Garbage in, garbage out
We moved recently and I had to subscribe to various new services in my new community, like water, power, internet and garbage service. The trash pickup (”waste hauling”) turned out to be far too difficult to arrange.
The city I’m moving to has a web page which lists all the waste haulers in town. The one I use at my old house is on the list, so I called them first to transfer my service. There was a loooong wait time, so I opted to leave a message and have someone call me back. They never did.
So I called them again a few hours later, and this time I got to a human in just a few minutes. When I gave him the address I needed service for, he couldn’t find it in his computer. It’s a small street, so it’s no wonder. So I listed various side streets for him, and he couldn’t find those either. After 5 or 10 minutes of this, we gave up. We don’t service your neighborhood, he explained.
“That’s ok”, I told him. “But I need to cancel my service at the old address while I have you on the phone.” He looked at the account and told me it was already scheduled to be cancelled on March 8th.
That perturbed me a bit, because, while I had told them on the message I left that I was moving, I never gave them a date to cancel service on. It seemed presumptuous of them to go ahead and cancel the service!
But no matter. I went on down the list of companies looking for a service provider for my new neighborhood. I finally found one (it wasn’t easy) and set up an account. Let’s call them Corleone & Co.
20 minutes later, my wife called and told me “The garbage company called. I gave them the new address and told them to cancel at the old house on the 8th.” Apparently they do service our neghborhood, and the guy I spoke to couldn’t spell. (And apparently they called my house back instead of the number I left on their automated callback service. What screwups!)
Great. So now I called back to Corleone & Co. to cancel the account I just created. All done. I thought. Naively.
Our waste company picks up on Thursday. Remember that: Thursday
At least they said it was Thursday. But this is the company that wasn’t sure they serviced my neighborhood at all, remember? So, with some trepidation, I placed my can on the curve Wednesday night. And Thursday afternoon, all my trash was gone. Hooray, it worked!
The next week, my wife called to tell me that a man had come out to put stickers on our trash can. He came to the door and asked if it was ok, and my wife let him get to the cans and label them. Trash companies do that around here so they can avoid picking up the wrong trash. I noticed the phone number on my can was out-dated, so it made sense that they put a new label on the can.
Thursday came again, and my trash didn’t get picked up. I called the number, waited on the voice response system for a while, and told the person who answered. She assured me they would pick it up Monday. Monday came and went; the trash stayed. I called again, waited again, told again, and was assured again. Wednesday, same routine. But that afternoon, a week late almost, the trash was finally picked up.
The next week, the same thing happened. Friday I called. Monday I called. On Tuesday I called the number on the trash can sticker. Something different: a human answered, so I didn’t have to do the long wait-time to ask for a pickup. On Wednesday, they picked it up again.
And then a funny thing happened: I got a bill from the waste hauler. The funny part was that I already had a bill from them just two days earlier.
And then the light-bulb went on. I realized four things all at the same time.
- This new bill was from Corleone & Co. That’s the company I cancelled, remember?
- The logo on the stickers on my trash cans matched the one on the bill from Corleone & Co.
- The man who placed stickers on my can was from Corleone & Co.
- My waste hauler was not picking up the trash because it had someone else’s stickers on it.
Later it occurred to me that Corleone & Co. must pick up on Wednesday. That’s why all my trash was disappearing 6 days late.
It was nice to finally have some answers. I called my waste hauler (the one I didn’t cancel) and asked them to come put their stickers on my can. But they can’t; they’re all out of stickers. So I printed my own and taped them to the cans. It looked great. Really.
Then I called Corleone & Co. and told them what happened. “But we don’t have any record of you calling to cancel your service.” I do, I protested. I wrote down when I called and everything! No matter; they still were going to charge me $15 for the two weeks of service.
“Fine,” I said. “Just cancel my service.”
A week later, my wife called. “We need to get a new trash can because the Corleone & Co. came and took theirs.”
“What?!” I asked, as calmly as I could. “That wasn’t their can!”
So I called Corleone & Co. and explained the whole sordid story, just as you’ve read it so far. She asked about the color of the can (green), and said their pickup guy must have been confused because the color is the same as theirs. She’ll call dispatch and try to get my can back.
There was hold music for 5 seconds, and then she was back. “Sir, are you sure it wasn’t our can? Because our records show that a can was delivered on 2-16.” I guess these are the same records that showed that I never cancelled the service to begin with. But, to be honest, I couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t their can. Oh no! In all my righteous indignation up to this point, I hadn’t considered that maybe they *did* take the can that they had left before. Maybe my company *didn’t* leave a can.
“I can’t be 100% sure,” I said. “I’ll call them and see.”
I called them. They had no record of leaving a can, but would send one out ASAP.
Dang. I was deflated. But at least I had a new can coming next week.
On the way home that day, I saw garbage cans in my neighborhood. I saw cans from my company and from Corleone & Co. And I recognized them both. Corleone & Co. did steal the wrong can, after all!
So now I have to call them back — purely for the principle of the thing — to demand they return my can. If they can find it. And then I’ll have what — two cans from the my company?
Well, at least when I call Corleone & Co. I’ll get to speak to a real human.
Maybe I should switch.