Moving and rudeness.

Anyone who has been reading this blog -- extraordinarily smart and good-looking that you are -- probably knows that among my many characteristics, I dislike unrequired rudeness and I admire the men who provide the basics of sanitation in our lives: clean water and trash collection. 

If one were to go back in Earth's history to any of the cities of the past, even 150 years ago, the first thing one would probably notice is how horribly filthy everything is. We are naturally repelled by filth, as nature's way of telling us to back off, but since we discovered the microscopic causes behind disease, we are more repelled than ever. Go back to New York c. 1840 and your nose would probably be the first thing that alerted you that you were not in 2023 anymore. (Not that it's exactly a bouquet of roses these days either, granted.) There are still plenty of places on the planet where clean water is a luxury, not a given, and trash collection is little other than wherever you can dump it; places where cholera and dysentery are still common. "Public health" is an oxymoron there.

So we ought to be as respectful of our garbagemen as we are of any service provider who performs an important function in a clean and peaceful polity. Which means stuff like this is a no-no. 

This family is in the process of selling their house, and this is the third huge dump they put out for the trashmen. I'm wondering if they're bringing anything at all with them, because it seems like everything in the house must be going in the garbage. They even had a set of tires -- with rims -- out there at one point -- and it's illegal to throw away tires with the trash. (The trash pros left the tires the first go-round, but they disappeared later.)  

The town says you can put out one large item (like a piece of furniture) per week. They flew past that limit a while ago. Old tires, of course, were mentioned as something you can never throw away, but state law says you can bring them to any place that sells tires and they have to take them (a small fee may apply). 

The county says you can bring your crap to the dump for about $130 per ton. In my experience they usually don't even bother charging if you don't bring a dump truck full of debris in with you, as long as you can prove you're a county resident.  

And it doesn't seem like very many of us are aware that these guidelines exist. This crazy thing called the Internet, where you can look things up instantly, is getting to be a thing. These people ought to check it out.

The best and most efficient option if you have a lot or junk is to rent your own dumpster and throw your garbage away yourself. Just chucking everything on the curb is inefficient. 

It also is the height of rudeness -- taking your problem and making it someone else's problem without asking. Like littering, drunk driving, useless mask mandates, and silly games involving personal pronouns, taking one's own problems and shoving them onto someone else's back is at the very least showing no consideration for one's fellows. 

Well, the trash legends did not take all that junk on the Tuesday run. The scene this morning:

Will they be willing to cart it away Friday? Will the slobs add to the pile by then? Will they ever learn? The drama continues unabated. 

Am I being nosy? Is that rude? Yes and maybe, but rudeness is A-OK in our neighborhood now.