Cheap, Cheap!
It’s time to rant once again about Sioux Cityans and their cheap-ass ways.
“Sioux City residents are SO CHEAP...”
“How cheap are they?”
Well, lemme tell ya.
This year, the city of Sioux City outsourced the garbage collection. No big deal – as long as it doesn’t pile up, I don’t care if it’s a city worker or some private schmuck who comes to pick up the trash.
But with this privatization, there’s now a limit on how much you can pitch. It used to be you could put out your garbage can, plus up to 6 extra bags. Not any longer. Under the new contract, any extra trash is charged. In order to throw out more than your allotted can’s worth, you need to affix a prepaid trash sticker to the extra garbage. They’re only .89 cents apiece, and are available all over town. Slap on a sticker, and they’ll haul away the extra.
Now, all things considered, .89 cents a bag is a real bargain. When I moved away from Seattle 10 years ago, at that time each extra bag would run you $6.00. No telling what they charge there now. So we’d been spoiled by years of throwing out everything we wanted, and now the time has come to pay the garbage piper. Buy a sticker, you cheap bastard. .89 cents won’t break you.
So this week being Thanksgiving and all, we had an extra bag of trash. Our regular pickup day was Thursday, which was pushed back because of the holiday, and what with the dead turkey carcass and the remnants our garage cleaning last week, we’d jammed our trash can as full as it’d go. (Yes, I stood on it and jumped up and down. You pay by the can, not by weight.)
So I took our extra bag o’ waste, set it next to the can on the curb Thursday night, affixed our .89 cent sticker, and went to bed, confident that I’d done the socially and financially correct thing for our city.
Friday AM. I get up and look outside. Our extra bag of garbage is still on the curb. Why?
Because someone stole our garbage sticker right off the bag.
Our .89 fucking cent trash sticker. Fucking stolen. Right off the fucking bag.
It very obviously hadn’t fallen off or blown off in the wind – nope, it’d been ripped off in the middle of the night, and I suspect is now affixed to one of my cheap-ass neighbor’s leftover turkey carcass bag.
What is it with people around here and their love of petty larceny? In the 7 years that we’ve lived here, I watched dozens of times as people swipe the aluminum cans from the recycle bin. (It’s not some homeless guy desperate for coins; it’s a middle age couple who drive a late model car.) I’ve lost 3 antennae balls off my cars to thieves. Neighborhood punks will steal your flowers (usually pulling up the whole plant in the process) from your garden every Spring. We’ve had 3 different flags stolen off the front of the house, until the Lovely Mrs. G. finally started bolting the flag poles to the house. People around town have had their Halloween and Christmas decorations swiped right off their front porches. When we lived out in the small Cowtown and had a lovely view of the farm store across the way, I’d watch people pull up all times of the night and steal mulch, water softener salt, Christmas trees, you name it.
It seems that you can’t try to do anything nice for your home around here without some jackass cheap-o bastard ripping you off. .89 cents for a garbage sticker. Gee, I hope you’re proud of yourself, buddy. Maybe there’s a baby out there you can steal a lollipop from.
Yet another reason why I can’t wait to move away from here. It’s imperative that we move somewhere where petty thieves aren’t as prevalent as they are in Sioux City.
So welcome to Sioux City, Iowa – We hope you enjoy your visit. Just watch your wallet closely.
“Sioux City residents are SO CHEAP...”
“How cheap are they?”
Well, lemme tell ya.
This year, the city of Sioux City outsourced the garbage collection. No big deal – as long as it doesn’t pile up, I don’t care if it’s a city worker or some private schmuck who comes to pick up the trash.
But with this privatization, there’s now a limit on how much you can pitch. It used to be you could put out your garbage can, plus up to 6 extra bags. Not any longer. Under the new contract, any extra trash is charged. In order to throw out more than your allotted can’s worth, you need to affix a prepaid trash sticker to the extra garbage. They’re only .89 cents apiece, and are available all over town. Slap on a sticker, and they’ll haul away the extra.
Now, all things considered, .89 cents a bag is a real bargain. When I moved away from Seattle 10 years ago, at that time each extra bag would run you $6.00. No telling what they charge there now. So we’d been spoiled by years of throwing out everything we wanted, and now the time has come to pay the garbage piper. Buy a sticker, you cheap bastard. .89 cents won’t break you.
So this week being Thanksgiving and all, we had an extra bag of trash. Our regular pickup day was Thursday, which was pushed back because of the holiday, and what with the dead turkey carcass and the remnants our garage cleaning last week, we’d jammed our trash can as full as it’d go. (Yes, I stood on it and jumped up and down. You pay by the can, not by weight.)
So I took our extra bag o’ waste, set it next to the can on the curb Thursday night, affixed our .89 cent sticker, and went to bed, confident that I’d done the socially and financially correct thing for our city.
Friday AM. I get up and look outside. Our extra bag of garbage is still on the curb. Why?
Because someone stole our garbage sticker right off the bag.
Our .89 fucking cent trash sticker. Fucking stolen. Right off the fucking bag.
It very obviously hadn’t fallen off or blown off in the wind – nope, it’d been ripped off in the middle of the night, and I suspect is now affixed to one of my cheap-ass neighbor’s leftover turkey carcass bag.
What is it with people around here and their love of petty larceny? In the 7 years that we’ve lived here, I watched dozens of times as people swipe the aluminum cans from the recycle bin. (It’s not some homeless guy desperate for coins; it’s a middle age couple who drive a late model car.) I’ve lost 3 antennae balls off my cars to thieves. Neighborhood punks will steal your flowers (usually pulling up the whole plant in the process) from your garden every Spring. We’ve had 3 different flags stolen off the front of the house, until the Lovely Mrs. G. finally started bolting the flag poles to the house. People around town have had their Halloween and Christmas decorations swiped right off their front porches. When we lived out in the small Cowtown and had a lovely view of the farm store across the way, I’d watch people pull up all times of the night and steal mulch, water softener salt, Christmas trees, you name it.
It seems that you can’t try to do anything nice for your home around here without some jackass cheap-o bastard ripping you off. .89 cents for a garbage sticker. Gee, I hope you’re proud of yourself, buddy. Maybe there’s a baby out there you can steal a lollipop from.
Yet another reason why I can’t wait to move away from here. It’s imperative that we move somewhere where petty thieves aren’t as prevalent as they are in Sioux City.
So welcome to Sioux City, Iowa – We hope you enjoy your visit. Just watch your wallet closely.
posted by Tommy G at
8:59 AM
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