Haha!!! You all are making me chuckle by bringing up some of your "garbage can" experiences.
First of all I have to say I'm impressed with the guy in the video - awesome! He took the initiative and picked the garbage up and corrected the situation. If ours fall over it is our problem and the truck will move on.
This all makes me think that the times they sure are a changing. We used to be able to pay for garbage service (or not) and pay by the bag but then the city changed the rules and imposed mandatory garbage fees incorporated into the sewage bill. Everyone pays - whether they use it or not! Then they went with a service that requires the big cans that many of you are familiar with. When they first started this, they used to empty into the back of the truck (took two guys) but now they've gone to a single driver/operator who uses one of the arms that grab the can and dumps like in the above video. Someone lost a job (only takes one) and of course they then they raised the price to the residents in order to pay for the "enhanced" service! Arggg!!!!
Now here's what's really interesting to me... that others have to deal with the garbage gestapo like we do. We get notices of failure to comply and fined if it happens again. And yep, with all the increased technology they also have to increase the rules. You can't put the cans out to early and you can't leave them out to late. They have to be facing the right way and they can't be too full or even too close together. They can't be on the road but they can't be too far back. The recycle bins are checked and whoa unto you should you put a bit of foam, plastic, metal or glass that is not acceptable - and the rules of what they take is constantly changing. And, if you have something that doesn't fit into a can... well, tough for you - you have to wait until the one spring clean-up day in order to get rid of that old bed frame or whatever.
Now much of this may sound reasonable except that life is not always so neat and there are always exceptions. As an example, in the dead of our Michigan winter we have to deal with snow storms that don't follow any particular schedule. When the snow piles up and the plow comes through it often creates havoc with the residents ability to conform to the rules! In the old days you could just leave the "bag" on top of the snow bank and the guys would just pick it up and toss it into the truck. In fact they probably appreciated not having to bend over so far in order to pick up the bag! Now it's tough on those without a tractor because they have to create a space for their big cans, get them out there and hope the snowplow doesn't knock them over.
Another example: What if you only have a small bag of garbage. Can you just put it out there? Nooo... you have to haul that big old can out there whether it was full or not just to get rid of that small bag that you didn't want to let putrefy for another week.
Then there are the little old retired folk. I know many who are just not able to handle those great big cans (with only a small bag of garbage in it) - even if it is only 20-40 feet from the garage to the road. My 91 year old mother was one of those.
I'm sure there are lot's of other stories out there as well but in the end it probably can be reduced to a single term: "Progress!"
