A Load of Rubbish

Everyone is talking rubbish at the moment.  It's the hot topic of conversation in the staff room, in the pubs and the swimming pool sauna.

Our local council has just switched to a new contractor who is providing new recycling services.  I'm a fan of recycling. I like to separate my waste.  It feels positive, as though I am doing something, no matter how small to save the environment.

Teething problems are to be expected but this new scheme has been a disaster.  Everyone's collection day has been moved to the same day and the poor bin men don't stand a chance of collecting everything on one day.

In the local paper a councillor admitted that the service was not good enough but said that the abusive telephone calls had to stop.  This astounds me.  Why do people feel the need to ring up and be rude and abusive to a poor receptionist, who has no power to change anything?  When I was walking the dog the first week, the bin men were quite cheerful.  They were confused and knew it wasn't all working but they were determined to do their best.  This week, they appeared downtrodden and fed up and when I said, "Morning, how's it going?" (Which is normally answered with a friendly chat) the reply was, "You're not going to moan at us as well are you?"

Following bin men around with a stop-watch is one of the highlights of my career.  I worked in the work-study department of a different council and it was my job to find out how long it took council workers to do certain jobs and set bonus rates for them, to encourage speed and accuracy.  Overall, it wasn't a job I enjoyed very much but the day I spent on the refuse truck was the most fun I've ever had.  Those men worked so hard and had so much fun, while doing it and they were even nice to me and my clipboard and stopwatch.

While I was working there the government made a new rule that council's had to put their services out to tender to make sure it was the cheapest deal.  The tender report became the responsibility of the the work study department and took months to produce.  We knew exactly, what it took to provide the services and the outside contractors were able to be more optimistic.  It didn't really matter if they could deliver because if they were cheaper they would get the job.  This must be what has happened here.  A contractor has been overly optimistic, got the job and failed to deliver.