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Writer's picturebetsineid

The Devil is in the Details



Good Morning.

I live on a busy street with people who use several garbage services. I sit at my desk, gaze out the window with my coffee, and have the opportunity to observe these gentlemen at work - I haven't seen any gentlewomen yet. In any case, the differences in how they serve their customers are pretty interesting.

Monday begins with a guy in a small truck who shows up at the place across the street around nine o'clock. He backs

his truck into the driveway, dumps the Army green plastic receptacle into the truck by hand and off he goes. Within seconds

a second truck does the same thing to collect the recycles every other week. This is also done by hand, and the timing between the two trucks is perfect. It is obviously a modest, family-owned business and I like that.

Tuesday is the day for me and my neighbors to the north. We use a much larger outfit with great big trucks, and our garbage

cans are royal blue and have to be taken to the curb. The recycle people come by around 8:30, but the regular stuff isn't

collected until noon. The truck pulls up across the street, and the collection agents have to dodge traffic to do their hauling. The cans are hoisted mechanically into the trucks and returned to somewhere near the garages. It doesn't matter where they end up - as long as they're outside, they can always be seen from the street which is the point, the office gal told me when I signed up for the service. I believe this is called marketing. My daughter told me about this company because it was cheaper than the one I'd been using, and if I mentioned her name, she'd get a free month. She was right; I pay about a third of what I was paying and get exactly the same thing accomplished with my destined for the dump and recycled materials. I believe this is called the free enterprise system. Also on Tuesday, the people across the street but two houses up from the Monday people have their garbage collected by a third company, but they get to use a hunter green receptacle that doesn't stick out like a Duke sweatshirt.

On Wednesday, three other houses are serviced by the outfit I used until my daughter told me about the blue people. These

neighbors have red cans and must also take them to the curb. On Thursday the people just to the south of me have a truck that stops right at the driveway. These folks have their cans, an unobtrusive dark brown, wheeled to the truck and returned to their rightful place, but they pay even more than I did for the red can outfit until my daughter told me about the company with blue. Now that I think about it, my daughter and her husband have DUKEBLU on the license plate of one of their vehicles so maybe it wasn't about money and a free month after all.

Best regards,

Elisabeth

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