Dear Mr. Trashman

Dear Mr. Trashman –

It's me, your favorite customer with the trash can so full you fear your compactor won't be able to handle it.  I'm the one who mandates my husband to complete ridiculous household projects in record time and refuses to pay extra dump fees so we bust everything up and dispose of it through our regular trash service.  

Except – it's not "regular" what you see every Tuesday morning – we've doubled the size of our trashcan by sticking boards down each side so we can balance things up to 4 feet above average container height.  

Yes, I know our lid has never been used and the underside is just as sun-bleached as the rest.  Perhaps you should ask the previous owners why they NEVER updated a thing since 1958?  The fault really lies there.

What I'm writing about today is that NEXT TUESDAY, when you make 3 noise-ordinance-surpassing drives past our curb-side bedroom windows between 6 and 6:30am, I will be sending my bed-headed children out to spend the day with you.  As if it isn't rude enough that your shrieking brakes are in need of maintenance, you seem to lack aim on the "barrel grabber" as by the third pass I am watching you botch nearly every retrieval.

Do you think I care that your truck is powered by "bio diesel" or that you recycle 70% of your load?  I loath the sound of you worse than a beeping alarm clock!  Do you know that there are NO Holidays on Tuesdays so I don't get a break even ONCE? And on the oft occurrence of a Monday holiday you come even EARLIER on Tuesday because you have to squeeze 2 routes onto MY TRASH DAY.   It was by no decision of my own that our neighborhood has ALL trash pick up on Tuesdays.  Must have been decided by a childless man.

There must be a compromise because I feel this weekly hostility will eat a hole through our relationship.  After all...I NEED you to pick up my loads of aged sheetrock, haunted light fixtures and vintage panelling.  

A few suggestions I have are these: change your route to wake up someone else's children at the ass-crack of dawn, pay to replace my not-so-trendy "mid-century modern" windows with more sound-proof ones, strap in a couple of car seats and be ready for new co-workers.

The portrait I took of you this morning from my bathroom window doesn't do justice to the menace you are in my life.  You look rather benign hiding behind that tree and driving off into the freshly sunlit sky.  I do hope you realize there are sleep deprived persons behind the rubbish and we would appreciate some kind of change...unless that's up to your Fortune 500 central office and you have no control over your life because you "work for the man."  Yeah...that's likely the case...I get that.

See you next Tuesday.

 – Jen

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