route varies from pick-up day to pick-up day and, consequently, the time of pick-up varies. I can think of two possible reasons for this variance. If times were consistent, then households in one part of town would always get their garbage picked up late. The eyesore of trash cans sitting on the curb all day wouldn’t be fair to them. Or maybe it’s just that the sanitation crew is so bored, that any variety in their routine is welcome.
I am sometimes tempted to ask one of the sanitation workers about their schedules when I’m standing in my boxer shorts and handing them my garbage cans, but I don’t want them to think I am a wise guy. Make an enemy of the sanitation man and risk having your emptied cans thrown haphazardly on your lawn, or, even worse, being ignored completely on glass/cans/plastics pick-up day.
