Complex Numbers

No One Wants To Work (Especially Me)

Well, this "JAFBG"  [XGC] prompt was going to come up sometime.

Tell us about something/someone that fucked you off this week.

My city.

I can't say it was specifically this week. It's more of an ongoing thing.

First, a bit of background that's probably necessary for understanding:

Like many cities, mine has a recycling program. Whether the items that go into recycling are actually recycled or not is an open question, but that falls into the category of Not My Problem. Recycling is free (or paid for by taxes or whatever; the point is that we don't pay per pickup for recycling). Other waste (which I will refer to herein as Garbage to distinguish it from Recycling) is paid for through an annual fee and/or a per-pickup tag.

Garbage is picked up every week. Recycling is picked up every other week, by a different truck. In my neighborhood, we put the bins out on Monday evening for a Tuesday pickup, then we have to take the bins back from the curb by Tuesday evening.

I told you about the shitty sn*wstorm we had here last week. That was on Monday morning. I dutifully lugged the bins to the curb despite the sn*w. I didn't really expect the pickup to happen on Tuesday, because of the heaps of frozen slush, but just in case, there they were. Tuesday came and went. No pickup. Well, I'm not schlepping that shit back through the sn*w; probably it would happen Wednesday.

Wednesday goes by. No pickup. Most of the sn*w melted from the roads and yard.

I leave that crap out there (as do the neighbors) all week. No pickup. There's a Garbage bin, a Recycling bin, and several cardboard boxes filled with overflow recycling because I buy all kinds of shit online because I don't give a damn and it's not like I can go to stores right now.

The following Monday (this week, which makes this all fit the prompt), the garbage pickup happened. The recycling continues to sit by the curb. Getting soggy. There's no way in hell I'm dragging all of that back up to my house. I mean, it's only 25 feet, but now the yard is filled with fallen branches because sn*wstorm.

They're not going to pick it up this week. The next scheduled recycling pickup is this coming Tuesday.

Guess what's predicted to happen Sunday. Go ahead. Take a wild-ass guess.

You're right: a blizzard.

Well. A Virginia blizzard, which translates to "flurries" from the perspective of my friends in Minnesota, Michigan and Canada. Predictions are for a foot of sn*w. Or maybe mixed sn*w and ice. Or maybe rain and sn*w. Whatever, the point is, I'd bet $100 (the approximate annual price of an annual garbage can sticker) that the trucks won't make it here next Tuesday either, because this is Virginia and if there's a foot of sn*w, it might as well be twenty for all anyone can move on the roads. Meanwhile, I have another two weeks' worth of recycling ready to go to the curb. And to the curb it will go: on Saturday, before the oncoming storm, because there's no way in frozen hell I'm going to try to drag it through a foot of sn*w on Monday.

And if they don't pick it up, it will continue to sit there, because I'm done. I did what I was supposed to do. They did not. They can try to give me shit about it if they want, but the bottom line is: if they don't want a bunch of soggy, falling-apart cardboard boxes filled with a mix of more cardboard, plastic, beer bottles, paper, more plastic, cans, and more beer bottles, any one of which could fall apart at any moment, and which will soon be also weighed down by sn*w, sitting in the street, they can goddamned well pick it up themselves.

Not. My. Problem.