Dear Garbage Collectors:

J. Glarsten has written so much for so many places and in so many forms, he's...read more

Every Wednesday, after pick up, there's a crushed milk carton on my family's lawn or some ripped apart plastic bag or a bunch of used tampons or other personal hygeine items that are definitely, positively not our garbage.

What if, instead of your carelessly dumping other peoples' garbage on our yard -- the other week finding a used kitty litter box there was especially nice; we don't have cats, of course, we don't like cats, hate them really -- but how about we agree that, going forward, you'll only leave our garbage on our lawn? And what if, to make it easier, at the beginning of each month we give you a bag full of our garbage especially for that purpose? Our garbage that you can dump all over our yard whenever you're in the neighborhood. Will that make it more likely than not that instead of having neighbors' and our junk left on our yard each week, it will only be ours?

Of course, we'll also quadruple your Christmas-New Year gift, and add regular quarterly friendship gifts, and make sure to only leave a couple bags out each week on the curb so as not to burden you too much; and we can leave out cookies and hot chocolate and cider -- and, of course, a couple kegs of beer, Sierra Nevada Pale and Anchor Steam -- and whatever else might show our good intentions, whatever you want, really, any time, just tell us.

We are, of course, terrifically grateful for your services and all your hard work. (And, we don't hold it against you at all that you left our open cans out in the middle of the street a few weeks back and then ran over them with your truck...and did it again a week later. That could happen to anyone obviously. We also don't mind that you missed our house entirely a week last month, also the month before that, though it was a bit surprising that on those dates you missed our pick-up, we still found neighbors' garbage on our yard, something you wouldn't ordinarily expect to happen in that circumstance but, of course, could happen and, as we think about it, yes, is probably unavoidable.)

So, again, thanks. Let us know if there's anything else we can do to make your work and lives more comfortable.

Sincerely,

Your Frustrated (f**king pissed off) Grateful Customer ...read more blogs